When we first brought Eli home from the hospital I
never knew that I could be so tired for so long. Constant, prolonged
exhaustion. A few months later when Eli began sleeping through the
night I thought that heaven was giving me the greatest gift of all
time. A month later heaven took the gift away. A month after that we
got it back. Now it varies by the night based off heaven’s mood.
Heaven is toying with me.
First, Eli would wake up because he was either hungry or he had unswaddled himself.
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| Always arms in the air. Why? |
Next, Eli slept on his stomach and we enjoyed blissful sleep for a while, although we were confused by some of his positions.
I used to sleep in my doorway (I wasn't allowed to leave my room) like this every night.
I guess some things are just genetic.
Whatever it is, I want in on that dream.
Then, Eli learned how to prop himself up, prolonging the falling-asleep process and allowing his screams to travel farther.
Like a slug, the Eli leaves a trail of slime as evidence of where he traveled from.
Currently Eli wakes himself up by rolling over from his tummy to his back. So now, while we don’t have to go feed him at 4 am, we do have to go in and roll him back over and pop his binky back in.
After
thorough research, we’ve been operating on the cry-it-out method, which
seems to work great as long as you’re willing to trade half an hour of
night time feeding for an hour of lying in bed listening to your child
wail while waves of adrenaline flow through your body with the peak of
every cry. Still, aside from some disastrous vacation schedules we are
making progress. In the meantime, don’t be surprised to see Zach and I
moaning as we shuffle along in the search for fresh sleep.
