Trust your gut

After a week of absolutely awful nights, with Silas waking up 6-10 times, mostly crying (this is quite unusual), I became quite desperately sleep deprived again.  On Friday I hadn't slept past 4:00 AM, or for more than 90 minutes in a row, in a week.  I was a mess, and I had a hypoglycemic crash right about the time I realized I'd completely forgotten to eat all day.

I've been playing mental games with myself.  How to handle a hard week like this?  How do I frame it?  It's just a phase?  It's just what babies do?  It's just something to cope with until it passes?  Or should I put my problem solver hat on and try to fix it?  Should I call the pediatrician?  Google endless lists of symptoms?  Is it my fault he's waking somehow?  Have I been inconsistent or confusing with him?  Is he just the sort of baby who won't sleep until he's 3?

In the end, on Friday afternoon, sitting next to Silas on the floor, finally eating a snack and trying to collect myself, I decided to go with my gut.  He was waking up crying, and couldn't fall asleep for naps.  He wasn't just crying for no reason; he was hurting.  I strongly suspected his teeth - he's been drooling like a fountain for 2 weeks and chewing rather violently on anything he can reach for at least a week, teething toys included.  (I also think I may be able to see his lower incisors erupting, but I'm not totally certain.)  I decided to give him a dose of infant acetaminophen.

A few hours later we had a much, much more relaxed baby.  He was calmer, smilier, and he went to sleep easily.  And even better, he slept well during the night!  He only woke up 3 times, nursed, and went straight back to sleep.  There was no crying at all.  Such a dramatic improvement.

This is the second time that we have been through a stretch of horrible sleep, and after a week of trying to just accept that this is what some babies do, we've realized that actually, Silas was in pain, and we've been able to treat him appropriately (the first time it was his itchy skin and nose).  To have this happen a second time is really humbling.  I wish I'd been more proactive, and more willing to "believe" his crying as a sign of pain - he cried more this week than any other time in his life, including his first few days.  In my defense, he was still so incredibly charming much of the time that I was put off the scent of the real problem...  But he was communicating with us, and we were so busy trying to accept his terrible sleep and fussiness as normal baby behavior that we weren't listening.

I wish I could come up with a good moral to this story, but I actually think that trying to draw any firm conclusions, or trying to formulate some kind of plan along the lines of "whenever he cries, do this", will just predispose me to misunderstanding what he's telling me again.  So I'm just trying to listen to him with a clear mind, without too much mental baggage in the way.