Voicemail from the devil and other bedtime stories

Sometimes I am the source of my own discontent. Other times it feels as if unseen evil forces are conspiring against me and all I hold dear.

To illustrate the former: when I first started blogging almost a year ago, I would always forget to put labels on my posts. So that has always bothered me, but in a slightly nagging, annoying away, not in a way that inspired me to actually do something about it. Last week I figured that if I did not do it now, well, I never would. So I started using some of my normal blog time to go back and add missing labels, to get rid of a few labels that didn't make sense, etc. General housekeeping stuff. (Blogkeeping?)

It was fun to re-read some of the posts as I went along, seeing what was going on in my life one year ago. Until I read the following "draft" that I had started way back in Jan 09, and never finished/published:

So this morning I woke up at about 4:30 with full breasts; E has been sleeping through the night for a while now, but just last week stopped waking at about 6, nursing, and falling asleep next to me in bed (which I can't fully enjoy since I have to get up at 6:45 to get M ready for kindergarten). Now he is sleeping right through until 7:30 or 8! Again, which would be great except that I have to get up at 6:45 to get M ready for kindergarten. (I have been SO tempted to yank her out and just homeschool, but she loves it, and I want her to have the full experience G had.)

What?! ONE YEAR AGO E was sleeping from about 7:30 at night until 7:30 in the morning????!!!!!

Ok, let me back up. Each of our girls have been terrific sleepers--we have been really blessed in this area. They all started sleeping from around 7-8 p.m. until about 5 a.m when they were about 3 months old.* And when each previous baby woke at 5 a.m. I would always bring her to bed, nurse her back to sleep, and we would be cozily asleep until about 8 a.m. So sleep-wise, for mommy and baby, this has been a lovely pattern. Every now and then a baby would have trouble in the middle of the night, if teething or stuffy-nosed, but she would almost always be soothed with nursing and then go right back to sleep.

Nearly almost always.

So, maybe some of you will be thinking I completely deserve that which I am about to write.

Ever since our summer of travel, E has been waking up in the night multiple times, typically between 2 and 4 times. It all started with the traveling, when the poor little guy had his schedule all thrown out of whack despite my best efforts to keep some regular rhythm to it. For weeks at a time we were in different beds every night. Or we were tent camping, which is admittedly a bit cold and uncomfortable for everyone, but esp. for those who are too young to understand the helpful admonition to "buck up, camper!" And since we were always sleeping in spaces where a crying baby in the middle of the night would greatly bother people outside our little family unit, and since E and I were usually sharing a bed anyway, I pretty much chose to be E's pacifier every night. For a great deal of the night. And it usually worked--he would go back to sleep--for a few more hours--and no one was overly disturbed except me.

I really don't know what we could have done differently. And the resulting poor sleeping habits were really okay with me; I figured it would take a while for him to settle back down into good sleeping habits, but surely it would not take overly long once were home and back into the flow or regular life. Right? Esp. once he stopped teething, which he was doing this summer too.

Well, I guess I just got into the mommy-zombie state of thinking that this is just the way it is and forgetting that I had ever had a good night's sleep. Until I saw that blog draft and realized once upon a time I had had it really good. And now, I want that again. I want a good night's sleep--more than three hours uninterrupted. And since for the past few weeks he has been staying up too late,** and actually seems to be even more restless than usual at night, I decided enough was enough. I decided I would wean him off of his usual 3:30ish waking/nursing. So about 5 nights ago I mentioned it to D, and he agreed that it was about time and we decided to start that night.

But then, at 3 in the morning, when E was crying and D and I were arguing vehemently in the dark about the best way to handle it, I realized we had made a mistake. We should have gone into the night with a mutually agreed-upon plan. Ugh.

So the next night, D and I talked about it before bed, and we agreed on a plan. Which was that I would take care of everything if D could please just try to ignore the crying and sleep. Just for one night--we would take one night at a time. (Meaning I figured I would try to beg and plead to get my way again a second night. ; ) We had agreed that I could go ahead and nurse E if he woke up 5ish, as long as I put him back down in his own bed. And we agreed I could keep the 6ish-bring-the-baby-to-bed-so-he-doesn't-wake-up-the-other-kids-and-we-can-get-another-hour-of-sleep routine. But until 5ish I was not going to nurse him back to sleep. So we went to bed, D expecting the worst, me dreading the night. . . .

to be continued!

(yeah, sorry--this post is already too long and it has taken me about 5 days to get this far, and I am out of blogging time for today. I'm counting on that eye-catching title to get you to come back for part deux. : )


*I am thinking maybe even a little earlier than 3 months, but I would hate to be erring on the side of rose-tinted nostalgia--you know, how our children are always cutest right before our eyes, but are always best-behaved in our memories.

**no longer able to fall asleep with our normal amount of evening activity here in the living room/master bedroom suite--which means he really needs to be sleeping in the bedroom, which has its own set of complications, and which will be fodder for another post sometime soon!