My so-called life

You don’t want to read this post.

I know, I said that yesterday and instead you got a bawdy bit on breasts.

Today I mean it.

Because I’m going to get honest. I’m going to open up. And I’m going to talk about something for the umpteenth time without even joking about where umpteen falls in the numerical system. (After a million? Before trillion?)

I’m going to say things that I should say on the phone to my mom or my best friend but don’t because I want them to think I’m a good mom instead of saying, “I’m about to give up.” Because I don’t want to be a whiner and say, “I’m on the verge of tears all the time and desperate for someone to fix my problem.” Because I don’t want to sound like a broken record and say, “Miss Dub is a terrible sleeper.” But she is.

I know, I know, you’ve all heard it. You’ve told me to let her cry it out. You’ve told me to have a positive attitude. You’ve told me everything you know. You’ve given me advice and some of you have even lectured me. So why am I still complaining about it?
Because it’s a really big deal to me.

Because last night she went to bed at 7:30, but I had to hold her stomach for 30 minutes to get her down because if I don’t restrain her she flips over, starts crawling, pulls herself up to standing and wants to play. So I have to firmly rub her stomach until she relaxes enough to drift off to sleep.

Then, she woke up at 12:30 crying and clinging to her crib, but I was able to nurse her to sleep. Not that I go straight for nursing. I’ve been tough. I’ve been firm. I’ve let her cry and tried to put her right to bed. Sometimes it works. Sometimes after 30 minutes, I get so frustrated, so tired and so agitated by her screaming that I have to do something to calm her so that I can calm myself. So I nursed her. Combined with some shh-ing and sweet nothings, it worked. A half hour later, I was sawing logs.

Then she woke up at 4:30 a.m. in such hysterics that she was nearly vomiting. It’s like she wakes up disoriented and no amount of soothing will help. I turned on the light. I read books. Mr. Dub stepped in. We turned on the TV. All of these are bad behaviors, I know, but we were desperate. At 6, she went back to sleep – for 45 minutes – when she woke up giggling for the day.

And I woke up tired, but forced some smiles because she is so dang cute.

This kind of thing happens every night, people, and it’s getting worse. Besides one sweet month when she slept through the night, she’s always woken up. It used to be 4-5 times a night, but for short bits of nursing or resettling or a little fussing. Now, she regularly is up screaming for 1-3 hours. And I’m so unbelievable distraught about it, I don’t know what to do.

In the middle of the night, I’m mad at her. I just want her to stop crying. I just want her to go to sleep like other babies. I want her to respond to all of the efforts I’m making, all the research I’ve done, all the prayers I’ve offered, all the patience I’m mustering to pretend I’m not upset.

When the moment passes, I realize I’m crazy. She’s a baby. Any problems she’s having are because I’ve accidentally given her bad habits or failed to teach her how to sleep. But I honestly feel like I’ve tried. When she was younger, I let her cry it out all the time. She was never nursed to sleep before naptime or bedtime. She fussed herself to sleep as a newborn and talked herself to sleep as a young baby. But she still woke up in the middle of the night. And she was still inconsolable.

When she learned to flip onto her stomach, things got worse. Even if she’s tired, as soon as she flips onto her stomach, she thinks it’s play time, even though she sleeps best on her stomach. Now that she can pull herself up to standing it is even worse.

I don’t know what to do. Do I let her cry it out when she’s clinging to the side of her crib and doesn’t know how to get down short of falling? Do I let her scream so hard she pukes? Do I let her wake up the entire apartment building night after night?

Is she hungry? Is she hot? Is she cold? Is she just capable of getting less sleep than the average baby? Is something wrong?

And to be honest, I don’t want to let her cry it out. That was fine when her decibel level was lower, but the gut-wrenching, ear-piercing screaming until she is heaving is too much for me. There has to be another way. There has to be more than one way to teach a child to sleep. (And seriously, I’m not 100 percent clear on how making her scream herself to exhaustion gives her the skills to put herself to sleep night after night.)

I’m a softie. I know. Because I love her. Like, I really, really loOove her because for some reason I’m capable of really intensified emotions, which makes my frustration even more extreme.

And I am so frustrated. I’m so tired. I’m so fatigued after nearly 9 months of no sleep. I can barely function, and I highly doubt I should be driving a car. As a result, my whole life has suffered. Not that I really had one, but my efforts to get out, do more and make more friends have been hampered by sheer exhaustion. I’m too tired to do much, but I’m also lonely and in need of a distraction.

There are other factors in my depression – I wish we lived closer to family. I wish we could afford a home. I wish we didn’t have only one car, which requires me to drive up to 1 hour to take Mr. D to work 4.8 miles away. I wish that taking him didn’t totally disrupt Miss Dub’s nap schedule, which is one thing she is good about, even if it takes some occasional wrangling to get her to sleep. I wish someone would teach me how to teach her to sleep. I wish I could catch up on sleep.

And to top it all off, I’ve been watching the World Series of Pop Culture on VH1 and am disgusted by my play-along performance. My once stellar pop culture knowledge has dwindled to the occasional “Eight is Enough” random reference. (Nicholas Bradford.) I’m just not up on current pop culture.

And you know what? I’m too tired to care.

And that’s the scariest part.