Will Pay for Sleep

Seriously, kid. Go the F*** to sleep.

Yesterday we hired a night nurse.  That's right, we are paying someone to hang out with the Little Lady while we sleep.  It sounds ridiculous, I know, but when you haven't slept in stretches longer than an hour for almost a month you will do almost anything to get some sleep.  I understand now why sleep deprivation is a torture tactic; deny someone a decent night's rest for a long enough period of time, and she will tell you anything.  

Basically, what I'm saying here is that babies are teeny tiny terrorists and their mission is to break you.

The Little Lady has broken us, my friends.

During the early days of her time here with us, she was a great sleeper.  At just two months of age she was sleeping through the night.  I thought we had dodged the sleepless baby bullet.  I patted myself on the back, sure that her stellar sleep habits were entirely the result of my ace second time parenting.  Smug as a cat who ate a canary, I shared with my Mommy and Me groups about her incredible sleeping habits and enjoyed the jealous looks of the other exhausted Mommies whose kids were still waking up every two hours.

And now look at me.  I have circles under my eyes that are so dark I look like a character from The Walking Dead.  I can't remember the last time I slept long enough to even have a dream, and I drink so much coffee that it's quite possible I bleed caffeine.  I'm starting to think that this long stretch of sleepless nights is Karma for my being an assh*le during those early days of Motherhood.
 
Are you there, God?  It's me, Anna.  

I'm sorry I was a jerk!  NOW CAN YOU PLEASE HELP MY BABY SLEEP THROUGH THE NIGHT??!

These days I'm the exhausted one in all the Mommy and Me groups listening with envy as other Mothers describe four month old children who go to sleep at 6:30PM and don't wake up until 8AM.  I'm now the frazzled, hollow-eyed Mombie who forgot her child's birth date last week and had to call her husband to find out what to put down on the preschool application.  I'm so tired that yesterday I stood in the produce section at Whole Foods crying because they were out of Lacinto Kale.

So I think you can see why we hired some help.  It's only for two nights, and even that's a stretch for us financially, but the hope is that the night nurse can give us some guidance on what to do to get Rose to sleep for longer stretches.  We've tried everything we can think of - the dream feed, the teething remedies, letting her cry, the wombie, the sleep sack, the Zippadee Zip - if it's supposed to help a baby sleep we've given it a shot, but nothing has helped.  It's time to bring in the professionals.

And if this doesn't work, I may actually have to take my Mother's advice and give the kid some brandy before bed.  Just don't tell my neighbor.