Spoiled and Exhausted

Today is day three of the Wook's Sleep Strike.

Let me back up a little bit. My husband has what he calls "Early Weeks" at work. During these weeks he has to go into work at 7am in order to present at the morning meeting. Fortunately, his "turn" only comes around once every 6 weeks, thanks to the other folks in his department.

We have been extremely lucky since our Wookster began sleeping through the night at 6 weeks. And by through the night I mean 8pm-5am. I could handle one short breastfeeding at 5am, knowing I would be back in dreamland by 5:30am. Not long after, Wooks, being the considerate baby that he is, decided he could make it until 7:30am. What a sweetie! Yes folks, I have a breastfed baby who sleeps 11 hours through the night! And we have never had to experience the excruciating, heart wrenching, "cry-it-out" scenario.

Don't get me wrong. We have had the occasional "I feel like playing/nursing/babbling in the middle of the night" case. This generally happens during a play-date with our new teeth or a growth spurt. Ok, back to my point.

Since Monday, "early week" I need not remind you, Wook has woken up 5 hours into the night wailing to no avail. I assumed teeth. We did the usual Tylenol, Hurricane Gel (diamonds in a bottle) but nothing worked other than nursing him endlessly, until he wore himself to sleepiness. Then comes the "back in your crib tango". Fighting not to step just the wrong way, twitch, heaven forbid sneeze or bump the crib. Monday night my frustration took me so far that I whispered over my child's crib to Darling Husband "I could choke you" when he turned the monitor on while Wook was stirring, causing us to begin the whole thing again. Horrible I know, seeing that he (darling husband) was up WITH me! I love him.

Tuesday same scenario, but Darling Husband wore his clunky old man slippers across kitchen floor sending Wook back into a teething rage. I didn't mention anything about doing bodily harm this time.

Wednesday night, Wook went down easily as usual, but woke again with teething troubles. We spent an hour and a half just coaxing him back into dreamland after nurs-apaloosa. I then proceeded to have a meltdown about how I wasn't any good at being a mother and how I had now clue what I was doing. Boo-hoo-hoo. DH sleepily reassured me that Wook was lucky to have me and that I was a wonderful mother and that it was just a phase. Now who can threaten to choke a man who says things like that at 2 in the morning. We hugged and I selfishly thought about the sleep we got before Wook came along. Crazily, I would continue these sleepless nights forever to have my baby look at me the way he does.

I am exhausted. DH was dizzy yesterday. My neck hurts and I ache down my arms. I have a headache and miss my sleep. We are spoiled and have started to wonder if the Tooth Fairy has it out for us. Yawn-Yawn.