Bad Nights Stink

I should start by saying that both my girls are great sleepers. Kate took a bit more work than Padyn, as I have eluded to in previous posts, but really, I know I'm blessed with two wonderful sleepers. They go to bed without a fight, they sleep throughout the night, and they are happy and content to play by themselves in the morning until I can get my lazy you-know-what out of bed in the morning.

But last night? Last night was bad. And what's worse is we have no idea why. Double worse that it's not normal, so it really throws you for a loop because you are never sure how to fix it.

I got home late because I was at a concert with my sister. (And just so all you country music fans know, it was quite fun. Especially Faith. She's just awesome. Talk about a voice.) Anyway, Joel had put the girls down with no incident and hadn't heard from them at all. But as we were crawling into bed at 12:45am, Kate started to cry. Now, our general policy is to let them cry for a bit and see what happens. If we know there's gas or teeth issues, we'll go in and administer the appropriate meds. (Who am I kidding. Even if we don't know, we give a little Baby Tylenol to make sure it isn't something like teeth or a fever.) So, we let her cry off and on for a bit, then I went in to rock her. I was pretty sure she'd go back to sleep if I rocked her.

So, I went in, rocked her, put her down...all went according to plan, until 10 minutes later she started crying again. I waited again, then went back and gave her some Tylenol. I rocked her again for a couple minutes, but not as long as before. When I put her down, she started screaming...AGAIN. I left and figured that was it. She'd be screaming herself to sleep. Eventually she'll tire herself out, right?

Well, about 1:30 or so, Daddy got up to try. I guess he couldn't stand the crying anymore. And understand...it wasn't constant crying. She'd cry for two minutes, stop, and just about the time you start drifting off to sleep, she'd start again. Not very fun.

So, Daddy's attempt was successful for about 5 minutes. At that point we agreed to just let her cry it out. But at 2:45am when she was STILL crying, and I hadn't gone to sleep yet, I decided 2 hours of intermittent crying was long enough, especially when I knew how to make it stop. I went in, got her, and went into the office to sleep on the couch. Kate immediately fell asleep on me. I can't say that my sleep came immediately, but somehow through the discomfort, sleep eventually got the better of me.

When I awoke at 4:30am with stiff neck and a pinch nerve in my shoulder blade, I decided to attempt to return sleeping beauty to her room. Sleeping well for at least 2 hours was worth the risk of transferring her back to her crib.

She was certainly a tired girl, because she slept until 10am. When Padyn woke up at 7, J quickly got her out of their room and sent her to the playroom. When I eventually woke up again at 9am, Padyn was happily playing and Kate was still sleeping.

She seemed happy when she woke up at 10. I have no idea what that was all about. But if it happens again tonight, one of us may be sleeping outside.