Yesterday, I was getting very frustrated as it was a battle to get her to go to sleep fro her nap. I was still under the seedy control of sleep deprivation from the night before and my patience with her was running very thin. Although she ate a pretty good lunch she was demanding food.
I laid her down at 12:00 which is her normal time. Recently, she has been laying awake in the crib for up to an hour. While this is very frustrating it has not effected her nap; she just sleeps later. Yesterday, she demanded food, through her suckie, crying, screaming and anything else she could do to stay away.
As night neared, I worried about how hard it would be to put her to sleep tonight. Much to my surprise, however, she went almost right to sleep. But, the night before, (and others, but not to the same extent) she woke up in the middle of the night.
We live in a small, one-story house so that if she is awake, we are all awake. While Michele laid in bed (she had to work the next day) I got up to attend to her. So we were all awake from about 2:00 to 3:30. I feel bad for Michele when Rachel keeps us up. She (Michele not Rachel) does not have the same naportunity that I do.
I wonder why she is waking up in the middle of the night all of a sudden. As I see it there are too possibilities: She is legitimately hungry and I should feed her a snack or more at supper or she is doing this to stay up longer when she knows she is not allowed to stay up. If she is hungry I want to feed her, but again I do not want to teach her that she can get food at night to stay up.
I use to feed her small graham sticks, but now I am feeding her more healthy food; I fed her apples pieces last night. I changed in the hopes that if she is doing it to stay up at least she is getting something healthy. And it may make her less inclined to ask for it if she is not getting the sweet cinnamon graham sticks.
So much of parenting is like this: a balance. I’m always worried about what I may be teaching her; especially when it may be negative. But I also want to make sure that she gets what she needs.
In case your wondering:
Naportunity - noun - the opportunity to take a nap during the day; especially when taking care of children.
