Tired Enough

Gosh, I had apparently gotten pretty good at getting a tired baby who didn't want to sleep yet to go to sleep.  Not to fall asleep, but to go to sleep when she didn't want to.  It is painfully obvious now that she hadn't been ready to fall asleep when I thought she was.  This for weeks.  She would to go sleep so easily, and it slowly got harder and harder to get her to nap.  It would take nursing in combination with standing, rocking, singing, white noise, and patting most days.  I know!  Sure, she was cranky and seemed like she was sleepy.  But, she wasn't ready to sleep.  These past few days, since we dropped a nap, she's been sooooo tired that she's passed right out.  And, she is staying asleep a little longer.  There were weeks where we could have spent extra time playing.  There is this fine line between not tired enough and too tired.  We had an overtired baby a few months ago, and now we have a baby that's not tired enough.  I can fix that.  We can go on a walk.  We can go to the store.  We can sit on the porch.  We can have a dance party.  We can play in the jumper.  We can go crazy.

We'll see. One of the hallmarks of a high need baby is the feeling that we're geniuses when we figure out something that works (after weeks of being at our wits end), only a few days or a week later have her figure us out and it stop working.  I am not counting on this being the end-all-be-all, but I do certainly feel like we missed a boat somewhere.