sicky baby

Last Thursday night, G's nighttime sleep just went haywire. He went from waking up once, maybe twice, to waking up every hour (if we were lucky). And it's been that way ever since. Last night he woke up every two hours and we felt so well rested.

Often a quick paci replace would get him to go back to sleep. But sometimes he wake up and take 30 minutes of rocking to go back to sleep. Or we'd have to put him downstairs in the swing. We have to get up at 5 so I can get ready for work, but we haven't had to use our alarm clock because he doesn't sleep past 4:30. Seriously ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. And 4:30 is actually good because he could be wide away at 3:30 and take an hour to go back down. The poor hubs handles all of the night wakings in case the sight and sound of me causes G to want to eat. If he's tired and I'm holding him, he goes ballistic trying to nurse. But anything G's up, we're both up.

It's certainly enough to make you reconsider having anymore children in the future. A reminder of that lovely newborn sleep.

Of course, we kept checking and checking his gums. Didn't see anything for a while. At almost eight months old, G is still toothless. After the first couple of nights, we started giving Tylenol. We had lowered the temperature in the house at night to account for a super high heating bill last month, so we bought him a fleece sleepsack in case he was getting chilly. These things maybe bought us the waking up every two hours that we got last night.

Also, he's rolling onto his tummy in his sleep. Over and over. He hates being on his tummy, so of course once he pops out of deeper sleep, he has a hissy fit about it. He knows how to roll onto his back from his tummy, but there's not enough room in his crib for all that rolling. You'd think he'd stop doing it since it pisses him off so much but nooo.

Along with the bad night sleep, G has exhibited other odd behavior. The worse is the random crankiness. We call him the "hot and cold baby." He'll be sitting and playing happily by himself one moment, then shrieking and making cry faces at you the next. He'll freak if you left the room to get a glass of water. He's learned how to push things away, so if you'll hold him and he decides to crank, he'll plant a little clawed hand against your face and shove. He doesn't want to drink from a bottle much, which is a problem on the mornings when I'm at work for over four hours.

On top of all of that, he developed a rash yesterday morning. It's now across almost all of his body, all of these tiny raised red bumps.

Since he didn't seem to be getting much better, we took him to the pedi today. She checked out the rash, said it didn't seem to be a contact rash like last time but rather a rash caused by a virus. A throat swab ruled out strep, so we're supposed to just keep an eye out for fever and worsening symptoms. Should go away.

She also did a thorough examination of his mouth and confirmed that he does indeed seem to be moving toward cutting his first teeth. Both of the bottom ones seem to be on the move. Yay for toothies!

I feel bad that my little one is in so much discomfort, but I'm glad that at least there seems to be (several) reasons for the nightwakings. I didn't like the idea of doing any heavy sleep training. G has always slid toward great sleep on his own, with us just aiding him and tweaking our methods as we go. It all seemed to be unraveling, but at least there's some hope that things will return to normal once the virus is gone and these first two teeth are out...

At least until the next teeth come along. Or he decides to start sitting up or standing in his crib in his sleep.

Sigh. There are people who have more than one kid! How do they ever get to the place where they look at each other and think, "Gee, I want to do it all over again"?