No rest for the weary

I am not trying to be over dramatic in this post, I just really need to vent about the recent happenings with the Tobeman. To say that this past month has been exhausting would be a huge understatement. I have never coveted more all you who take your uninterrupted sleep for granted. Towards the beginning of October Toby started teething and thus was up ever two hours at night. Don't get me wrong, I feel bad for the little dude. I can only imagine how extremely painful it must be to have a sharp object protruding through sore, swollen gum's. But honestly, how long must this teething thing last?! Soon after his two bottom teeth came in, he caught a bad case of croup, a scary virus that causes the trachea to swell and make it hard to breathe. Poor guy. So then he was doubly miserable and up every hour and a half. Then as he recovered from the croup, he actually had one night where he slept 7 hours straight! Too bad Nick was also sick and kept me up with his coughing and snoring. "No matter" I thought, "I will just catch up on sleep the next night since Toby is obviously feeling better." No such luck. Every night after that his wakefulness got worse until we figured out that his top two teeth were working their way in. So currently Toby is up EVERY HOUR! Even now as I write I am paranoid about him waking up. But the worse part of it all is that sometimes when he wakes up (usually around 2 or 3 am when I am extremely exhausted) he will just be awake for a good hour and there is nothing I can do but hold him until he falls back asleep on his own. Oh but last night I discovered that if I sung to him, it helped him fall asleep faster. Hey do you have any idea how hard it is to sing at 3 in the morning when you have only gotten maybe 3 hours of broken sleep? Try it sometime, just for me. :) And some of you might be saying, "Debbie, you can just nap when he naps during the day!" Well Toby is the best cat napper of all time. His naps are hardly ever longer than 45 minutes. You would think though that all this nightwaking would make him more tired and extend his naps during the days time, thus letting me catch up on sleep. Wrong! By the time I close my eyes and start to drift off, he is wide awake, giving me his jackolantern grin, and making it so hard to be upset at such an adorable chubby face. And one more thing to vent about: the only time Nick can relieve me is basically on the weekends because he is gone from 6 am til 10 pm every weekday. *sigh* So needless to say when I talk to other mom's and they tell me how teething never affected their child's sleep or that even if it did, their spouse could help out at night so they could get some sleep, I am just a little bit bitter and envious. And if any of you have had a similar experience to mine (I have yet to find one person!) and found something that helped your child please feel free to share!! Right now I have pretty much resigned myself to just waiting it out until his teeth come in. Just so I don't get a bunch of tips that I have already tried, here is my list of failed soothers: Infant Motrin and Tylenol (not together, don't worry), teething tablets, sleeping next to Toby, giving him frozen wash cloths during the day, and rubbing Oragel on his gums.

Again, I am sorry if this came across as one whiny post, I just needed to get it out. I feel much better. Now I am going to attempt to get some sleep! Wish me luck!