Yawn

For the last 5 nights Alyssa has been up every 2-3 hours for a feeding and I'm EXHAUSTED.  It's like having a newborn again and she's almost 8 months.  I don't know if it's caused by her switching to 2 naps a day, growing, teething, or her just wanting more to eat.

On Friday we went to my mother in law's for dinner and I discovered I am not feeding her enough.  About 40 minutes before dinner she was nursed, normally she can wait 30 minutes for solids but not that night, followed instantly by twice as much banana as I would have given her.  Less than 30 minutes later she was demanding food again and while we ate our dinner I gave her twice as much pear as she would normally get. 

I thought for sure she'd sleep well that night, but no.  She was up 3 times for food.  Since then she's been getting more solid food at her "meal" time, but it still doesn't seem to be enough to get her to sleep through the night again.

She's also having a hard time switching herself over to 2 naps, although it was her choice to.  It makes sense, she's eating more so she should be awake more but she hasn't figured out the right ratio.  In the morning she'll nap for maybe 20 minutes, 30 if I'm lucky, and then in the afternoon (sometime between 1 and 2) she'll nap for 1.5-2.5 hours.

I'm at a loss as to how to get her back to sleeping for 8-10 hours without a feeding - but I'm so exhausted I'm not surprised I can't think.  Over the next few days I'm going to switch her dinner to solids first and milk afterwards; get her nice and full so when we do the bedtime feed it's just a topper instead of filling her up from dinner.

I just hope that whatever is causing the switch in her nights gets sorted out soon (I suspect it's growing more than anything else) so I can get back to having a 6-8 hour stretch of sleep a night.  I need it.