Mr. Sandman, Bring Her a Dream

Nora is now ten months old. She still sleeps in a pack-n-play in our bedroom, that is, if she sleeps. Because, you see, she still does not sleep through the night. She is ten months old. She is waking up multiple times at night. I am feeding her multiple times at night. Yes, it's pretty bad. I am so exhausted and so done, even though I know it's of my own doing. When there's a fussing baby twelve feet from my ear, it's really hard not to get up and go to her, and go to her right away.

Yet, even in my "doneness" I am so not done.

I still don't feel ready to put her in her own room. I desperately want to keep her with us, a symbol of her babyness I'm not ready to give up. But I want it to look like a bedtime snuggle, laying her down, all of us sleeping soundly, and then waking in the morning to a cooing and happy baby. And that is so far from what our nights look like right now.

I want to keep her in our room, but I'm so tired and at my wits end with the nighttime crying, I want to put her in her own room. And I want to help soothe her when she's have a particularly rough patch, yet it's getting so long and difficult that I just want to let her cry until she ends in exhaustion.

My heart is so wrapped up in her little twenty-one pound body, I am "that" mom, the one who doesn't want her to be too far away from me. She is my baby. I don't want to transition her away from us, even if I'm planning on sleeping on the air mattress on her floor for a few nights for comfort. My own comfort, of course. But she is two months from being a year old (What!?) and she really needs to learn how to soothe herself back to sleep, to be able to sleep through an entire night. And I need her to be able to soothe herself, and let me get an entire night's sleep.

Oh how difficult parenting can be, even the third child around. I've been through night time stressors twice before, yet it all feels as heartbreakingly difficult as if she were my first. In fact, it almost feels more difficult... perhaps because she is my youngest, my baby, my living child after a loss.

A morning snooze. Perhaps because she didn't sleep enough during the night?

I don't feel quite as worried that I'm traumatizing her like I did several months ago (although there's still some questions and guilt), but I just don't feel emotionally ready to be physically farther away from her. Yet I also don't feel emotionally functional to be physically getting so little sleep.

I feel like her being in our room is coming to an end, faster than I am ready for. I want to keep her in our room, but I really really need to be getting more sleep. Really.

It might be time to pull out the air mattress. Or maybe I'll give it one more night.

xoxo, christine