Paige hasn't been sleeping well over the past few weeks. Two or three times now (it all blends together, so I'm honestly not sure how many time it's happened), she has woken up screaming and refused to go down again for at least two, if not three hours.
Thing is, she's been waking up once a week or so for months now, but usually we could just stick her in her chair and feed her, and then put her to bed once she's done a half-hour later. I usually would just doze on the floor by her high chair while she ate her cheerios.
Not anymore. Now, if she wakes up, she'll eat fine, but then will absolutely refuse to go back to sleep. Or, she'll go to sleep, but only for about 15 minutes before she's up screaming again. Sometimes, she's just inconsolable. Other times, she has just simply been wide awake and wanting to play, read, etc. When it's 12:30am, I can deal with that, as I've always been a bit of a night owl. But at 2:30am or 3:30am, I'm barely functional. It's one thing if she just needs to eat, or when she needed to suck down a bottle in my lap when she was younger. But my God, she wants me to read to her?!? It's inhuman!
Apparently, whacked-out sleep patterns by 18-month olds is fairly common. "Moxie" (see link) indicates that it can last anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. I'm hoping for the former. In the meantime, we've tried everything you can imagine to get her back in bed. Teething tablets, Tylenol, Oragel, milk, water, fruit, those cereal bars she loves, "new" stuffed animals from her toy hammock, night lights, dimmed lights, door open, door cracked... We've tried laying down with her on our bed, trying to get her to rest on the couch... We've tried having Mom put her down instead of me... We're not fans of letting her "cry it out," but we've given that a shot for 10 minutes at a time or so.
I've been half tempted to go try to find some kids Benadryl to drug her back to sleep, but I doubt that Mom'd let me. So our best solution just seems to be to try to split the staying up duties as best we can based on whoever is functional. The first time, that was mostly me. This most recent time, it was mostly Mom. ... I just put a pillow over my head to muffle the crying and tried to get some sleep.
One thing that might help in Paige's case is that she actually sprouted her first new tooth since June today, her right upper canine (or cuspid, if you prefer...though canine is a cooler word). The other isn't far behind. Hopefully, once they've finished cutting through her gums, she'll be less inclined to wake up. We'll see... In the meantime, I had better go get some sleep while I have the chance!
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