No Rest For the Weary

Claire is a healthy, sweet, loving, generally happy toddler. However, she has a dirty little secret...she is a terrible sleeper! I would be feeling very badly about myself right now wondering what I did to contribute to her poor sleep habits except that she has been this way since she was a newborn. I have vivid memories of walking her back and forth from the family room to the study for an hour or more in the wee hours of the night when she was just a week old. She would wake up to eat and then be up for an hour and a half. I would try to nurse her and she would refuse and just scream. Good times! I eventually had to let her sleep with us b/c it was the only way that she would sleep. I even had to let her sleep with me during naptimes b/c I just couldn't get her to nap. Her naps as an infant were 30-45 minutes each which was exhausting for me and is why I eventually would just let her lay down with me so that we would both take a good nap.

Now at 18 months she still has lots of struggles with sleeping. As I type this at 2:40 in the afternoon she is up in her crib wide awake, like she has been for the past hour. This most likely means that she will not nap today. This is not uncommon and is probably the 4th time this week that she hasn't napped. She is way too young to drop a nap but I'm not sure what to do to make her sleep. She dropped her morning nap at 10 months and like I said has never been very good at napping. On the plus side, when she doesn't nap she is in bed at 7:00. On the negative side, when she doesn't nap she tends to be up more at night. I think the nighttime is our bigger issue. She doesn't wake up quite every night but more often than not we will hear her screaming "mommy" or "daddy" at some point during the night. If she just cried out for us it would be one thing but she will scream bloody murder and you don't know if something is really wrong. So I always go up and check on her, change her diaper and soothe her for a minute or two before I leave. The couple of minutes after I leave are the worst and she screams at the top of her lungs but after a couple of minutes she calms down and eventually falls back to sleep. During the summer she was up screaming every night for awhile and we eventually realized that we can't pick her up...common sense, right!? Well, it took us awhile to figure that one out. Then I talked to the doctor about potential night terrors and we ruled those out since Claire is awake when I go into her at night and with night terrors the child is asleep. When she does wake up at night I often get up and check email and maybe surf the internet for a couple of minutes until she is quiet again. Last night I emailed a friend at 3:30 in the morning! I don't foresee this behaviour subsiding anytime in the near future so if you ever receive an email from me in the middle of the night you know why!