girls' night with elenora

last night i tried to have girls' night with k. as we always used to on thursday to watch The Office.

ella had other ideas.

she was awake and pleasant for a couple of hours. nursed twice, and then started to get fussy. which is the cue to me that she is tired and needs less stimulation and some rocking in order to get her to sleep.

but for some reason last night she wouldn't go to sleep. i rocked her, i sang, i walked up and down the room, i said soothing words, i tried the pacifier.

ella just screamed. every time she seemed to be drifting off to sleep she would suddenly wake up and start screaming again.

it breaks my heart when she turns all red and cries so hard that she starts to cough.

so i spent an hour and a half trying to calm elenora while k. just sat on the couch by herself eating ice cream and watching tv. k. finally left with me in tears with a crying baby in my arms.

this is my life now. it makes me wonder if i will ever have normal evenings again. will i ever be able to hang out with friends? will i ever be able to go out to dinner? will j. and i have a date again? should we cancel our netflix subscription because we haven't been able to watch a half hour tv show let alone a movie in the last month?

this morning ella and i had such good bonding, alert time. i told her about so many things and we did exercises with her arms and legs and sang songs. she likes to lie on my chest and she picks her head up and turns it really well already. she looks around and wants to know about everything.

i don't know if i overstimulated her and then she couldn't process it all, but then she took another three hours to get herself to sleep. same as last night--she'd almost drift off and then she'd wake up just screaming.

dr. sears says that babies use the really light sleep time to process things and to grow their brains. maybe ella is just getting a lot of the light sleep and won't fall into the deep sleep too quickly because there's too much to process??? i have no idea.

i just wish i could soothe her.

poor j. seems to always catch me when i'm at a breaking point. he came home at lunch time today and i was in tears. last night when he got home i had finally gotten elenora to bed, but i was crying. i know j. is stressed out and worried that i'm going through postpartum or something. i don't think i have postpartum depression, but there are moments when i really feel very much like a failure.

i was raised to be a perfectionist and to get things right. i think that makes me a lot harder on myself than i should be.