The Young & The Restless

Lacey has decided that sleep is an unnecessary annoyance in her day. Since our return from the trip to Illinois, she refuses to go to bed at night easily. It's a fight every night to get her to go to sleep. Our routine hasn't changed - - a nice warm bottle, brush her teeth, rock and hum or listen to music, and then lay down drowsy and drift off to sleep. No more!! Now, we lay down drowsy and it's time to play! She opens her eyes wide, lays still for a while, then she's on the move...first shaking her butt in the air, then scooting up the bed with her face still down, then sitting up, then standing and smiling at me from under her binky. At this point, I either lay her back down (which never works), or start over with the rocking. On Tuesday night, it took over an hour. Last night, I was getting so frustrated with her that I let her cry-it-out for a little bit while I sat where she could see me and hoped that she would stop playing around and lay down to sleep on her own. Fat chance. She would have fallen asleep leaning over the crib rails first (which she appeared to be near doing). Every so often I would lay her back down. Finally, after 6 attempts, she remained laying down and drifted off to sleep.

Additionally, she has been having problems again with frequent night wakings. On Tuesday night, it was something like 6 times. Last night was down to 3. But that's 3 more times than I was getting up while we were on vacation! I'm not sure what happened in the day between Illinois and home, but it is certainly a problem. I wondered if it was because she was sleeping on a nice soft blanket there, so I flipped her mattress to the softer side. Didn't work. So I made her bedtime routine earlier again. That was last night and appeared to help some, but she didn't actually fall asleep until later anyway after all the goofing off. The other thing I discovered is that breastfeeding no longer satisifies her hunger, so I started giving her a bottle at night instead to make sure she was full. Still no major change. So we'll see. I'll keep tweaking until we find the right groove again.