Sleepy Mommy.

It's like having a newborn all over again.

My until-recently-awesome-sleeper (used to sleep thru consistently from
10:30 or 11 til 6:30 or 7, nurse, then go back down til 9 or so) has been replaced with some sort of wild, starving, nocturnal creature! It all started with him waking once or twice in the middle of the night, just squirming and grunting -  a pacifier always did the trick. Then he started waking up to eat in the middle of the night... He'd go down around 10:30 or 11, wake up and nurse around 2:30 or 3:30, wake up for his normal feeding around 6 or 7, and be up for the day around 9. Over the past week or so, he has started pushing bedtime backward - more like 10-10:30 now, and as early as 9:30. Then he added a 1:30ish feeding to the mix, and suddenly for the past two nights I've been up every 2-3 hours.

Last night? He was getting cranky and rubbing his eyes around 9. This is actually quite early for him, but I'm all about the baby-led routine so we follow his lead - there's no sense in fighting with a cranky baby for another hour just to stick to the "normal routine", since that routine is still evolving anyway. So we settled in for our last nursing session of the evening and he was in bed around 9:30. Much to my chagrin, he was up again at 12:30. TWELVE. THIRTY. What the heck? I tried rocking/walking/bouncing him back to sleep - he'd have none of it - so we nursed. About 15 minutes later, he was awake again. Holy crap. This time I just pulled him over into our bed and laid him on my chest, and he literally fell back to sleep almost instantly. Success! Back into the bassinet he went, after 5 minutes or so of snuggling to make sure he was good and OUT this time. Then, after what felt like about 10 minutes of sleep (but actually turned out to be about 2 1/2 hours), he was up again at 3:15. I tried the old snuggle-on-my-chest trick again, and again succeeded in lulling him back to sleep. I thought maybe I was onto something - maybe he just needed a little extra snuggling. But alas, it was only a temporary solution. Fifteen minutes later he was up again, and this time protesting quite a bit more adamantly. This time I got him up and changed his diaper in case that was part of what was bothering him, we nursed, and he was back in his bassinet around 4. Along came 6:15 and we were back at it again, nursing and going back to bed. 7:30 - awake and protesting again, but with eyes still shut and looking rather cranky, so I once again pulled him over into bed and snuggled him for a few minutes to put him back to sleep. By 8:30 it was uppy uppy time - he was laying in his bassinet, eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling, happily jabbering to himself (this is how I know that there's no more hope for sleep and I might as well just give it up).

Back to square one, or so it seems. Growth spurt? Teething? Bad karma? Who knows. Whatever it is, I'm gonna need at nap today.