Well, It Had To Happen Sooner or Later....

Rubbish, rubbish night.

I think The Baby is teething. I have thought this many, many times since she was about 8 weeks old. At Christmas, I could have sworn I saw the very tippiest tip of a tooth poking through, but it must have gone back in or something, because she is still toothless. However, it might be the Real Thing this time. This is a reasonable assumption to make, I think, after she practically cooked a peace of melon last night just with the heat of her gums. And after a day of extreme grumpiness (she whinged all the way through my friend's daughter's 1st birthday party), we suspected we were in for a rough night.

As I've probably said before, I have been extraordinarily lucky in that The Baby has always been very good at sleeping at night. Therefore, when she doesn't sleep, it kind of takes me by surprise. Like last night. Ugh. I have renewed admiration for those (like my mother) who had or have babies that are up screaming all night every night. These women are saints and goddesses.

Anyway, I am very attached to our bedtime routine, mainly because it seems to work and I usually get a not bad night's kip. She has her bottle, and gets put to bed with her dummy in and her mobile on, and that's it. SHE DOES NOT GET UP AGAIN AT ALL (except for big poos and fire alarms). However, even I am not so heartless a mammy as to leave a baby to scream while she is poorly. Besides, it would have done no good, as the more she screamed, the more awake she got. So there followed 4 hours of rocking, cuddling, stroking, shushing and singing to a screaming baby. Not fun. (It didn't even occur to us to check if she was hungry until 11pm. She was. But kept screaming anyway) Whenever she stopped screaming, she decided it was time to play, and play a new game of her own invention which mainly involved hitting us very hard in the chest. I finally got her to sleep by giving her a very tight cuddle, which took me a very long time to extricate myself from. When she was lying peacefully asleep in the middle of our bed, the decision was taken to move her back to her own cot. Fail. Restart whole process.

Grumpy tired Baby and grumpy tired Mammy today (probably grumpy tired Daddy too, but he's at work so that's his colleagues' problem) She'd better get a tooth at the end of this.