One thing I've learned over the past almost-year (oh sweet Pete, she's going to be 1 in a couple of weeks!) is that no matter how many times you say "I'm not going to do X", life's not that simple. Babies don't read the book.
Last night, Squeaky went to bed beautifully, asleep in 20 minutes, snuffling peacefully to herself. So I went in the shower. That was my mistake. She knows when I'm out of circulation for a few minutes, and so she started crying. No, not crying, screaming & howling, like she was in pain. SqueakyDaddy went up to her to try and settle her, to no avail. Calpol, Bonjela, no change. We brought her downstairs, by which point her diaphragm is in spasm &she's gasping (I won't call it hiccuping, but it's not a million miles removed), and still howling. I got half a wrap of Teetha into her, the rest went down her front, and the chamomile seemed to settle her a little bit, and she went from howls of pain to "normal" angry & tired crying. Still with no intention of settling down.
So I gave in. Bear in mind at this point, I've been in the shower, and so I'm in my pyjamas. Unzipped the bottom of her growbag (Ikea, I love you right now), stuck her in the car seat, grabbed a cardigan so I didn't look completely weird, and off we go for a drive. Half a minute after setting off, she's dropped off. A nice 20 minute ride round the bypass to make sure she was actually asleep & not just pretending, and back home. Left her a few minutes in the car seat when we got back in the house (yes, she still uses her infant carrier, she's too weeny for the next car seats yet), and then to bed.
Blissfully, she only woke once after that, about half 3, so we got a decent night's sleep once we'd all calmed down. But I swore I wasn't going to drive round with her to send her to sleep, I'm too worried about it becoming habit, that she won't sleep without a tour of Merthyr & the soothing tones of whoever was on Radio 4 at 10 last night. But needs must, and if I hadn't, she'd probably still be howling now.
She's fine this morning, you wouldn't know any difference. And we're not so bad, because she let us sleep most of the night. But ARGH! I'm so cross with myself for giving in to the driving around til she falls asleep tactic.
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