Back on Track

As I have mentioned in a previous post, Ella came down with three colds in a row starting the middle of November.  This ruined our wonderful, nighttime routine that we had worked so hard to establish due to the fact that Ella could no longer just take her pacifier in the middle of the night because she was too stuffed up to suck on it and breathe at the same time.  As a result, she would immediately start crying and would need to either be rocked back to sleep or nursed to sleep each time this happened which could be many times a night.  This made for several rough weeks for me over the holiday season as I would be exhausted every morning and would refuse to take an afternoon nap while the two "babies" were napping because I had so many items to check off of that Thanksgiving and Christmas to-do list.  Since I am the type of person that needs some decent sleep each night, it was pretty brutal.  And by the time we had gotten Ella finished with her third cold and finally healthy by Christmas, we had created a baby that now needed to be rocked or nursed back to sleep EVERY single time she work up in the middle of the night.  Argh.  This same thing happened to Logan during the fall that he was the same age as Ella...so although this was familiar territory to us, it was not one that I wanted to go back to because it meant that we needed to have Ella "cry it out" for a few nights to break this nasty habit.  This was also another reason why we opted to stay home from Priest Lake so that we could take care of this before Ron had to go back to work.
And, so last Sunday, we took a deep breath and put Ella to bed, bracing ourselves for a rough night.  And it sure was.  She woke up around 2 a.m. and after refusing to take the pacifier from both Ron and me, we shut her door and let her cry.  And it lasted for 1 hour and 40 minutes.  It was awful.  We stayed awake the entire time listening to her and watching her on the video monitor.  But then she finally stopped crying and fell back asleep and slept until the morning.  Feeyooh.  As was the case with Logan, the next night wasn't as bad because Ella only cried for a little under an hour.  I was so exhausted from so many bad night's sleep and the Christmas season that I actually fell back asleep during this hour which is unheard of for me.  And then a miracle happened.  Ella went back to her normal sleeping routine the very next night.  Yes, that's right.  She started taking the pacifier and going back to sleep without a peep every single time she woke up from that point on.  I couldn't believe it as Logan took a good week to get to this point.  I was so relieved.  And so a week later, I am happy to report that Ella is back on track and I am finally sleeping well for the first time in almost two months.  Hallelujah.  There's just one catch...I just came down with another cold and Ella's nose started running today.  Oh dear.  Here we go again.