Teach me to fish!

What is with these kids of mine and their non-sleeping?? It is 6:30pm, Sabine has been awake since 9:45am when she woke up from a 45 minute nap. Before that she'd woken at 7am after being awake for several hours through the night. Really, she was awake for more hours than I care to recall just being in the bed, awake, sometimes cute, sometimes nasty. She wanted to play, she wanted to nurse, she wanted to slap us in the faces. All of that she did. Zach and I were miserable and yelling at each other because we couldn't figure out what to do but all we knew for sure was that if we didn't get to sleep we were surely going to die. To recap: My 10 month old baby has been awake for the day for almost 12 hours of the day, 45 minutes of that was spent napping.

We can't go for more than a few days before having a really hard night or really hard day in regard to the non-sleeping. I thought we were doing well for a while, she was going down for a couple naps a day at a pretty regular time. And then Tuesday happened. This Tuesday was horrible, I was a horrible mess, Sabine was 16 pounds of cranky misery. We made public fools of ourselves, etc, etc, etc.

When I'm having a day like this my mom and Jamie usually end up baring a lot of the weight. They show up and swoop down like angels to take the baby out of my arms so I can breathe. Tuesday was just a total wash and I don't even want to relive it. Today was Tuesday all over again, and by the way, Zach was working, he's always working. At Jacob's t-ball game today I was about to lose it because Sabine was freaking out screaming really loud as I was trying to put her to sleep and then my mom showed up and gave me my arms back. When Sabine still didn't go to sleep I started losing it again, telling my mom that I'd had plans for after the game and if Sabine didn't fall asleep now she'd fall asleep in the car and that would be the end of our plans.

My mom told me that she would leave the game with Sabine. She would drive to my house and sit in the car while Sabine slept in her carseat and that I could take Jacob to the store like I'd planned. I told her that was crazy for her to do that, to go out of her way like that. I felt helpless, like nothing could make the difference. I still feel like that in this moment, like no amount of working on this sleep schedule thing will make it come true. I told my mom that perhaps Sabine would fall asleep on the way home and she'd get a nap, thus possibly going to bed at a normal time and possibly enabling Zach and I to get sleep tonight, but that would be like giving a man a fish. You know the adage: Give a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime. I want the secret to this sleep thing, I want somebody to give me a freaking clue, tell me what I'm doing wrong, tell me what to do to get her to sleep!!! I want someone to teach me how to fish!