Adventures in Baby Sleeping

Ever since Chris left, May has stopped sleeping. really. She is teething really hard and still has no teeth. She has been skipping naps left and right. I have gotten tired, irritable, cranky and frustrated and am alone with this cranky baby all day every day with my nearest friends 75 miles away. (I only have one or two that close- the rest are 95 miles away). Gas went up to $4.25 a gallon- this creates a whole batch of problems for me way out here in Corona.
This past week I reached a breaking point. I spent Thurs.-Saturday crying and frustrated and letting May cry in her crib for over two hours while trying to get some time to rest and re-coup. Nothing doing. Listening to a baby scream while frustrated and trying to get her to sleep is not my idea of restful. I called every friend I could think of while crying and alone and no one was home. I prayed (admittedly, half heartedly in frustration- but at least I prayed) for an hour on and off.
Friends called back that evening and I got a lot of "have you tried..." which I know was meant to help but was not encouraging. These questions only made me feel like whatever I did was not enough and surely if I tried harder, my child would sleep beautifully. Or if I spent at least a week or two letting her scream, she would learn that crying would produce no result and go to sleep. Is that how I want her to learn not to scream in fear or confusion or whatever her reason for screaming is? no.
so, I went to the bookstore to see what was there. I had heard of a book years ago called "The No-Cry Sleep Solution" and thought I would check it out. They had a copy and I bought it. I read half of it that evening.
I have been on a routine with May since we moved here. I have given up coffee to a degree that makes me reflect on it with a mingling of desire and sadness. I have tried to keep the same hours for her and we go to bed and wake up at the same time each day. While some people can make it work for their babies to stay up late for Dad to get time, we are not those people.
The first day I tried out what I had read the night before (Fri) it was brilliant. The book has a lot of common sense stuff in there but it also explained so much about sleep and how it works and what happens to your mind while you are sleeping. It explained so much about May's sleep to me and why she started to wake up 6 or 7 times a night all of the sudden. As soon as she stirs in her sleep, she sits up or stands up. I have watched it. She could still be sleeping and all of the sudden she finds herself standing up and starts to cry in confusion and fear because she doesn't know how she got there. Teething, learning new skills (she decided that, right after Dad left, she would crawl and start walking all at the same time. She learned how to pull herself up and cruise around the house, she is learning more "words"....all at the same time. That is a lot of skills in three weeks.) and more activity in the daytime all made her sleep cycles weird. On top of that, she sleeps like me and those of you who know me know, I am not an easy sleeper. And if I wake up once, I am awake until the next nightfall because I don't sleep well during daylight hours.
So, the book is a brilliant help to me. Saturday night Chris finally called back, (he also was not home) and told me he had been in the E.R. because he was having health issues that involved bleeding where he was not supposed to bleed. Please pray for his Dr. to be more concerned and attentive on Korea than they have been at Edwards as he has been struggling with health issues in this area for over two years. He listened and was so encouraging to me. And all he did was say he knew I tried as hard as I could and he wished he could be here. Then he prayed for me. That was it. I was more encouraged and refreshed for the ministry of my daughter than after anything else.
Even this brilliant book that I will suggest to each one of you having trouble with sleeping babies.
Over the weekend, May should have gotten a total of 16-17 hours a day of sleep including naps. She got an average of 11.5 per day- including naps. BUT, I am following all the suggestions in this book rigidly and last night she slept a total of 11 hours!!!! She only woke up once at night and that was at 2:30am!!!!! Praise the Lord.
I don't know if I am stupid or too stressed out to think straight, but this book was a great help to me. Read it, if you will, and let me know if you think it has helped you too. If it proves to you that your suspicion of my stupidity was correct, please just don't say anything about it. Don't even tell me you read the book.
Until the next post, arrivederci!