Jonathan woke up this morning at 2:18am to nurse. "Oh good," I thought, "he'll nurse back to sleep and I'll get a glorious almost-eight-hours before having to get up." And on previous nights, that is what happens. But not tonight. Tonight he nursed, and then cried. And cried, and cried, and cried. I rocked him and sang to him for 10 minutes by the clock, with no result, then put him down to see if he'd cry himself back to sleep. 15 minutes later, he was still crying. I tried patting him, reassuring him, swinging his car seat (he sleeps in it) back and forth. He'd calm for a minute or two, then cry again. Back to the rocking chair, with no better results. Gabe changed his diaper, and Jonathan was happy as long as the light was on. As it was now a quarter to four, we decided that at least one of us needed sleep and we'd just let Jonathan get up. Hence my post at not-quite-four am.
It seems wrong to let him get us up in the middle of the night like this. It seems to set a horrible precedent, and I'm afraid that I'm just training him to think that 2am is a great time to get up. But I don't know what else to do. We can't just let him choke himself crying cause he's wide awake and thinks he's alone. And holding him in the dark while he cries doesn't let either Gabe or I sleep, which really isn't a workable solution either. For fifteen minutes, yes. For an hour, difficult, but yes. For the rest of the night? No.
I wish I knew what to do. And I wish I was asleep.
1 comment:
I hope your day turned out better than it started! Any chance he's teething a bit? I wouldn't worry too much about him deciding that 2am is a good time to wake up... my guess is that there is something else going on. Not that it really helps all that much to know what it is, but it is at least somewhat comforting to be able to put a label to it. (or at least I always thought so!)
Post a Comment