My latest post for API Speaks, hope you all enjoy my sleepy tale…
Excuse me if this post is rambling, it’s written by a very tired mammy. One who only went to bed at half 4 this morning and who got up again at 9. But it’s nowhere near the sheer exhaustion I remember from the first few weeks of Littlepixie’s life, this is just regular tiredness, I feel like I was out dancing all night!
Littlepixie has just cut her first molars, 4 (or possibly 5) all at once, the poor pet. Understandably, her mouth is a little sore.
Last night she nursed to sleep and I snuck downstairs to get some internetting time in, in retrospect I should have gone to sleep too because as it turned out it would be a good many hours before my little head hit the pillow! LP woke around midnight and was clearly in pain, she was banging her mouth with her hand, crying and sobbing “teeth, teeth”. We gave her some medicine but it didn’t seem to help much. Nursing was acceptable to her but only while sitting up with the light on.
Myself & LP retired downstairs to the living room. We’ve been quite lucky recently with her night wakenings, usually she nurses straight back to sleep. But not last night. We snuggled on the couch under a big blanket, nursing & reading her bedtime book over and over again. We found every bear, rabbit, sock and red balloon in the book, chatted about them, laughed at them, counted them and then started all over again. I got sleepier, LP did not!
It was really just a case of watching the clock tick by and waiting for her to get sleepy. The medicine finally seemed to take effect and she was no longer complaining about her teeth, so that was good. But I was barely awake! So, after a while playing with LP’s dolls I resorted to putting on a DVD for her to watch. I know the middle of the night is not usually prime tv time, but the show was nice and calm and has no advertisements.
We watched that for about 15 minutes while nursing and reading more books, I then brought her into our office where she often nurses for her naps in the hopes that she would think it was nap time. No such luck! At 4 am we went back up to bed where Mr. HPP read her another story, and she finally nursed back to sleep, with her foot lodged firmly in Mr. HPP’s face. We were all awake again at 9 am, we’re very tired but LP is in top form, her teeth don’t seem to be at her now and she’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
Night-time parenting is hard work! But it’s worth it. LP clearly needed some extra care last night and I’m glad we could help her out. Fingers crossed we all sleep well tonight!
What about all of you? Do you have any particular things you like to do when you’re passing the wee hours of the night awake with your child?
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Lily is also cutting 4 molars at the moment and kept asking to sit in the ‘rocking chair’ and “read stories” last night. What amazing symmetry! Hope that you get some good sleep tonight.
Eliza has been cutting teeth to and tossing and turning all night in our bed. I feel so bad for her. She likes to pull on my hair when she can’t sleep.
we’ve been having nights like those lately! here’s the recap of last night’s fun: oh, what a night!
I bring the LO downstairs to the basement and cuddle with her in our rocking chair. I keep the lights dimmed and the TV on an all news channel that displays the news in print so i can read it while interacting with her. We nurse and sing our sleep songs and cuddle. Sometimes I wake up daddy and he taks a shift until LO cries for me. By then she’s usually ready to nurse back to sleep.