Tuesday, January 18, 2011

In Which Petunia Has a Good Laugh at Me

Since I had the temerity to post about how Petunia's sleep has been getting better, she decided to throw me a curveball last night. OK, rationally I know that she has no idea what I posted on my blog. But boy, was last night weird.

I went to bed at about 10:30 and was just falling asleep when I heard someone crying. I'm always pretty disoriented if I get woken up just as I'm falling asleep, so for some reason, I thought it was Pumpkin and went barreling into her room asking "what's wrong?" Amazingly, she didn't wake up. But the crying didn't stop, either. So I went down the hall and found Hubby sitting in the rocking chair in Petunia's room, trying to calm her down. She was having none of that- she only calmed down when I took her. It was only 11 p.m., but I knew that she was too worked up to settle down and go back to sleep without nursing, so I took her into our room and nursed her. I figured that she'd go to sleep, wake up again in three hours, and we'd have a so-so, but normal, night.

I was wrong. She rolled away from me, which usually means that she's falling into deep sleep. But instead of going to sleep, she lifted up her feet and kicked them onto the bed. Over and over and over. She tossed and turned. Every once and a while, she found her thumb or rolled toward me and settled down for a bit, but it didn't last, and soon she'd be back to kicking her legs. She wasn't crying, but I certainly wasn't going to sleep with her doing her workout next to me. So I'd try to snuggle her. She'd calm down for a few minutes, then roll away, and the whole thing would start over.

Honestly, it was sort of cute and would have been funny, except I really, really wanted to go back to sleep. I suspect this is related to the fact that she's recently started walking more. I've read about how babies will process new skills in their sleep, and how developmental leaps (cognitive or physical) can disrupt sleep. We saw it a bit with Pumpkin, but her baseline sleep was so bad that we never really knew if she was going through a developmental leap, teething, getting sick, or just not sleeping.

Anyway, after an hour of trying to get little miss restless to settle down and go to sleep, I got up and took her into her room, and rocked with her for about twenty minutes, after which she finally went to sleep. And slept through until about 6:30, giving me a solid five hours of sleep.

I wonder what will happen tonight?

UPDATE: Petunia got sent home from day care with a slight fever at about 4 p.m. So she officially has the cold that I caught from Pumpkin. It was really short and mild for Pumpkin- here's hoping for the same for me and Petunia. Was the start of the cold the cause of last night's shenanigans? I doubt it, but who knows. I still don't know what to expect tonight. But it seems like Pumpkin is done calling for me, so I think I'll go to bed and just see what the night brings!


  1. Annie does this too. The restless "I can't sleep" routine. She's not in the bed with me while she does it, but often wakes me up nonetheless talking to herself and kicking the wall/crib/mattress. Sometimes its several times a night. But lately (not counting th past few days as she's been sick) she manages to fall back asleep on her own, even after a good hour or more of reslessness.

    It often amazes me how she can function all day on such a crappy nights sleep. Because she never seems to just sleeeeeeep. Always has a restless period at some point. Its weird.

  2. @Melba, I wonder if Petunia would have gone back to sleep on her own if Hubby hadn't gone in to settle her. He said she wasn't crying, just rattling the crib. We were conditioned by Pumpkin- if she woke up, you needed to get to her FAST to make it easier to get her back down. We need to break that habit and see what Petunia does if she's left a while.

  3. Ugh. Moo had one of those restless nights last night too. I predict a new tooth will push through the gum in a day or so.

  4. Le Petit still has restless periods in his sleep when he'll toss and turn, cough, or even talk to himself, although now that we no longer have the baby monitor in his room, we're less aware of it.

    We figured out pretty quickly that we should only go in if he really seemed to need our help, because our presence would often completely wake him up when he could have resettled himself on his own. Then we'd ALL be partying for hours in the middle of the night. Ugh.

    So I'm definitely a proponent of "wait and see" (i.e. parental laziness) if you have a kid who doesn't seem to require immediate intervention to keep them from going bonkers.

    Oh, and once le Petit was a toddler and old enough to understand night vs. day when we talked to him about it, we had a lot of success taking him to a window and showing him that it was dark outside, if he was otherwise calm. May be worth a try.

  5. It is interesting how children seem to sense that point right before we break and ease up a little. At least I remember that happening with Tate during the first two years when things were so bad sleep-wise.

    It sounds like if you can uncondition yourself from going in so soon with Petunia, she just might be the type to settle back down on her own. Fingers crossed. :)

  6. What @mom2boy said exactly about kids sensing our breaking points just before we crack!

    YMMV, but this month we finally just started turning off the baby monitor at night. Big step for me, but it needed to happen. If DD really needs us and is crying loudly, we all hear her and I will go to her; if it is just a bit of restlessness and she'll be able to fall right back to sleep in a minute, then we don't hear about it and we aren't disturbed. BTW, this never, ever would have happened with DS. He still comes into our bed every night.

  7. That restlessness is exactly what happens when I try to cosleep with my boy. But then he gets up completely, gets off the bed, pulls my hand until I get up and tries to either play or go downstairs for breakfast. At 2 in the morning. So I don't get to cosleep with him, and I miss that. (Although my daughter still comes into our bed every night.)

    My husband has convinced me to wait longer than I want to when the boy is crying, and he almost always gets himself back to sleep these days.

    I hope you got a good night's sleep!

