scared of the dark

It would make a lot of sense if this post was about Eden and a little girl's fears of the dark, but it's not.

At 11 weeks old, Lydia had started to sleep through the night pretty consistently, skipping her 2am feeding and sleeping to 4 or 5 or even close to 6 a.m. It seemed these long stretches of sleep were more common when she had a really fussy, screaming evening preceding.

You would think these longer stretches of sleep would have been good for me. For the most part, they were. The only problem was that when I woke more rested at 4 or 5 in the morning to nurse Lydia and she was quieter and going back to sleep easier, it gave me time to think. Instead of having a fierce focus on getting Lydia to not cry and focusing everything on getting her back to sleep, I was actually more awake and thinking. And, then I started to get scared.

It started to feel like I was the only person in the world awake, and fear took over ... I got scared that I won't be able to handle the semester, that I'll break down when Eden melts down when I go back to work, that I'll never live in the same city as family again ... ... ... Yeah, at 5 in the morning when it's dark outside and I'm alone and awake, I start to get scared and go overboard with worry.

But, once the sun came out and I actually talked about these fears to a few people, they didn't seem as scary. Isn't there some children's book about night time fears not being scary in the daylight?

The day after I really said these things out loud, Miss Lydia slept in until 6:45, and the sun was up when I woke. For the past week, she's been waking at 2 or so to nurse. Guess little bit is trying different strategies to help me out.

- ashley