Some Things Never Change

Eventhough I just started blogging again in the last week after taking a 5 month hiatus I want to make it clear that Claire's sleeping habits have not changed during that time, unfortunately. She doesn't wake up every night and generally only wakes up on days when she's overly tired, normally after we've had a very active day and she hasn't napped. Since we keep fairly busy and she rarely naps she tends to be overtired on any given night. Fortunately she mostly wakes up between 10:30 and 11 when we are still awake but sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night or around 5:30. If she wakes up at 5:30 the odds of getting her back to sleep are slim. We have tried lots of different techniques in the past to get her to calm down and go back to sleep but ultimately she needs to cry it out. I feel terrible letting her sit up in her crib screaming, thinking that I don't care that she's upset so shortly after she starts crying I go up to her and stand by her crib and try to console her for about 5 minutes. I often change her diaper if she lets me and then I tell her I love her and that mommy needs to go to sleep and I leave. She tends to cry a little longer but then will calm down and go back to sleep. For a long time we were getting her out of her crib to try to calm her down but she was so difficult and wouldn't just sit still and let us rock her. We would end up reading countless books to get her to stop crying before finally, normally after 30 minutes or more, putting her back in bed which just made her cry again anyway. This process became so exhausting that I decided that standing next to her bed for a couple of minutes so that she could at least see that mommy is there for her was a better option. We are still holding out hope that once we move her to her big bed and Sam can sleep with her that she will stop waking up with these screaming fits. But we also know this plan could backfire too so are preparing for that. I hope that this is something that she will grow out of but in the meantime we will do what we can to keep these nightly fits to a minimum.