Driving Miss Luci

(Okay, I wrote this about a week ago on Facebook, but I am still going to re-post it here in an effort to spruce up my sad-looking family blog, and also because most of it still applies to the current sleep battle...)

Or, The Blog I Have Written Three Times Because I CANNOT Finish Anything I Start Due to Baby Things and/ or Power Failure
Part I:

It is probably a stupid idea to attempt to write this blog, as Luci is asleep and her Mom-is-having-alone-time radar will surely go off by the time I finish it. Also, I could be folding the laundry I threw on the bed while Luci was whining at me and failed to finish folding when the whining began to drive me crazy, or finishing any one of the eighty million things I still need to do around this house, but I am just feeling drained.

We were blessed to have my friend Dana come over for a couple of hours Wednesday afternoon so that Mommy could have free hands for a while, and I now have a slightly cleaner house (THANK YOU, DANA!). As i said in the last blog, it has basically been my fantasy lately to have somebody come and entertain Luci so that I could clean for a few hours. I used to nanny for a family whose parents were pharmaceutical reps who worked from home. I never completely understood the need for a babysitter for a work-from-home job until now. I need a babysitter just for the STAYING at home "job," though right now I wish that we were doing a little more "staying" and a little less driving, but I'll get to that in a second.

But I am hoping that this is just a particularly needy stage we are going through with Luci. The past couple of weeks especially have been exhausting. She has had a constant runny nose for two weeks, and I HOPE she is preparing to cut a tooth, because she is crabby all the time (unless we are out in public, because she loves to show off what a good and happy girl she is to strangers). I now thoroughly regret not establishing a schedule with her in the early months (although it's not that I never tried... I just never thought it was "working" and therefore gave up), because we are having the worst time with sleeping routines now. The ONLY way I can get her to take ...

**SHE TOTALLY JUST WOKE UP AS I PREDICTED, BUT IS NOW PLAYING SOMEWHAT HAPPILY IN THE WALKER**

...a nap is to go for a drive. I am probably spending a fortune in gas as I just cruise the neighborhood, hop on the freeway to nowhere, or create some unnecessary errand for us in order to get out of the house and PUT HER TO SLEEP. It's the most maddening thing. I can try for HOURS to get her to take a nap. She no longer likes the bouncer. The swing no longer puts her to sleep. She is a BUSY girl, and she wants to be on her feet and Mommy to be holding her up. She doesn't even like to be held most of the time so much as she likes to be held UP so she can "walk" around and find stray Kleenex to eat. She does still like walks in the stroller, but I'm not really up for that until the late evening in the heat we've been having.

So we drive. Or we drive, park, and shop, because generally, she will stay asleep for shopping. I can't count the number of times I have arrived at our front door with her sleeping in the carseat, my heart full of hopes that I will be able to sit in peace in quiet or unload the dishwasher for 30 minutes, and the second I put the key in the lock, she wakes up wailing. I don't know how she knows.

Then, at bedtime, it takes about three hours to get her down. We have just started her on cereal, so the time between that, the bath, the nursing, the wrestling, the giving-up-and-going-for-a-drive, and her sleeping... is about three hours. I know that the extended bedtime is probably related to her being over-tired, but I don't know how to fix that when I'm already driving (literally!) myself crazy all day trying to get her to nap.

So, needless to say, her sleep issues are my sleep issues, since I can't take a nap when I am driving around and/ or shopping all day, and because I have been staying up late or getting out of bed late when I have FINALLY gotten her down, so that I can have a couple of hours to DO anything, or do nothing. I stayed up until 4am finishing the wedding invitations, because I literally COULD NOT keep her happy long enough to get anything done in the week and a half that I had to finish this task. I have had a few meltdowns lately in the form of "I wish I had a real job so I would be entitled to a full night's sleep" (which... I am not exactly how that would work, since Luci doesn't seem to care who has a real job or not. :) I just get jealous of Adam sometimes, as I am sure he gets jealous of me) or simply, "I am failing at everything," but I know I am doing okay.

And no, I am not ready to trade her in, although I would be happy to rent her out for a few hours some days. I am just a new mom who feels like this stage is never going to end, like she's never going to turn thirteen and want nothing to do with me.

Part II:
HOLY CRAP, fast forward two days from when most of this blog was written, and we have a miracle: I have just gotten Luci down for a nap the SECOND DAY IN A ROW in her Pack 'N Play (portable crib/ playpen, for those of you who can still walk in your houses without tripping over eighty pieces of "baby gear"). I did it for the first time yesterday and though I was having delusions. She has basically NEVER gone to sleep any way except nursing, driving, or being in the swing with a pacifier.

But, out of desperation after nursing and wrestling her on the big bed for about 40 minutes, I put her in yesterday to see if she would wear herself out wrestling with her big fluffy doggy instead of her big fluffy mom. She cried a little, but I rubbed her back and sang to her. And then an AMAZING THING happened: she put her head down and yawned. My heart started to pound with excitement, but it nearly exploded with excitement when, a few minutes later, I affirmed that she was truly ASLEEP. No boob in her mouth, not even a pacifier. Even when I took my hand off her back, she didn't stir.

And this is probably a skill that MOST new parents learn within a few days of bringing home their bundle, but I don't care that I am just getting the hang of it. We have co-slept all her life, from the very first night in the hospital. And while that arrangement drives me crazy sometimes, I absolutely hate it when someone tells me, "Oh, that's not good." I think it has been a very good thing in a few different ways, and especially for the quarter that I was in school and away from her for a 4-6 hour chunk most days. She had to catch up on her mama snuggles and nursings. And she really sleeps very well snuggled up to me. She nurses very often still, and that is the only reason I get crappy sleep with this arrangement (well, that and the occasional crotch-kicking, face-whacking fest she throws in the morning). Aside from the half-wakings where she wakes up and squirms just enough to tell me it's time to switch sides, she sleeps through the night.

Anyway, all that to say: there's a teeny tiny light at the end of this tunnel. She has surprised me with these very grown-up naps, and I am sure she will surprise me some more. :)