Strike
We’re currently going through a delightful and exciting stage of development called “I’m 14 months old and I hate everything”. It main consists of Baby Evan hating things and making his hatred known in the loudest, screechiest, most ear-splitting way possible. Things Baby Evan currently hates include:
1. Diapers
2. Getting dressed
3. Being told not to hit people
4. Being told not to throw things
5. The floor
6. Sleep
7. The cat
8. Shoes
9. Hats
10. Sunscreen
11. Water, especially the river, especially people going swimming in the river
12. Children
13. Any food besides the one specific kind he wants at that exact moment but has no clear way of communicating what that one specific food is
14. The world “no”
15. EVERYTHING ELSE
I think I could deal (if not exactly patiently and lovingly) most of the time if we could get back to the happy place where Baby Evan sleeps 7pm-7am with one early morning feeding. I’m not even asking for him to sleep through the night. I just need him to get more than 8 hours – for EVERYONE’s sanity. For the last week we’ve done our normal bedtime routine at 7:30 or 8:00 pm and then fought a screaming child for close to an hour before giving up and letting him come back downstairs to empty the cabinets and torture the dog for another hour until the face-rubbing and whining reach epic proportions. We considered having him asleep by 9:30 on Sunday night a victory…only to have him wake up for the day at 4:45 am. Last night was another “victory” where he only whined for a few minutes before passing out and AGAIN was up at an ungodly hour.
E and I are understandably exhausted, not just from our own lack of sleep but from the mental strain of a crying, unhappy child we cannot seem to comfort. We spend hours every evening having the same discussions over and over: Do you think he’s teething? He must be teething. One year molars you know. Do you think he’s hungry? What else can we feed him? He must be too tired to sleep, poor thing. Should we just bring him downstairs? I know we don’t want to but what else can we do? It’s probably his teeth. I’m clinging to the hope that it’s just a phase, a temporary setback before he goes back to the good sleeper (relatively speaking) we’ve had for the last 6 months. Either that or I’m selling him to gypsies. Do they still take babies?
The only other possibility – although it sounds sort of crazy to me – is maybe he’s having nightmares or bad dreams or terrors. I don’t know if that’s the sort of developmental milestone a baby grows into around the 1 year mark and I have no idea what to do about it. What does a 14 month old even have nightmares about? A sudden peanut butter shortage? Losing his last sippy cup? The passage of federal legislation making shoes mandatory at all times? Whatever it might be, my only hope right now is to fill his life with so many happy thoughts and new experiences he forgets all about it. Maybe there’s a circus I can take him to. That sounds exciting. And also like a good place to find some gypsies.
Tags: 14 months, baby evan, challenges, development, milestones, sleep
Sounds like teething to me too – Maybe it’s too soon for this to be relevant, but my little brother used to have literal growing pains as he started to hit a growth spurt, so maybe Baby E’s physical discomfort is clouding his usually sunshiney personality.
Worse comes to worst, I’d check out back of the elephant trailer for available gypsy interventionists.
I have know idea but let me know how it goes for my own future benefit…
UGH! I hope you get through this as fast and painless as possible! We had a rough bout of early morning wake ups around the 14 month mark if i remember correctly. The molars are killer. Hopefully they come quick if that’s what it is. Tylenol? Motrin?
My daughter went through something similar around 10 months (3 months ago). I think it had to do with teething as she got her top front 2 a few weeks after. Let me know if you find a solution as I am not looking forward to molars…or canines.
Niko’s popping his premolars. He’s got one (and holy GOD it is enormous, like a giant boulder perched in his gum) and is working on the second lower one and sometimes the poor guy just grabs his face and cries. So, yeah, it took him about two weeks to really work the one tooth through the gum, and he was in a decent amount of discomfort for that. Tylenol really helped.
He’s also going through a stage where he wakes up or just plain doesn’t want to go down to sleep until somebody’s walked him through the house and shown him that nobody is having any fun without him. See, we might have guests! Or be eating food! Or generally having fun! AND NOT INCLUDING HIM!!! Wouldn’t that be the worst thing ever? So we show him that nobody’s having fun, and we drug him up, and then he usually goes back down to sleep.
So, start drugging your child and stop throwing wild parties and he should sleep much better. Alternately, babies were weird jerk ass creatures who like to fuck with you and you might not get a solid night’s sleep until all your kids have moved out.
Rory went through something similar a few weeks ago. i am convinced that she was having nightmares. she would wake up screaming and would be inconsolible for 1-2 hours at a time in the middle of the night. it lasted about a week or so. i tried to at least get her some good naps and also tried putting her to bed earlier to try and catch up on some sleep. i tried EVERYTHING, and nothing really helped. i think she just had to work through it.
Oh you poor dear. It must be teething. Molar are hell on wheels I hear. My friends bub got her molars FIRST. Can you imagine?
Ivy does the face rubbing thing too when she’s overtired. When she’s teething and tired and face rubbing she also purses her lips and goes brrrrrrrrrp really loudly. It’s kinda hilarious till the screaming starts too.
Fact: Noggin/Nick Jr. shows Gullah Gullah Island at 4:00 and 4:30 am.
I am not suggesting you let an abomination of southern culture raise your child while you pass out on the couch but…