Scream til you puke... or I dump water on you.

Nothing is ever easy. Just as Alex gets his 8 teeth, I start having fewer headaches, health news seems to be fairly positive, Ella decides not a be good sleeper.

I'm not sure what happened, but she started waking up in the middle of the night a couple of weeks ago. It was right around the time we learned about the tumors, etc... and we chalked it up to stress. She saw me crying once, spent some time at Laura's while we went to doctors' appointments, etc... This was not the norm.

Then my parents came into town for a long stretch, so that added to the problem, and her tonsils or sinuses are infected, so we had a 5 day antibiotic to top it all off. We hoped the weekend at Laura's house while mommy and daddy were away might put things back on track, but no such luck.

Last night, Ella screamed for more than an hour. I'm not talking about crying or calling for us, she SCREEEEEEAMED! So violently, that she started gagging. We tried the usual come in after 1o minutes, then 20 minutes, then 40 minutes. We tried using the "big girl rules" which work so well at nap time. She can play with her babies, talk, etc... as long as she lays down and goes to sleep. We even threatened, and made good on the threats. Her band-aid was taken away, babies were taken out of her bed, etc... She was hysterical! We could not calm her down. (Yes as the blog entry indicates, I dumped the remaining water in her cup over her head in an effort to get her attention. We've done cold showers before or a spritz of water from the kitchen sink when she's acting up and won't "get a grip." This was the closest water available, so I used it. But it didn't phase her. So much for that idea.)

She didn't have sugar, she had a good afternoon nap, etc... Is there some underlying problem we're not aware of? Are we parenting properly by consistently forcing her to stay in bed, when she wants to come to our room or have one of us lay down with her? Should we stay with her and calm her down or leave her in hysterics to cry herself to sleep?

This battle is making my physically sick. I can't stand to sit here and hear my child scream like this. She begs me to "lay down with me mommy!" She grabs my face and pulls it to hers. She pleads for us to let her come to our bed and "make my happy." She seems to want and need us so much more right now. And I want and need her. My first concern when we learned of the tumors was for my babies. They need me! We're so close! I just want to lie there with her and love her all night long.

But that's not the best answer for her in the long run as a successful sleeper, is it? I just hope we're handling this correctly by staying strong and making her stick to the normal bedtime routine.