Over the past 2 months or so, Charlotte has woken up at 3 or 4 am about 7 or so times. Unfortunately for me, 4 of those wakeups have occured this week… consecutively… while my hubby is away. Not fun.

I know that we are so lucky to have a baby who has slept through the night for the past 6ish months, so excuse me for complaining anyway. I’m totally struggling, walking around like a damn zombie. Or even better, walking around like I’m feeling fine, but making big errors or saying crap that makes no sense. Isn’t exhaustion awesome?

Anyway, I’ve made many excuses for why Charlotte is suddenly waking up…

• She’s teething (she does have 4 giant teeth coming in on top… one that’s already cut through)
• She doesn’t feel well (Mark’s been sick with an upper respiratory infection and I was battling all sorts of crud)
• She’s overtired (she skipped two naps this past weekend and this girl never skips naps… ever)
• Her schedule is totally off from our traveling these past two months

I’m pretty sure it’s a combo of all of these. My thought is that maybe it started as her teeth or something else bothering her and has been perpetuated by her being overtired and feeling off in terms of her schedule. Regardless, it’s gotta end.

I’ve been working so hard to get her napping on time and going to bed at a good time. But the child continues to wake up.

The first three nights, Charlotte got a diaper change, a little coddling and then it was back to bed. Last night, I decided it was time to cry it out. I felt horrible about it, but I kept going back to the fact that Charlotte and I are BOTH better off when she’s sleeping soundly through the night. Allowing her to get used to breaking up her sleep for a 4 am snuggle is not productive for her or for me.

So, I painfully listened to my baby cry for about 15 minutes. At that time, I whispered for her to go back to sleep and sang her a lullaby through the baby monitor. She was quiet for a minute, but then returned to crying/whining/tossing around her crib.

About a half hour later, I did the same thing again.

When she hit the 1-1.5 hour (ish) mark of being awake, I decided it was time to go in. When I got in her room, I saw that she had thrown her bunny and paci out of the crib (WHY DOES SHE KEEP DOING THIS!!?!?). I put her paci in her mouth, handed her the bunny and laid her down on her back. Of course, she started crying. I wound up her music box from my Aunt & Uncle, said goodnight and left the room.

She let out a couple of quick howls and then laid captivated by the music. She loves that music box.

Within 10-15 minutes, she was finally back to sleep… at 5:45 am. The whole affair took almost 2 hours of blissful joy.

I crawled back in bed, pulled the covers over my head, and we both slept until 8.

As always, I have no idea if I handled the situation correctly. But, unlike other times, I was alone last night. There’s something so reassuring about going back and forth with my hubs saying, “do you think this is right?” Last night I had to just trust my gut.

Hopefully it pays off.

Thankfully, despite waking up late, she went down for her morning nap at a decent hour (only about a half hour behind her normal schedule) and has been sleeping soundly for over two hours and counting. Not to mention the fact that she woke up in a relatively good mood.

She was a little edgy, but shared her adorable little smile and sweet laugh.

   
   Wish me luck tonight!