Exhausted

I don't know why I do this to myself. Why do I have to take a happily sleeping baby and put myself through many nights of sheer misery? 

We have a bit of a vicious cycle going on here. Leni "likes" to be swaddled. Actually, she fights me while I swaddle her, but she sleeps wonderfully this way. When she wakes in the middle of the night to find her soother gone, she calls out to us and, like zombies, we get out of bed and pop the soother back in. 

With her teething and all (still no teeth), she has been sleeping more restlessly and seems to wake up more at night, which means she calls out more and more needing her soother back in. 

I, for one, want to take the darn thing away as I did with Gemma at this age. Leni minus soother minus swaddle but sleeping as well as she does = perfect. 

Well, first thing first, we decided to stop swaddling her. And I'm one of those folks where if I start something, gosh darn it, I would like to finish it. I started the unswaddling and the goal is not to give in and swaddle her for a decent nights' sleep. 

With her arms out, she is losing her soother more often because she rubs her face or whatever and she just keeps knocking it out. I sock her hands because we keep the house cold at night and i don't want her hands to freeze and I don't like to see her in the morning with new scratches on her face even though I trim her nails religiously. 

Last night was awful. Actually, this was night #2 and both nights were awful. The first night, we went in still to pop the soother back in - the goal being we wanted her to get used to sleeping unswaddled. Last night, I let her cry for longer because I wanted her to just go to sleep without us popping the dang soother back in. It's a bit annoying to keep hearing "can I go in there?" a million times throughout the night because SOMEONE can't handle a little crying.... anyways, this morning I've made up my mind to take the soother away too. All in one shot. I know Leni is a much slower adjuster than Gemma, so this may prove to be quite difficult. With Gemma, it was surprisingly easy. Actually, I almost don't think Leni will ever fall asleep without the soother, no matter how long I let her cry. A big difference from the first few weeks of her life when she couldn't figure out what to do with it and I kept forcing her to take it. Backfired! 

Anyways, wish me luck. If I never post on here again, it's probably because I ran away.