The (b)itching Hour

Forget the Italian lady, she wants $50 more per week than the woman we have now. Yeah, and she wonders why she keeps advertising daycare spaces and no one wants to sign on.....

So at what point do night wakings change from normal baby behaviour to a sign that something is wrong? In the past 15-and-a-half months Jonah has slept through the night perhaps 25 times (and I don't mean a 12 hour night, I mean 7-8 hours). This constant, chronic sleep deprivation is really bad for the whole family, C and I are groggy and short tempered, Katie isn't getting the sleep she needs to grow and develop, we're all sick far too frequently and it has to be connected to the lack of sleep. We've done the NCSS, we've done a modified CIO (*never* trying that again, what a freakin' nightmare) we've adjusted his diet, exercise level, pajamas, blankets, bedroom temperature, light level, noise level, bedtime, nap length, how close to bedtime he eats, we've stuck with basically the same bedtime routine for 9 months now. He goes down like a charm but invariably sometime between 11 and 2 he's SCREAMING. This child can't whimper and fall back asleep, or even cry a little, no, once he's conscious he's screeching. He seldom settles back down without intervention and at least 70% of the time that intervention is quite involved (rocking, walking, back-rubbing for half an hour). So here I sit blogging at 1:15am while Jonah (who's been awake since 11:45) plays beside me. No, I don't usually let him get up and play but an hour of walking and rocking with the constant screaming in my ear and I give up.