Gotcha!

A few weeks ago I got a Baby Center weekly update on the status of Ian. It told me that as a nine-month-old he would not necessarily do well with travel and would need lots of down time. Cue the whirlwind of taking the baby to three conferences in two weeks. He went up to Oswego to hang out with librarians for a few days then flew over to Manhattan to cavort with his toddler cousins and 2000 bloggers at BlogHer. And this week we went up to DC for an archivist conference and our company outing of a Nationals baseball game. He's been a trooper through all of this but not without a few hiccups.

Yesterday, because of various circumstances, Ian only had two twenty minute naps all day. I tried nursing him and rocking him to sleep at the baseball game in an empty party suite but there was still too much going on. He went to sleep at 10:30 that night.

And woke up screaming at 11:55pm, 12:05am, 2am, 2:30am, 3:45am, 3:50am, 6am and 6:30am before actually getting up for the day at 7:30am.

I use the term "woke up" but that's not quite accurate. He would get all stiff-armed and flail around the bed crying like you'd stabbed him, but not actually be awake. He would settle back down within a few minutes each time, sometimes after walking around with him, but each time Rich and I both were ripped out of sleep to "OMG THE BABY IS CRYING WHAT'S WRONG HOLY SHIT MAKE IT STOP". Repeat each hour or so. One of my Google searches at 4am called them night terrors and I can see how they get the name because I can attest to waking up pretty terrified the first few times he did it. Ian, of course, wakes up perky and cheerful the next morning.

My father tells this joke about a pair of golfers betting on a game but one getting "two gotchas". And much like that golfer waiting for the second gotcha, each time I fell back asleep I was just waiting for the next panicked scream to wake me up.

This week should be pretty low key for him and I'm hoping the return of routine will help him out of this screaming night terror phase. I can feel myself getting threadbare from this last week of sporadic sleep.

When he's not screaming, he is pretty adorable when he sleeps.