Night Terrors

After having a baby who only ever woke at night to feed and slept through from a very early age, it's quite a shock to suddenly have her waking at night. Heike has always had the odd whimper at night, and has always either put herself back to sleep or had a dummy sneakily popped in her mouth by a loving parent. But now she's given up the dummy (herself, I wish she would still take it) the second option is out the window, and suddenly she's been waking up INCONSOLABLE.

My first strategy is to ignore her. Just in case he isn't sure, I will yell "IGNORE" at Justus as soon as I hear that first little cry. It usually starts off as a little whimper or even a bit of a chat, so it's not like I'm leaving her in there crying her heart out. Occasionally she will put herself back to sleep but lately we usually move on to step two, which is escalated crying.

At this stage I generally go in and employ the "pat and shush" methodology perfected in the early no-day-sleeping days. This generally calms her down but requires a LOT of patience, particularly at 3am. Again, this can sometimes get her back to sleep but can also often lead to step three, ridiculous out of control screaming.

At this point one of us will usually pick Heike up and carry her around the house, bouncing up and down like fools and singing nursery rhymes or, in the case of Justus, really out of tune made up songs. By this point you're lucky if she'll go back to sleep. This morning we got so desperate that we put her in bed with us, which caused her to LOSE IT and cry in a way I've never heard before - completely out of control shrieking. The poor darling clearly wanted something we weren't giving her. At nine months Heike is 10.5 kilos and has three big bottles and three meals a day, so I simply don't believe she's hungry. But I also don't see how a baby getting teeth would wake at the same time every night. We'll try another blanket tonight, but I'm not sure that's it either.

While I don't have the answers I can tell you that I'm feeling rather fatigued today. In the end Justus gave Heike a bottle at 5 o'clock this morning and put her back into bed where she chatted away until drifting back into slumber at six for another hour. WHO KNOWS what is going on with this child!?

LUCKILY, Heike is particularly cute and does nothing but delight me during the day. How can you feel lethargic when you have this darling little person smiling at you all day?

My gorgeous little night owl

Z xx