Not sleeping

Last Tuesday Elsa and Gwen were in their room taking a nap when a neighbors horn went off for about 20 seconds. My kids are real sensitive to things that sound like alarms and this sounded like an alarm and it terrified them both! Gwen recovered quickly, but Elsa hasn’t. Since that incident nearly a week ago, she has not been able to sleep in her room at all.

We’ve tried so many things I can’t even recount them. The only thing we haven’t tried so far is moving her crib into a different room. It feels like this is not so much about fear any more and a lot about “if I hold out long enough I can sleep with Mommy and Daddy!”. Yet she displays some other behaviors that lead me to think that at the very least she does not like her room at all now (she won’t play in there for instance, even if we all are in there).

For the first few nights we eventually would give in and put her in our bed where she’d fall asleep almost immediately. Then we’d put her back in her bed and she’d sleep through the night. The last 4 or so nights though, she will wake up every hour. As you might imagine, this is extremely exhausting and frustrating.  This also applies for naps so its something we’re struggling with all day long and the wee little bit of free time I got every day has been eaten up.

I hate going to bed frustrated and upset, waking up every hour frustrated and upset, and starting my day frustrated and upset! There is no one to blame… its just something to get through. But its still very draining.

I’m having a hard time staying positive. It feels like I’m crying every day.  We seem to just be in a real tough streak and that little black raincloud just hangs over our heads wherever we go, making things as complicated and stressful as possible. I feel so worn down. Usually pregnancy is a time when I feel pretty good. As detailed on this blog, I usually have at least one semi-major home improvement job I tackle during pregnancy and I like to get things in order. I don’t know that’s going to happen this time. Seems hard enough just staying on top of day to day tasks, let alone any big projects.

Anyway, enough whining. Off to make some order out of chaos.