A Little Bit of Sleep

Last night D slept so well! Every couple of weeks, she'll do this. She'll do it for exactly two days in a row, which is exactly enough time for the debilitating cloud of exhaustion to clear and for me to start clinging to the hope that she is, at ten months, going to finally shake off the four month sleep regression! 😂 And just like that, she's back to her old ways of either waking every hour, or waking once at midnight and being impossible to put back down until 4am. Some days I wonder if I'm going to be rocking and breastfeeding this child to sleep until she's four! I have had probably five decent nights worth of sleep since she turned four months. Before that, she slept through the night from one month on. Sometimes I feel that it was some kind of sick, cruel joke! She used to suck her thumb, which was how she was able to sleep through. She would stir awake, but would find her thumb and get right back to sleep. Then she decided that sleeping was for suckers (ha!) and flat out refused to suck her thumb EVER. When she would get drowsy as she was being rocked or just taken off the breast from feeding, you could see her thumb making its way to her mouth, only for her to realise what was happening and throw her thumb as far as her arm would take it. We've tried eighty bazillion times to get her to take a pacifier. We've tried and tried to get her to become attached to a comfort blanket (called a Lovey at our house). Nothing works! My only hope, which is awful because it's something that we cannot have any control over, is that one of these days something in her just clicks and she sleeps for longer periods without waking up. This is such a frustrating thing! There are a million strategies out there for getting your kid to fall asleep on their own and "training" them not to wake up in the night. I really believe that none of these would work with D. She is what I like to call a "Velcro Baby." She has extreme separation anxiety from me. She shrieks and screams if her dad comes to her during a night waking instead of me. She screams and cries at loud noises even if I'm holding her (for example people cheering at a soccer game). She cries at the sight of our friend Kerr. When she sees new people (unless she's securely in the Tula carrier and she knows she's attached and nobody can try to take her away - when that's the case she's as smiley and friendly as anything to all the strangers she sees), she burrows her head deep into my neck/armpit and grips with a tightness that could bruise! When I put her on the floor to play or because I need to do something that you can't do with a baby in your arms, she screams and cries and holds tight to my legs. When we even walk in her room and I don't turn on the light, she starts crying because she knows it's time to sleep. There will be no "put them down when they're sleepy but awake." There will be no leaving her to play in her crib with a toy and hope she eventually tires herself out and falls asleep. There is only screaming and crying that is relentless until I come back and feed her and/or rock her to sleep. R was a whole different kettle of fish. I would always try to leave her to put herself to sleep, going and coming when she got distressed and calming her down and then trying again. Only after several times of it not working would I resort to rocking. And she used to put herself to sleep about half of the time for her naps. She always put herself to sleep at night. But R never had this severe of separation anxiety. And she also had comfort items she was attached to and took a pacifier. If anyone has any ideas of how to get your child to sleep without feeding/rocking/bouncing/singing that you think will work on a severely attached child, please feel free to share your wisdom! Otherwise, it is truly a case of sticking it out until her body (and mind) are ready. Whether I'll be able to make it that long without becoming a serious head case is another question all together!