The Baby Insomniac

Ms Pooky has always been a decent sleeper. As a newborn she would even sleep 4-5 hour stretches between feedings. Lately it’s been a different story. At 14 months old, she has decided that she no longer needs sleep. She sleeps in our room because we only have 2 bedrooms and she can’t move in with her sisters if she is waking up like this! Let me explain the way most of our nights have been going for the past 2 months and maybe you’ll understand.

8:00 I attempt to put Ms Pooky to bed. She gets nursed, changed, cuddled, laid in bed.

8:45 She finally falls asleep laying in her bed holding my hand.

9:45 She wakes up screaming and demands to nurse. I nurse her and lay her back in her bed and she goes back to sleep.

11:30 Wide awake and as soon as I appear she wants to nurse again.

1:25 Wakes up and nurses and then fusses and wiggles until I place her back in her bed and she falls asleep.

4:00 Wakes up and wiggles around in her bed huffing and puffing. Then she talks to herself for awhile and scratches the sheets.

4:45 She stands up and calls me. I don’t want her to wake up her sisters (because if they wake up early in the morning then they want to get up for the day) so I go to her and see if she wants to nurse again, maybe it will help her go back to sleep. She nurses and is still as wide awake as ever. She refuses to sleep next to me, and she tries to crawl around the bed. Husband retreats to the couch in the basement.

5:00 I try to walk her around for a bit, to see if she’ll go to sleep, but I am so tired by now that I am walking into walls, so I put her in her bed and she immediately stands up and screams in protest. I tell her that it is night night time and lay her down. She continues yelling. I lay down on my bed, almost tired enough to sleep through her protests.

5:15 Ms Drama bangs into our bedroom announcing “ Baby is crying mom! She needs her mama.” I inform her that the baby really just needs to sleep and I stumble out to the couch with Ms Drama to snuggle together.

5:45 Ms Pooky stops yelling and spends some time playing and talking to herself in her crib.

6:15 Ms Action wakes up for the day and my husband comes upstairs to watch the kids for me.

6:30 I’m afraid to go back into the bedroom and risk Ms Pooky still being awake, so I doze on the couch.

8:00 I get up and my husband goes to work.

10:00 Ms Pooky wakes up for the day.

I know, its ridiculous. For awhile my theory was that she was waking up because she was hungry, because at a year old she was still almost exclusively breast fed (her choice, not mine). But recently she has been eating more table food, plus she just doesn’t seem that interested in eating when she wakes up, more like partying. She doesn’t want to sleep in my bed, she doesn’t want to sleep in her bed, she just doesn’t want to sleep in general.

And just to shake things up, last night she slept almost the entire night, waking up to nurse at 1AM and 6 AM, and she is still asleep as I type this! Success? I’m not counting on it!