Ever since I've been back from my dreaded 10 day work trip, A has been a sleeping disaster. My worst fears about knocking her off her awesome sleep train have been realized.
We had this down to a magical routine that was years in the making. Bath, books, and bed, peacefully. Sleep for 10-11 hours, in her bed. Cuddle in the morning. Two hour nap in the afternoon.
Now she refuses to go to bed. She just will not do it. Now it's fight to take a bath, read her books, then she wants to read books by herself, then she wants to cuddle, and then she'll go to her bed. And proceed to get back up 5-20 times. We spend hours on this battle every night. We're right back to the beginning with the sleep training, only she's not tiny and contained. She's a big, mighty girl now fighting for control over her environment.
After she's too tired to fight, she sleeps for a few hours and then gets up to crawl in my bed or just raise a ruckus. A few times she's just been up for the day at 3:30am. Not cool. She's getting about 8-9 hours of interrupted sleep now. And no nap. Refuses to nap. We're at a total loss.
We took her to the pediatrician, which wasn't really that enlightening. She just said that it could be residual separation anxiety and to keep putting her back in her room. But why is this happening now? We already did everything right and now it's just destroyed. She's been off her pattern before and has gone back to "normal" within a week. It's been a month.
Is it separation anxiety? Is she going through a growth spurt? Is it just summertime and hard to want to sleep when it is so light out? I would go for this one, but she drags it on until midnight sometimes. Did she just realize that she can open the door, turn on the light and walk out whenever she wants? Is it some sort of developmental pushing the boundaries?
Whatever it is, we can't really make her sleep. We need to contain it the best we can and not engage in the fight. It's just so profoundly disappointing because we really thought we had gotten somewhere, and life started to look a little bit livable again. I was even feeling like my regular, friendly self again instead of a sleep-deprived wound-tight bug-eyed freaky monster.
I guess what Buddha says is true - you can't really be attached to anything. The tighter you hold, the worse things will appear as they are in constant flux and can't stay the same. A flexible, nimble, accepting mind is a happy mind.
I had forgotten.
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