Adjustment

Well, Monday sucked. There was no question that it would though, was there?

Nora, my perfect little sleeper, decided to throw a wrench in things on Sunday night and was wide awake between 3-5 a.m. Of course she would choose the night before I have to go back to work to do that, right? She must’ve known something was going on, the little stinker. Then the time came to get up and get it over with, and I cried all the way to daycare, dropped her off, then cried all the way to work. The waterworks continued a few times at work, too, but overall, I wasn’t as big of a mess as I thought I’d be.

My coworkers kept me pretty busy and plus, I have to admit I felt a certain level of liberation. I’d find myself thinking, “Wow! I can pee by myself!” and “Nice! It doesn’t take me three hours to write a simple e-mail!” But I did miss my girl like crazy.

On Tuesday and today, things were easier. Drop-off hasn’t been nearly as painful, and I’ve only called our sitter once per day instead of the three times I called her on Monday. The only thing that has really been bothering me is the lack of time with Nora. When we get her up (or she wakes up) in the morning, we only really have a half an hour or so before we have to leave the house, and of course, we’re running around doing everything we need to do to get out the door. Then, when I pick her up, we don’t get home until 5:30, and then we’ve had to start bedtime routine at 6:45. So it’s just NOT.ENOUGH.TIME. I miss her so much, and it’s only been three days. The weekend cannot come fast enough.

Daycare itself has been going pretty well, I think. The sitter reports that Nora is happy, alert, and drains her bottles. She apparently loves watching the other kids and observing everything around her. And the kids (all girls, coincidentally) LOVE having Nora around and dote on her. So it’s a good situation and I think it’ll be great for her long-term.

My only complaint? Nora is not napping.

When she was home with me, Nora would usually only go an hour to an hour and a half of awake time before she would need to take a nap. I would recognize her “tired signs” early, and could typically get her down for a nap without issue. Recently, naps had become pretty short–maybe 45 minutes to an hour–but she was taking them pretty frequently throughout the day so she was still spending a good amount of the daytime hours napping.

Now, at daycare, Nora is apparently only sleeping for a couple of hours total. Today, our sitter said that she slept for an hour and a half this morning, then an hour in the afternoon. When I picked her up, it was clear she was totally exhausted. On Monday and Tuesday, she fell asleep on the car ride home, but tonight she screamed. That should’ve been my first indication that things were going to be rough.

Last night, I initially got her down for bed around her normal time (7:30), but then she spent an hour and a half waking up every five minutes and fighting going back to sleep. It was aggravating, but once she was finally down (at 9:00), she was down.

Tonight, she was so clearly exhausted that I started bedtime early, and I had her in her bed by a little after 7:00. Two and a half hours later, we were still battling with her to get her to go to sleep and stay that way. It’s 10:00 now and it’s been a bit since we’ve heard from her, but I’m not entirely convinced that we won’t again. IT IS BRUTAL.

I think the issue is that with each passing day, she’s missing out on more sleep, never catching up on what she missed the day before. So she’s becoming more and more overtired as the week wears on. I did some quick Googling and found some advice that says to try to make up for their lack of naps at bedtime. In other words, I’m going to have to try to put her to bed as soon as we get home. :( That rips my heart out, because I feel like I already get so little time with her–now I have to put her to bed at 6:00??

I hope she will start to nap better at the sitter’s ASAP! The hard part is I feel like I have no control over the situation because I’m not the one who is with her during the day. *sigh* But hopefully this is just a period of adjustment, and this too shall pass.

In the meantime, I am really, really missing my girl.