As you may have surmised from my last post, things have not been going well with Miss T when it comes to bedtime. She started fighting it a bit last week, so I had to revise our admittedly lazy routine of feeding her in the living room with the TV on, the 5-year-old hopping around, the dog begging for her walk, N doing the dishes, etc. At 5 months she is just too aware of her surroundings for that to work anymore. Fine. I began taking her in our bedroom and arranging myself on the bed with pillows to feed her. With the TV on. (Why the insistence on TV-watching? Because she is a lazy eater and it takes freaking forever to give her a bottle.) But now that isn’t working either, because as soon as you turn her horizontal she realizes that you are trying to get her to go to sleep. So I began what I should have been doing from day one: rocking in her bedroom during that final bottle. However. As soon as I lay her in the crib, she wakes up and we’re right back at the beginning.

We have tried everything. We thought it was teething so we treated it as such, but I’m pretty sure that isn’t the case anymore because she’s perfectly happy when held or placed in a non-sleep inducing position. We took her to the doctor to be sure she wasn’t sick. Nope. We’ve tried crying it out, going in and comforting her every few minutes, rocking and rocking and rocking and then waiting a while before putting her down. It doesn’t matter. Nothing works. She (and we) has only had one decent night of sleep in the last 10 days. I realize we haven’t been at it that long in the greater scheme of things but it just all seems so OVERWHELMING when you are tired yourself and the baby won’t stop screaming and just GO TO SLEEP. I am not a patient person, okay? [You: NO KIDDING!] And I get WICKED CRANKY when I have not had enough sleep. Add all of this together and we are dangerously close to Nonsoccermom Goes Nuclear. (If you were to ask my husband he would say we reached that point last night but that is another story altogether.)

To add insult to injury, she’s been going down for naps at daycare just fine. In fact, when I asked one of her teachers this morning what their routine was – in case I was missing some critical element – she seemed surprised. “No, no problem! I wrap up and give her the blue doggie and she holds it like this and rolls over! Goes to sleep! No problem!” Lots of gesturing involved here – Ms. Z is from India and sometimes there is a bit of a language barrier. I was able to get the point, though – Miss T gives the daycare people NO TROUBLE WHATSOEVER. ARGH.

But! I have a plan!! Today at lunch I went out and bought a Fisher-Price Rainforest Waterfall Peek-a-Boo Soother. I’m going to hook that puppy to her crib. Then I’m going to swaddle her up (a practice I had attempted to discontinue because I am sick of trying to wrap a large wiggly 5-month-old). Then I am going to rock her while she eats. And then I am going to keep rocking her long after her last burp until I am sure she is good and asleep. Then I am going to tuck Blue Doggie under her arm and turn on the “soothing rainforest sounds and lights”. I will lay her down ON HER SIDE (because that’s where she rolls according to Ms. Z), and I will pat her little ass until she is motionless even if it takes hours because I will be DAMNED if I am going to listen to another night of screaming.

Wish me luck. Update tomorrow.