The past few weeks, we've been pretty busy with doctors appointments and other fun things, and as a result, Maddy has been getting very overtired. She's been getting particularly cranky around 8pm but cannot get to sleep, even with a lot of assistance. On more than a couple of occasions, she's even screamed for up to an hour and a half inconsolably until we could finally manage to get her to sleep. It's been pretty rough on us both as she's pretty high maintenance at the moment!!
I know what the solution should be - it would be to get her into some kind of routine, be careful not to overstimulate her, and help her to learn how to self-settle a bit better, but putting it into practice around everything else that we need to do is pretty hard.
Often with our doctors appointments, we go and need to wait for an hour or sometimes even more before we see a doctor. During that time, Maddy might fall asleep only to be woken abruptly soon after. It's not uncommon if we have a morning appointment for us to need to wake her in the morning, give her a quick feed and then drag her out of the house right away.
Most of the time during the day, she's fine. There's only been two times where I had this problem during the day. Last week at our orthopedic appointment, we had a two hour wait and Maddy pretty much missed her morning nap which is for her the most important nap of the day. She screamed in the waiting room for about half an hour before falling asleep five minutes before our name was called.
The second time was yesterday when we were having the consultation with the orthopedic doctor from Toronto. We'd dragged poor Maddy from bed at 7am to take her up to the hospital, during which time she was woken by one of the various nurses or doctors every time she managed to fall asleep. By 10:30, she was completely past it but unable to settle. We spent most of the time with the doctor trying to yell to each other over her screams. Fun!
Usually it hits the hardest around 8 or 9pm. She's showing definite signs of tiredness and even looks like she's about to drop off to sleep. Sometimes we manage to put her into bed and think that we've won for once - but she inevitably wakes up after five or ten minutes screaming. She will settle a bit when she's sitting on our knee but still shows signs of tiredness. Sometimes we repeat this cycle, sometimes we just let her sit up for a while in the hopes that next time we put her down it won't be so painful. Sometimes she will end up completely overtired and screaming after which it's a huge effort to get her to sleep, but once she is asleep she will sleep until morning. Other times she will stay awake until we go to bed and once we're beside her, she seems to fall asleep easier (although if I try to "trick" her by "pretending" to go to bed at 8 or 9 and then sneaking out when she seems like she is completely asleep, she ALWAYS will wake up a minute after I walk out).
I never had to deal with these issues with Lana so I'm at a bit of a loss for new ideas that will help Maddy to get to sleep easier - I really don't want to spend hours and hours of my evenings just trying to put her to sleep. And due to the busyness of the past two weeks, it has been a daily battle. Hence the lack of blogs!
On the bright side however, once Maddy is asleep, she sleeps fantastically. She often doesn't wake up until an hour or two after Lana and the rest of us!
I know that probably it will get better in time as we have less appointments or as Maddy grows more tolerant to being dragged from place to place - but in the mean time, if anyone has any suggestions or ideas on how to make things easier for all of us, I'd LOVE to hear them!
(this blog was brought to you in bits and pieces between putting Maddy down, picking her up again, holding her and typing at the same time, and finally in the end having sweet victory as she is down for the night now - fingers crossed! - so forgive me if it's a bit disjointed!)
