Valentine's Day Parent Style

Also known as "What happened to my baby?"

The day started out great. Aubrey woke up happy at her normal time, we played for a while, dressed in a cute v-day outfit, took pictures. Then she didn't really want to eat her breakfast and started getting fussy. After some more playing I got her to take a nap, a good 1.5 hours. Still very typical day. Then we went and had a nice lunch with Bill near his work, came home, Aubrey ate a big lunch and we played for a while longer. She was so cute, she tried to put a pacifier in my mouth! She recently learned how to pick one up and put it in her own mouth, then she tried to put it in my mouth, it was adorable. After a nice afternoon nap, Bill came home with dinner and we opened cards and presents and enjoyed dinner with Aubrey on our laps.

I started getting her ready for bed around 7:30pm. Read a book, get in jammies, etc. with the goal of getting her to sleep around 8pm. Bill and were going to enjoy some wine and cheesecake and watch a movie once she was asleep. Now typically she has been sleeping from about 8:30pm to 7:30am with one waking to eat around 4am. Last night, I would put her down and she would start crying. Pick her up, she would be almost instantly soothed and falling right back to sleep, put her back down, instant crying. This went on until 1 am! Now before this I was not an advocate of letting babies cry it out, but that is because I had such a good sleeper. We tried everything last night. Tylenol and oragel for teething pain, swaddling, unswaddling, pacifier, extra nursing, humidifier, stuffed animal in the bed, and she was having none of it. So finally we gave up and just put her in her crib to cry and she cried until about 2am and then slept until 7am. That was the longest hour ever! I just sat on the end of the bed, "Bill, am I doing the right thing? I feel like a horrible mother. What if she needs something and just can't tell me." As Bill pointed out it probably was a combination of her developing separation anxiety, learning that when she cries I come, and possible teething pain. We also figured that nothing really was wrong with her because as soon as we picked her up she would go to sleep.

So that was our "romantic" Valentines evening. And I still feel so upset about letting her cry last night, probably partly because I only had four hours of sleep. I think I'll be crying it out too tonight.