I am so tired right now. Waking up at odd hours several nights in a row will do that to you (thank you, two youngest children). So, if my words become incomprehensible, well, I’m blaming lack of sleep…or more like interrupted sleep which to me might as well mean crazy sleep deprivation.
4am this morning. Lydia starts crying, not the kind of crying you can hope just quiets on its own. I mean, screaming crying, calling our names, “I’m 100% awake” kind of crying. For the third night in a row, I somehow managed to remove myself from our bed to go in there. And, I wasn’t happy about it.
I wanted her to stop. crying.
“want Mama’s bed, want Daddy’s bed. No crib.”
And, I just didn’t want to do it. For all those cosleepers out there…bless you. It’s not for me. The only person I’m cosleeping with is the one I married.
I knew it would make her fall right back asleep and quit the crying that somehow seems like it’s a 12 on a scale of 1 to 10 when it’s at 4am. It worked all the other nights.
But, I just didn’t want to do it. again. and then again and again. I see what’s happening here. I changed her, held for a few seconds, put her back in her crib crying, and made her a little warm bottle. And, then left her in there while I went back to bed.
A few minutes later, she was quiet.
But, right away, my thoughts were not–did I do the right thing? If she’s crying to come be with us, should I have let her? What kind of message am I sending? Should I have laid on her floor next to her for a while until she was quiet? Did I just reinforce anti attachment thinking? Did I mess this up?
It’ll be 2 years in April since she’s been home with us. And, I’m overthinking about when I won’t be overthinking attachment stuff. When can I just be and not have to worry about damaging effects on our attachment or sending the wrong message?
…
She woke up happy, totally fine, totally attached this morning…though her interrupted sleep seems to have caused her to be overly exhausted for her nap this afternoon which led me to put her down crying…again…
