Scared to go to sleep...

...last night was one of those traumatic nights....the type of night that makes you fear the next night (as my sister Malene said, with her second child she (mom) sometimes would start crying when the sun went down). 

Selah had been a sleeping champ for the past week.  Yes--I was getting overconfident in my mama skills, attributing every single wink of sleep to some genius on my part....

• when I put her down,
• what I fed her,
• how much I fed her,
• the jazz I played when she went down,
• the perfect book I read her,

and the list of absolutely correct steps I took to facilitate her brilliant sleep is endless.

Then last night happened.Selah went to sleep a little earlier than usual at 5:45...she woke up a few times and was really hungry both times.  I gave her a night feed at around 9:30pm.  The problem is we were watching the BCS Championship and didn't get to sleep until almost midnight.

At 2AM Selah starts tossing and turning.  She's doing the quiet fuss--and I'm good at ignoring her noises in the night, so I ignored her.  Then she started yelling like her head was stuck in her crib.  It wasn't....but close.  She keeps getting stuck on her stomach.  Somehow she's rolling over on her stomach in the middle of the night, and can't figure out how to get her pacifier back and turn back over.  So I flipped her over, rubbed her back, made sure her humidifier was going, re-set her mobile, and changed her uber-wet diaper before heading back to bed....I then had to waste time on my blackberry for another 30 minutes to get sleepy again....including responding to an email exchange my friends and I are having about an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about Chinese mothers. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html

3AM, I'm back asleep and 4AM I'm back awake.  This time, again, she's screaming like she has a body part stuck in her crib.  Again she has flipped herself over and isn't able to flip back over.  She screams her head off for another 10 minutes before finally she wins and I decide to feed her.  I'm still nursing, but I had some wine during the BCS Championship so I hesitate to nurse her--even though the requisite hours have passed.  I make her a formula bottle while she continues screaming her head off.  By the time I get ready to feed her, my husband is downstairs trying to be helpful.  The only problem is he's talking to me.  "What can I do to be helpful?".  I can't tell the truth, because the one thing that's not helpful in this situation is someone talking...period.  I try to usher him back upstairs.  He goes back upstairs, but not before making a symphony of random night sounds (coughing, creaking wood, talking, etc.).  And sometime during all of this she also poops in a major way and I have to change a diaper so stinky it makes me gag.

Back to bed.  As I go to bed I hypothesize ALL the missteps that could explain this crazy night.

• is it the snow?  maybe the snow is making it so bright outside that Selah thinks it's light
• maybe it's the snow day--it threw her schedule off
• maybe I let her go to sleep too early (at 5:45)
• maybe I didn't feed her enough
• maybe it was when we had her outside in the cold for almost 15 minutes
• maybe I should have suctioned her nose more before she went to bed

Oh the reasons go on and on....I still haven't figured it out...and of course, I won't.

Selah wakes up again at 6am...but she just talks to herself.  I can ignore her talking to herself, but by 7am she's back on her belly and screaming at the top of her lungs.  Oy vey. 

Okay, almost bedtime.  Just a little scared to see what the night has in store....