The Strangest NIght. Ever.

Yesterday, Leah wouldn’t take an afternoon nap, no matter how hard I tried to rock her and coax her to sleep.  She was obviously sleepy (you moms know what I mean by that), but just wouldn’t sleep.  This is unusual for her.  While some babies and children fight sleep with all of their strength and will, Leah has never been like that.  Since she was born, if we merely suggested a nap, placed a soft blanket by her face, and gave her a little bit of a bottle, out she goes.  The power of the nap overtakes her, and the story is over.  She has slept through the night consistently since 3 months old; by “through the night,” I mean about 11:00 PM to about 7:30 AM.  Yeah.  She’s always been a sleeper.

Since she hadn’t had a nap yesterday afternoon, she took about half of her bedtime bottle and was out cold.  Limp, deep breathing, snoring a little……I figured it would be the night of sleep she needed to catch up from her day.

At about 1:37 this morning, I awoke to a sound that was something like, “waBAM!” followed by the distinctive wail of a nearly-nine-month old baby through the monitor.  Oh, dear.  I rushed upstairs to her room, where I found her apparently trying to escape from her crib.  In doing so, she had conked her head on the railing after moving the bumper out of her way.)  I replaced her pacifier, did some gentle shushing noises, and caressed her face with her satin blanket.  Did she fall asleep?  Nope.  Nor did she re-enter dreamland as I rocked her.  Or sang to her.  Or snuggled with her.  Eventually, she squirmed and wrestled with me enough that I gave up and put her back in her crib, kissed her forehead, and wished her sweet dreams.  She would just have to get herself back to sleep.

Not. So.  I hadn’t even been back in bed long enough to warm my pillow up again when I heard her crying again.  Not an urgent, “I need you now, mama!” sort of cry, but a pitiful, whiny, “I’m just tired and don’t quite know what to do about it,” sort of cry.  This is not a cry that gets me to rush to her side.  It did wake Scott up, though, and when I saw him moving to get up, I told him what had been going on.  “She’s just refusing to go back to sleep.  I don’t know.  You can go up if you want to, but I’d just let her go.”  He said he wouldn’t  be able to sleep with her making those little whines, so he went to her.  I think I was asleep before he even made it up to her room.  That was at 2:30.

At 4:00, I awoke again to ecstatic shrieks and gleeful giggles.  Strange, no?  I believe my exact thoughts were, “What. in. the. world……?”  As I rolled over, Scott appeared in the doorway to our room, closing the door so Leah’s enthusiasm for life wouldn’t wake me up.  I asked him what was going on and asked him if he needed me to come get her, since neither of them had slept a wink since our last conversation.  I had had no idea that all of that was still going on.  He said it was up to me whether or not I got up; I felt bad about the whole thing, so I wandered out to the family room.

There, I saw Leah, sitting in her PackNPlay and laughing hysterically at something, while her daddy sat nearby in sleepy, bewildered amusement.  (I don’t know if he was actually amused or not…..but that’s what it looked like.)  Apparently, Leah had decided that the middle of the night would be a terrific time to work on her pulling up and crawling.  What. on. Earth.

Scott went back to bed, while I gave Leah another part of a bottle to try to get her to sleep.  She drank, we rocked, and finally – finally – at 5:00, her extremely heavy eyelids fell shut.  Once I was sure that she was good and asleep, I eased her down into the PackNPlay to sleep there.  I cozied up on the couch, and we slept for a couple of hours.  At 7:40 or so, Scott came to tell me he was leaving for work.  As he opened the door to the laundry room to leave, it stuck, making that obnoxious noise doors make sometimes. 

Leah screamed.  And cried.  And was fully awake.

For good.

She slept about 45 minutes a little bit ago, but is now rolling around on the floor  giggling, cooing and clapping.  Beats me.

The strangest thing about all of this isn’t that she isn’t sleeping, though that’s definitely weird.  The strangest thing is that she’s so cheerful in spite of her sleep deprivation.  I just don’t get it.  She usually sleeps for close to 12 hours at night, and then wants a 2 hour nap at about 10:30.  She slept only about 6 hours last night, plus the tiny cat nap this morning.  I’m afraid that just any time now, she’s going to crash and it’s all going to hit the fan.

I don’t know if we can credit teething with this nocturnal behavior or what, but seriously?  This is weird.