Lilly Giveth, and Lilly Taketh Away

Lilly started regularly sleeping through the night around 2 months of age.

[Ducking, afraid of being stoned to death.]

That wasn't just 6 hours, that was an uninterrupted 8-10 hours of blissful rest. I know that is pretty great and amazing, and we should thank our lucky stars for any nights like that. I realize we are lucky parents, for many reasons, not just the number of consecutive hours our baby sleeps. It's a touchy subject for parents, just like developmental milestones, breastfeeding, solid foods and vaccinations. The SLEEP question.

A couple weeks ago, Lilly started waking up regularly, around 2am, and then again around 5am. I know she is probably having a growth spurt, because the girl is insatiable. I could feed her nonstop and she would keep at it. Usually she just wakes up, demands! milk! now!, I give her food and she falls right back asleep. The past couple nights she has tried a new stunt. One where she doesn't want to go back to sleep, she wants to be held and play and kick and smile. This is cute and all, but we don't exactly want to encourage her to stay up and play at night. Let's save that behavior for her teen years and drunken college days.

So last night, she actually slept until 4am, and then ate, fell asleep, and as soon as her head sensed the nearness of her mattress, her eyes popped open, like WAIT! I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING! CHEATER! I patted her, kissed her and left her in the bed, hoping she would put herself to sleep (occasionally, she does this). No luck. Andrew gets up to try to put her to sleep. He rocks her, she falls asleep in his arms, puts her down and POP! The eyes go open. Twice he tries this. The second time he walks away. We lay in bed listening to her whining starting to escalate. When she starts crying, I start to get out of bed and Andrew stops me, he's tired and frustrated, and no joke says, "No, she has to learn sleep, we are going to Ferber her ass."

Lovely.

I guess this is what they mean about not treating your 4-month old like a newborn, right?

I did go to her after 10 torturous minutes of crying, but I didn't pick her up. I patted her and rubbed her belly, and then flipped her over on her stomach (HEATHEN!) and patted her tooshy before she finally drifted off.

I think we have a rough patch ahead of us.

I'll be the one with enough baggage under my eyes, I would get charged the overage fee by Continental. Again.