Sometimes I Hate Being a Mom

I've never been a very confident person (as far as I can remember) and sometimes I'm very uncertain about how to deal with Kaitlin. Those are the times I don't really enjoy being a mom. I don't know what to do and that makes me feel stupid and drains my energy quickly. The past few nights have been like that. The first night, Kaitlin kept signing "eat" right before bed (in PJs, listening to bed time music, about to get into bed). Now she ate dinner and had eaten a pretty good snack just before getting ready for bed and even passed on the nilla wafers so I assumed she was just trying to stay up longer and told her she could drink more milk. She refused it and I put her to bed. Within 5 minutes she was asleep so she must not have been too hungry! I was pretty confident at this point, but she woke up in the middle of the night wanting to eat.

The next night, I opened the refridgerator to get Kaitlin's bottle ready and she climbed into the fridge, opened a drawer and reached in for a banana. Then she practically pulled the bread off the shelf. She ate most of the banana, most of a piece of toast, a slice of cheese, about 10 goldfish crackers, and 3 mini nilla wafers. Holy Cow! She slept all night long. So we thought, "she must be having a growth spurt." Last night, she wanted to color at bedtime. I set a timer for five minutes and told her that when the timer beeps she had to stop coloring and go to bed. She colored for about 30 seconds and started signing eat. I gave her leftover mac n cheese from dinner and half a piece of toast. She gobbled down the toast and then sat in the high chair for 45 minutes "eating" mac n cheese. Mostly she was playing with it and when we started to ask if she was finished, she would eat a piece - one noodle. She wouldn't use her signs to let us know if she was really done or wanted more. It was very frustrating as I didn't know if she was really hungry or just wanting to stay up.

To complicate matters, Kaitlin is very skinny and has already had bloodwork done because her growth rate dropped off too much. I am supposed to take her in for a weight check this week and if she hasn't gained enough weight, she's going to have to have bloodwork again. This situation makes it very difficult for me to deny her food and just continues the cycle of uncertainty. I wish I knew the right thing to do. I wish I felt confident enough in myself to figure this out. I don't want to deny her food, but she was really tired and needed to go to bed. My husband and I need time together and we get it after Kaitlin is in bed; if she goes to bed late we either stay up way too late or we just don't get time together.

Any thoughts? Does this situation sound like she's manipulating us to stay up longer? Do you think she's really hungry?