I'll Take My Coffee Intravenously, Please

Oooh, Gerry.  I love this boy, but he is slowly, slowly draining the life out of me.

For the past week and a half or so, nighttime has been a nightmare.  His normal bedtime is between 7 and 7:30pm, but he's been freaking out when we put him down.  I'm a total wuss when it comes to my kids crying at bedtime, so I always just bring him back downstairs with me for a bit.  This past week, I haven't even attempted to put him to bed before 8pm, and it's still a battle. 

Gerry used to just take a bottle and go right to sleep with no problem.  He was always my good sleeper and I used to brag about how awesome he was with it {especially after surviving Bailey's nighttime battles}.  Not so much anymore!  Instead of just rolling over, clutching his stuffed bear, and drifting off to sleep like he's always done, Gerry has started fighting the whole process big time.  We always say, "Alright, Gerry, time to go night-night!  Say night-night to Bailey!"  And then she and Scott tell him goodnight and give him kisses and up the stairs he and I go.  And he's perfectly fine and happy...until I go to lay him down in his crib.  At this point, he just starts whining, which leads to crying, which leads to full-on screaming if I don't pick him up again.  And he really lays the guilt trip on thick these days, too, standing up in his crib with his arms held out to me and whining, "Mom-my...mom-myyyy".  How can I just turn away from that?

So I do what most "experts" would say is a big no-no and I pick him up out of the crib. 

I hold him close and whisper in his ear that it's bedtime and time to go to sleep.  I walk around his room with him in my arms, and if he's crying I sing "Hush Little Baby, Don't Say a Word" {and make shit up, because who really knows all the words to that song?} because he calms down as soon as he hears it.  And then, when he's calm and I think he's ready to lay down, I gently lower him into his crib.  And he rolls over and stands up and starts screaming again.  Rinse and repeat.  And then when he finally does go to sleep, it's only a matter of hours before he wakes up screaming again.  My formerly awesome sleeper is no longer sleeping through the night.  Like, at all.  Last night it took us until 9pm before he actually went to sleep, and he woke up twice.  The night before that he was up four times. 

I hate not knowing why he's crying.  I've tried giving him Tylenol in case his teeth were hurting {he did sprout a couple more teeth this week}, I tried extra talking and snuggles before putting him to bed, we've tried rough-housing and running around in an effort to tire him out before bedtime.  Hell, yesterday I changed his clean sheets just in case they were the problem.  The "bedtime battle" still ensued.

I can't bring myself to just let him cry.  He's 14 months old and I know he's old enough to be sleeping through the night and yada, yada, yada...but I can't do it.  I've always believed that, no matter how old they are, if your kid is crying in the middle of the night, there is a reason.  He might be crying about something as silly and simple as the fact that he's just missing mommy and daddy, or something more serious like pain or a fever.  But I really do feel that {for me, personally} a kid's cries during the night shouldn't go ignored.

So, I haven't been sleeping much these last couple weeks.  And I'm exhausted.    I know this is "just a phase" and in a few more weeks he'll be back to sleeping just fine and these last few sleepless weeks will just be a distant memory.  But in the meantime...man, does it suck.