A Good Night

This morning I woke up early to round at the hospital. Usually Henry beats me up, but today I beat him. He got up, went to the bathroom and came in the dining room. I was ready to give him his good morning hug, but he stopped me and said.

"Before you give me a hug, there is something I want to look for upstairs" and he went up.

 a few minutes pass

"Mom, where is the red mushroom?"

"The red mushroom?"

pause

*sigh* "I guess it must have been a dream."

Then he comes down. I asked him what the red mushroom did in his dream and he said it made your belly stick out (not just mine, but everybody's).  Can you tell he played Super Mario Brothers last night?

As you can tell with my last post, I've been struggling with Frances at night.  When she wakes up, she can't soothe herself and needs to be nursed back to sleep. When she is waking up every hour or so, that is a lot for me to do. A few nights ago I wasn't getting any sleep, she was waking up every 45 minutes or so and I started to have a headache. I woke up Aaron and he tried to rock her asleep. He got her asleep, but the minute she was in the bed, she woke up. He again tried to rock her to sleep, but it didn't work and since I was up listening to her whimper, I gave in and nursed her to sleep. Now I know she is teething, but on good nights she wakes up three time a night. Since this is my last baby, I was sorta letting it slide, but this teething bout has me rethinking things.This girl needs a lesson in self soothing. During the day when she is tired but happy I have put her in her crib, but as soon as I walk away she gets upset.  So last night, I had a new idea. She was tired, happy and really cuddly. I put her on the bed next to me and I just laid there next to her. I didn't feed her, I didn't play with her. I was there to ease her sleep transition, and I touched her as minimal as possible. She whined/talked for a while, but never really got upset and eventually she fell asleep. I can't believe it, it worked!

The funny thing is that she stayed asleep for a long long long time, like 7 hours.  She never goes that long. Maybe this is the ticket, or maybe I was lucky. I'll find out soon enough. Still, it was good.