The Marathon

One of the hardest parts of being a mom is the whole sleep department.  There is nothing crazier than those first few weeks where your body is recovering from birth, your baby's schedule is all over the place, and your hormones seem to be your worst enemy.  The older the baby gets, the more "annoying" their sleep problems get.  You hear of the other mom whose baby was sleeping through the night at 5 weeks.  You compare, you long for a whole night...on and on it goes.  You feel like you're running a marathon but never quite know when you will cross the finish line.  The reward is just one full night of sleep.

Though my first 3 kids were not horrendous sleepers, one especially was pretty good (Aaron), none of them were superb and all had their own issues.  But by around a year they were ironed out and slept well.  Enter Miss Greta, child #4.  She has by far been my worst sleeper and at 2 1/2 still has not let me cross that "sleep finish line".  One of our big issues has been her pacifier.  I knew that the time was coming when we needed to get rid of it.  But I was dreading it b/c of how attached she is to it and how much it helps calm her at night if she is fussing.  I brought it up to Steve over breakfast on Monday, and Mr. Decisive decided that it was time.  He had her throw her pacifiers in the garbage and off they went to Kmart for her to buy a baby as her reward.  I was in dread mode.  I just knew that it was going to be at least a week of much, much, pacifier drama.

I am happy to report that Greta has handled this transition much better than either one of us thought she would.  The first 3 nights she slept the best that she had in years.  Really?  How is that possible??  The last 2 nights she has been back to fussing a number of times, but I am holding out hope that the end is near.

The most dramatic moment of it all was the first day that I put her down for her nap.  She just cried and cried but she never said she wanted her paci, just lots of tears.  I was mean enough to run and grab my camera.

She kept crying that she wanted Daddy.  Unfortunately, he was getting our taxes done but we gave him a call to see if he could comfort her.  All she did was cry and cry.  Now that I am looking at these pics, there are no tears.  Maybe she was just faking it and it was just wailing??