Oh what a night.

It started out OK when we put Munchkin to bed around 8pm, which is a little later than usual but not by much. She went down easy because she had missed her afternoon nap. I went to bed shortly thereafter and life was good.

I was in the middle of a nice dream about Derek Hough when it happened. The beast awoke.

Around 10:30 I heard her screaming and could hear CJ in there consoling her. She would calm down for a few minutes and then start screaming again. This went on. And on. And on. I finally got up at 11:30 to see if I could help. Hubby desperately handed her off to me. I could see he was frazzled and had that crazed look in his eye that said “if you don’t help me now I may literally go crazy.” He had fed her and given her some Tylenol. Now it was time to work my “mom magic”.

I changed her diaper and then we snuggled in the rocker. Only, she didn’t want to snuggle, she wanted to scream bloody murder. She didn’t have a fever and she wasn’t pulling on her ear or anything. I was baffled.

I finally got her to calm down and snooze. Then she woke up and screamed. Then she’d snooze. Then she’d scream. Again, this went on. And on.

We finally decided we just needed to let her cry it out. So at the next screaming fit, we let her cry. And boy did she cry. After 5 minutes, I went in to tell her it was OK and then left. And she cried. And cried. I finally decided “screw it!” and was going to take her out on the couch with me and try to sleep with her. As soon as I picked her up, she was stopped crying. We went to the living room (by this time it’s after midnight) and cuddled on the couch. She snuggled up to me and then when I tried to put the blanket over her, she freaked out again.

I’m running out of ideas so I grab another bottle and she sucked down 6 more ounces. I thought maybe this was the answer to my prayers and she’d drift off to sleep now so I placed her back in the crib and crept out. She was quiet for 5 blissful minutes and then it started up again.

Out of desperation I called the 24 hour nurse help line. They asked me a checklist of questions, all of which were things I had done, and her answer was to take Munchkin to the ER.  Gak!

I thought I would see how the next few minutes went and then make that determination. She woke up once more and then finally conked out at 1 am.  I got to sleep about 1:30 and slept til 6:45.

I still don’t know what was wrong with her. Maybe she was overly tired and got herself so worked up that she couldn’t calm down. Maybe she wasn’t feeling well. Maybe she was possessed by a demon. Who knows. All I do know is that today I feel like a zombie. Guess I’ll be starting Halloween early!