Further proof I'll probably never really know what I'm doing...

Caitlin's sleep has been a little...let's say uneven...lately. She's never really been a sleep-straight-through-the-night baby, but, I don't know. I guess I thought she would have outgrown that by now. Unfortunately, the more I talk to people who have raised children, the more I realize she might not outgrow that until she's something like 15, but still. I dream of the days when I can sleep through the night without at least one shriek-fueled wake-up call to disturb me.

In the meantime, I try to comfort myself with the thought that babies do grow up, most of the time quicker than you actually want them to. And eventually, Caitlin will change her sleep habits. And until she does, at least I get to cuddle her while she falls asleep, which is something she would NEVER allow when she's fully awake, as she must be free during all waking hours to wander the house and destroy each and every thing she can get her hands on. And even when she does wake up at 2am, it's usually just because her pacifier has fallen out of the crib, and giving that back to her sends her immediately back to sleep.

But these last few weeks? Well. We've had PROBLEMS here in Georgia these last few weeks.

There has been screaming. And hours long middle-of-the-night comfort sessions. And just general unhappiness when it comes to the sleeping time. Lately, we've been trying to let her cry it out to a certain extent, checking on her when she starts to cry, returning her pacifier to the crib, then leaving her to fall back asleep on her own without ever taking her out of the crib. And it's been working. For the most part, anyway. But two nights ago? I got less than three hours of sleep, total, because she REFUSED to put herself back to sleep, and the angry screaming come from her room was reaching epic proportions, and I caved in getting her out of the crib to rock her back to sleep.

It turns out, she wasn't opposed to sleeping, she was just opposed to sleeping anywhere but on my lap, as I found out when she woke up again an hour after I'd gone back to bed, trying to act like she was up for the day. At 12:30 in the morning. I finally managed to get her back to sleep as we were closing in on 3am, and while my alarm goes off at 4:30 in the morning, Caitlin seemed to be sleeping just fine at that point.

Last night, she was inconsolable. Again. She fought bedtime with a fierceness that was bizarre, even for her. She wouldn't calm down, even when I was holding her. I could not get her to quit crying and squirming long enough to notice how tired she actually was. And then I remembered...

Right around the beginning of January, I'd noticed it looked like a molar was pushing through on the left side of Caitlin's gums. And it looked like there was a matching lump on the right side that would be a tooth soon, too. And maybe there were a couple coming in on the bottom, as well. And apparently I am incapable of putting two and two together, a week later.

Because when I stuck my finger in her mouth to check her gums, you would have thought I was pulling off her fingernails or something. She screamed until she couldn't breathe, throwing her head back and arching as far away from me as she could get. Of course she's pissed off. Of course she doesn't want to sleep. She has molars cutting through on both sides of her mouth. She is miserable. Poor baby.

A dose of Tylenol and twenty minutes later, the poor kid had quit screaming and was fast asleep in my arms.

Parenting is ridiculous.