Sleep, the never ending quest

I hesitate to complain about Molly's sleep schedule (or lack thereof) because we are worlds away from where we were six months ago, when she woke up every two or three hours to nurse every night.

Now she sleeps a solid 9 or 10 hours most nights. She occasionally cries out as often as every few hours all night, but usually she goes back to sleep on her own ... often just as one of us has finally gotten out of bed and stumbled into the hallway.

The problem now is that she has an internal alarm clock that goes off around 5 a.m. every single day. Typically she starts crying around 4 or 4:30. Jim usually takes any wakings before 5 because he's better at getting her back to sleep. She usually only stays down for about 10 or 20 minutes, though, before crying again and by 5 she's up for the day.

This morning he went in several times. On his last trip she said "Da Da!" when he walked in the door (apparently she was standing there waving at him). I think it was around 4:50. I got up and we played in the dark until breakfast. Ugh!!

We've been experimenting with ways to get her to sleep longer since December and nothing is working. One book said to try to shift her bedtime later, as well as meals, naps and every other routine during the day. We did that for a week or two and ended up with an overtired toddler, frazzled parents who lost their window of quiet time before bed and still a 5 a.m. wake-up every day. We've tried (and continue to try) keeping the house dark in the morning, delaying her morning feeding (so hunger wouldn't be waking her up), bringing her into our bed (last time we tried this she said, "Da Da!" and waved at her sleeping father, then kicked her legs, hugged Jim's head and gave him kisses, kicked off the covers and was quite entertained, but not sleepy), lying down with her on the couch, and lying down with her on her bedroom floor (that actually worked two or three times). Our latest approach is from another sleep book, which says kids wake up early when they're sleep deprived and recommends moving bedtime earlier rather than later. No luck. Early bedtime has only caused her to wake up earlier.

I think Molly's just a lark, a kid who goes to bed relatively easily and wakes up ridiculously early by nature. I guess I'll be going to bed at 9 p.m. for the indefinite future. It could be a lot worse.

On a related note, Molly is generally taking just one nap a day now instead of two. It's kind of unpredictable (as her naps have always been), but lately she's been falling asleep around 11 or 11:30 a.m. and sleeping for an hour or an hour and a half. I've been dreading the drop down to one nap, but actually it's kind of a relief. It's so frustrating to never know when or how she's going to nap, and to spend hours sometimes trying to nurse her down when she's fighting it. It's nice to only go through that once a day.

It also helps that she just recently picked up the sign for "sleep" and occasionally even uses it.

Here's a picture Jim took (before dawn) this morning of Molly helping in the kitchen.


She drags the chair up to the counter and climbs up. Aside from the times when she grabs sharp knives or pulls the chair up to the hot stove or knocks food onto the floor, this has turned out to be very useful. Now I don't have to carry her around on my hip as I cook and clean with one hand. I can set her up on a chair and she's satisfied. Today she even stood with me at the sink while I washed dishes! She also helped me make dinner by putting spinach leaves into the salad spinner and swishing them around in the cold water. Any little chore I can get done while she's awake is a chore that I don't have to do in my precious little free time while she's napping. We're working on showers next -- for some reason she is terrified of me taking a shower. The running water makes her nervous and if I so much as try to step in she melts down. We made it through a quick shower with the curtain open today (water went everywhere, but that's how badly I wanted a shower). Yay!