This post is part of my Thirty-One Days with a Two-Year-Old series.
It wasn't always this way. No, we look back on Piper-girl's newborn days with nostalgia. She slept for a couple to several hours, woke up, nursed, and fell right back asleep. By the time she was four months old, she had settled into a routine where she woke consistently twice during the night, nursed quickly, and fell back asleep. We co-slept, so the wakings were hardly intrusive. And then it all went to hell.
Multiple night wakings, fussing, crying, screaming; she gave up her second nap before she was nine months old and she gave up napping entirely by 18 months old. We've had very few nights of good sleep. It hasn't all been terrible ... she likes to lull us into a false sense of progress and security. We'll have a stretch of time when she'll go to sleep well, or she'll only wake up once (or even not at all until 5:30, when her clock light turns on and she's allowed to climb into Mommy and Daddy's bed). And then we'll have nights like last night.
She came back out of her room multiple times after being tucked in for bed ...
She woke up at 11:45. She wouldn't go back to sleep. She tried climbing into bed with me. She screamed. She ran back and forth between our rooms. We gave her the standard offer of sleeping on the floor in our room - she refused. She screamed some more ...
Repeat until 1:15, when she finally decided to sleep on the crib mattress on the floor of our room ...
She woke up at 3:30 and decided to go back to her room ...
She woke up at 4:30 ...
She woke up sometime between 5:30 and 6, at which point she knew she could come into bed with us because, "LIGHT ON!" At which point she nursed on and off all morning until I dragged myself out of bed at 9.
What do you do with a toddler who won't sleep? I feel like we've tried everything. Sometimes something works, but then it stops working and we're back to battling sleep again. I wouldn't mind co-sleeping, but then she begs to nurse all night long, which doesn't help either of us get any sleep. (I like to pretend that she's night-weaned, but really it's only that I don't let her nurse during the night.)
Sleep is for the weak ... but Mommy really wants sleep.
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