crying it out

In about a week, H will be a year old and it will mark one year of no sleep for Alex and I. H just doesn't sleep. She takes a nap no problem, then she goes down for the night, also, no problem and then about 2-3 hours later she wakes up for the first time in what will be an all night fiesta of waking and crying/waking and playing/waking and talking to herself/waking and trying to scale the side of her crib. Her latest thing is to wake up around midnight and remain awake despite all of our best efforts for about 3 hours. We've read every book and tried the cry-it-out method and the modified cry-it-out method and what little, extremely hard-won success we've had with those methods has been so easily reversed by a simple cold or a trip to Massachusetts or a change in the weather, etc. We've tried co-sleeping, but H thinks our bed is an amusement park, plus she kicks like crazy. We've thrown our hands in the air and given up about as many times as we have crawled out of bed in a zombie-like state vowing to try again.

We have a one bedroom apartment and it is becoming increasingly clear that all the advice we've read in books or online or received from other parents is meant for people whose baby does NOT sleep in the same room with them. Honestly, try to ignore a screaming baby that is about five feet away from you in the same room. It's not easy. Our pediatrician recommended ear plugs and wine. We tried this too, but they just don't make ear plugs effective enough to block out the screaming child in the room. Then she started pulling herself up and reaching her arms out in our direction and there is definitely not a wine (or any booze) that can dull that image. Maybe she meant ear plugs and wine for the baby? We've tried sleeping in the living room, which kind of works, but the moment we move back into the bedroom it starts all over again.

I envy parents whose babies sleep through the night and to keep myself from feeling like a miserable parent I rationalize that they must all have two bedrooms. They have a door they can shut or a whole seperate room to retreat to. They live in castle's these night sleeping babies. Someone once asked us if we had a baby monitor (one of those, like, baby walkie talkie thingees so you can hear if your child is crying when you aren't in the room) and this cracks us up. We ARE the baby monitor. There is no spot in our apartment where the baby can not be heard.

Last night, during, perhaps H's third time waking up, Alex asked me "can you die from sleep deprivation?" I don't know if you can or can't (I doubt it), but these are the sorts of morbid conversations we find ourselves having, mostly at 3 or 4 in the morning. I don't make resolutions, generally, but I do entertain hopes and one of those hopes for this new year would be to sleep, not through the night (I'm realistic), but just enough to not spend most of my time thinking about how little I sleep.