When I started this blog back up after my break, its purpose was to give me a reason to take pictures with my new camera, and in turn have those pictures be a reason to create posts. Circle of Life, etc, etc.
And for the first few months, things went pretty well. Almost every day a picture was taken and a post appeared.
You may have noticed the paced slackened a bit in the past few weeks. The reason is I ran into a bit of a snag.
Namely, we moved my daughter out of her crib and into a Big Girl bed.
It hasn’t gone well.
It isn’t really that my daughter doesn’t like her big girl bed. She does. Once her bath is done, she’ll usually march right into her room and then on to her bed, waiting for me to read a story.
Or two.
Or three.
Or seven.
The problem comes during the extraction. Namely, she doesn’t like it. And she’s very vocal in letting us know that.
At first we tried to treat it like she was just going into her crib. Our daughter has never been a great sleeper, but even if she started wailing upon me or my wife leaving the room she’d calm down within a few minutes. Unfortunately she might have stayed awake for another hour or so in her crib, but for the most part she was quiet.
The first night in the big girl bed disabused us of the notion that we’d be able to just walk away from our daughter at night. We’d never heard her scream and wail like that.
For the next week or so, I found myself lying on my daughter’s mattress after telling a story or two, waiting for her to fall asleep. More often than not I fell asleep before she did, but it kind of kept her quiet. She’d have the disconcerting habit of waking up in the middle of the night only to find the space next to her empty. (My wife usually extracted me before she herself retired for the evening.) That began another round of wailing, which would normally only be satisfied with a trip to “Daddy-bed”.
Don’t judge us, we were tired.
Following that was our big trip out to New Jersey. During that trip we made up a little bed for her each night in between our two full beds in the hotel room. I would “sleep” in one bed” and my wife would “sleep” in the other. We thought that sleep and naps would be a disaster during that time, but it ended up working out really well. And that’s because that’s how my daughter wanted it. Mommy and Daddy sleeping in the same room with her. I honestly think we all got more sleep those few days than in the previous 10.
Coming home has been hard on us all. I tried varying my technique the first few nights. I kept my voice low and slow and boring and I just read. As long as it took. And it seemed to work…sort of. One night she fell asleep after only about 20 minutes. I was amazed as I watched her eyes drop and finally stay closed. The problem there was that again, she’d wake up and demand Daddy Bed (or Mommy Bed if I’d manage to tick her off). And it was worse than before.
Finally last night she woke up and was inconsoluble for two hours. She didn’t want bed, be it Big Girl, Daddy, or Mommy Bed. She didn’t want toys or water or anything. She wanted to scream. And it was too much for us. So today we ended up consulting with the pediatrician. We’ve got some ideas and techniques we’re going to try out. It’s not a “Cry-It-Out” method, but it does limit the amount of interaction we have with our daughter after the stories are read and she’s put to bed.
I’m not going to lie and say it’s some sort of miracle cure. She’s asleep right now, but it took better than an hour. She ranted and wailed and claimed that she was “pooping” (she wasn’t). Every ten minutes or so I’d go up to “check on her” and she’d beg me to stay. ”Me sorry, me sorry” over and over again. It breaks my heart just thinking about it.
It’ll get easier eventually. I know this. I’ve been told this by countless friends and family members. Still, it breaks my heart.
Daughter, I am sorry too.
