Somethings gotta give...

I can't let my baby cry all night. My baby can't let me sleep all night. Rock, meet hard place. :(

Allow me to start from the beginning... once upon a time, Addison was 6 weeks old and kind enough to start sleeping through the night (I'm talking 9pm to 6am... not too shabby!). Derek and I got very (VERY) used to our sleep routine and thought that we had skated through one of the most dreaded aspects of parenthood - zombie, caffeine-craving, sleep deprived parenthood.

It seems that Addison caught wind of our contentedness (is that even a word? And I call myself an English teacher) and decided to mix it up a bit. A few weeks ago (just before we moved her into her own room) she started waking up at night and grunting and groaning until someone fetched her bink and plopped it back in her mouth. That's fine with me once or twice a night, I mean, I couldn't hold something in my mouth all night and she lacks the hand-eye coordination required to get it back in so I'm willing to be a good mommy and help her out. The problem is, now she's requesting our presence at her crib every 30 - 45 minutes. NOT COOL DAUGHTER!! We're quick to get up and give it back so we can all get back to sleep but after the debacle that was last night - somethings gotta give.

So, what do we do now? Sleep training? Not a fan of the idea, to be honest. I don't want to spoil my daughter but I also don't want her laying in her room crying for her parents and being ignored (yes, I understand that is NOT the premises for Ferberizing but it's my take on it). The problem isn't putting her down at night - that's the easy part. She gets her bottle, enjoys a bath, gets all cleaned up, and then rocks in the chair with me until she's relaxed (but usually not asleep). I put her in her bed, tuck her in, say goodnight, and leave while she's still awake. She usually konks out in a few minutes and we're good to go. For a while. She starts grumbling and grunting around midnight and thus begins the bink game. At it's best, it's once or twice a night. At it's worst we're talking EVERY. THIRTY. MINUTES.

This is where I become clueless - once she's up like this she's usually wet and can be changed but then she's wide awake and hungry. If we ignore the wet diaper (bad parent) she'll sort of go back to sleep for the rest of the night. So do I get up with her at midnight, change and feed her, and then put her down again, and ignore the cries after that? I'm not comfortable with ignoring all night because she is willing to eat and I don't want to ignore her if she's hungry or wet. :/ I'm at a loss. I'm also exhausted. I hate feeling so clueless about what to do with my own child!! It's so frustrating!!