judecorp | End of my rope

I don't know what to do.

Punk has never been a good sleeper but she has always gone down fairly easily with the occasional exception. Yes, she will wake up a number of times through the night but she could always be counted on to go to bed at bedtime and stay asleep for a while so things like dinner and chores could happen.

Not so anymore. Now she is absolutely refusing to go to sleep. If I do any of the usual things I would do to parent her to sleep (swaddle, rock, cuddle), she freaks out and squirms and yells and cries and only wants to do one thing: stand on my lap on the rocking chair so that she can try to grab things or look at things. If I put her down on the floor, she howls. If I put her in the crib and say night-night, she howls. If I walk out of the room, she will howl for as long as two hours.

The last couple of days, the only thing that will get her calm enough to sleep is if I give her milk in a bottle. We have not done milk in a bottle at bedtime for quite a while now and I /really/ don't want to backtrack, but the last couple of days I have not had an option. I work 9.5-10 hour days and I don't have the stamina to listen to hours of crying and I also do not want to be a jungle gym for hours for an exhausted baby who does not want to go to sleep.

I am so frustrated and spent. I really feel like whenever I think it can't get any worse, it does. Also, I feel like a major failure as a mama. I am just at the end of my rope.