Lillian has never been a great sleeper. I wouldn’t even classify her as a good sleeper. However, the last few months have been awful. I’d happily go back to the days where she slept through the night, but would cry in her sleep. Those were the good days. As of late, she’d gotten into some horrible nighttime habits. Six out of seven nights in the week, she would wake up somewhere between 12:30 and 2:30 am. She would then cry/scream/holler for “momma!” Loran would attempt to calm her, but that would only get her more worked up. She only wanted me. How flattering. Then, once I’d intervene, she wanted the same things: milk, get wrapped up in her ducky blanket and rock. Every. Single. Night. Sometimes it would take an hour or more to get her settled back down.
Somehow, when you have a newborn, not sleeping is doable. However, once you have a child who can sleep through the night, those middle of the night wakings are just brutal. Especially when it happens night after night.
We tried the cry-it-out method. Not only is that just heartbreaking, it doesn’t work for Lillian. She gets more worked up, to the point of utter hysterics. It is then even more difficult to calm her down and get her to sleep. We tried bringing her to bed with us. Try as she does, she can’t get comfy, can’t quite calm down and ends up getting a little hyper. Usually we suffer with her for an hour or more thrashing around, and when she starts to climb on us to play, we toss her back in the crib. I had just resigned myself to the idea that I would have to respond to her each night, and eventually those nights would space out and become a thing of the past. However, it’s been hard.
Then, I was thinking about it. She started to get up every night right around the time the pacifiers went away. She then took her pacifier love and formed new sleep crutches that she didn’t need before: milk, “swaddling” and rocking. Initially, we’d chalked up her behavior to teething. But we’ve been banking on these two year molars to come through based on her behavior now for almost three months, and there is yet to be a molar to make an appearance. Hmm…perhaps, the pacifier is the key. Loran was traveling when I shared my theory, but upon discussion, it seemed that bringing back Ducky, with strict provisions seemed worth a shot.
When the pacifiers initially went away, it was easy. We sent them to Chelsey in Chicago because she “needed them”. Lily was happy to help out. When she asked for Ducky, we could just tell her that Chelsey needed them. Easy enough. But, little did I know, this would make reintroduction easy. It didn’t look like we were caving and she was winning after protesting long enough, simply put, I told her Chelsey was done with Ducky and sent it back.
I tucked it in my back pocket at bedtime. It seems she has x-ray vision because she knew I had it, even before I think she’d seen it. Clairvoyant baby. I gave it to her and told her Chelsey was done with it. She immediately started running around the room saying “Tank-ewe Che-sy!” I explained the rule that Ducky would stay in the crib and I didn’t unpack any of the other pacifiers, just Ducky. To seal the deal, I left a cup of water in her bed so if she truly was thirsty, we could default to water and not milk. However, I did not hear from her that night. In fact, when I checked on her at nearly midnight, she was curled in a little ball, hugging Ducky, not even sucking on the pacifier.
I wasn’t about to let one night of sleepy bliss seal the deal. For all I knew, it was her one night of the week when she sleeps. However, now that we’re a week into introducing Ducky back into our bedtime, I have not visited Lily once in the middle of the night. A whole week of sleeping through the night. A couple of times she’s cried in her sleep, like old times, but settled herself within a few seconds.
We love Ducky. I didn’t realize how tired I was.
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