Just Another Night

Shawn's been out of town so I've been single-mommying it for a week. His trip happened to be perfectly timed with Eliza's first cold.  At least he was here for the first couple of miserable days, but he left before she started to feel better.

I'm a night owl, AND I have a hard time falling asleep when Shawn's not home, so it's no surprise that I was up until 12:30am the other night.  What WAS a surprise was Eliza waking up at 1:00am.  I was pretty used to her 4:30am waking pattern.  And despite all of my best efforts, feeding her, walking, bouncing she was determined NOT to go back to sleep.  So, I pulled out the big guns, I grabbed Shawn's robe and held her and bounced her as he usually does. And it worked.  So, at 3:00am I found myself stumbling back into bed.  Only to be woken up at 4:30am with an upset belly!  I was confused, was I really sick?  I tried to ignore it and go back to sleep, but just kept waking up over and over.  Finally I trudged into the bathroom, and 30 minutes later, back in bed, feeling relieved and happy that the Pepto happened to be sitting on the bathroom counter. Then an hour later Shawn's alarm went off.  In my dizzy state I hit it and slapped at the alarm clock until it stopped.  10 minutes later I realized the beeping was NOT part of my dream and the darn thing was going off AGAIN! This time I put a little more effort into NOT hitting the snooze button, but still hit random buttons until it once again stopped.  Thankfully I accomplished my task. And then at 8:00 my living alarm clock (aka the baby) went off as well, and we were up for the day.

And you know, since becoming a parent, this is not such an unusual night.  Sure, Shawn's not always gone, he's usually around to help with the baby girl. And I don't usually get woken up by an upset belly.  But waking up three or four times a night is not that unusual anymore. And yes, we'll be doing some sleep training as soon as I can find a method I feel good about, but I also really love holding my sleeping baby in my arms in the middle of the night.