To ask for help here, am losing my mind

[Thisisfuckingawful]

I cannot go on like this anymore, I am going insane.

I have not had more than 3 hours of broken sleep a night for 3 months. DD2 7mo is hyperactive. She is awake for hours every night and is manic, arms and legs flailing. If we pick her up she smiles, chatters, grabs our face. If we leave her she cries. She wants to play all night.

If we cosleep she grabs at my face and clothes for hours. If I try to feed her she bites me. She lies in her cot and shakes her head frantically from side to side, like she is trying to keep herself awake. Tonight the head shaking was so bad I thought she was going mad. She keeps this up for hours at a time, she rarely sleeps for more than an hour.

It is taking it's toll on the whole family. I am a different person. I'm so angry all the time, I swear at DH and we argue constantly. My marriage is falling apart. Dd1 is 3yo and her behaviour has got so much worse because i'm so miserable. I don't know what to do. I've just made dh sleep on the sofa and dd2 is playing with a toy on the bed.

Please please help

"Night time is for sleeping, and, whilst perhaps controversial, I would not feed in the night until she accepts daytime feeds. Yes, she will yell the first night, perhaps even the second - but it doesn't sound like 2 miserable nights are going to make a huge difference anyway."

Completely agree with Alpine.

Night time is for sleeping!

There's fucking no way I would feed at night instead of the day!

Let her yell - it's daytime or no time.

YOU'RE in charge!!!

I would also definately start bottle feeds.

I'm so sorry. I have been where you are. I lasted six months with it and it was awful, and yes I felt at times my marriage would break up too.

It got so bad I nearly had a breakdown. Then DH stepped in and said, yes, right, enough of this! He said he would do all the night wakings for a week so I could catch up on sleep. As it happened, as soon as he took over, DS finally started sleeping through so he ended up being 'on duty' for a couple months, during which I regained my sanity.

I don't know what your DH is doing at the moment, but this is crisis time and he needs to step up.

Imagine you were (sorry) laid up in hospital for a week. What would he do? He would get on with things, right?

You need to sleep. If you can't express then, yes, I think you should consider formula because your sanity and your marriage are more important for your baby than what she is eating at 7 months.

Go see your GP. Do you have any family support? Really, treat this like the crisis it is and call in all available help.

You will get through this. It was the worst time of my life but now it is just a bad dream. It will get better!!

She's not bothered about milk full stop, she has tongue tie and doesn't comfort feed. She's not waking in the night for milk, I feed her because she needs nutrition from milk and sometimes it helps her go back to sleep. Feeding in the night is an improvement. For 3 days she had no milk full stop.

I have thought about formula but to be honest I don't see the point. she won't drink milk of any kind during the day other than very small amounts in a cup. She is too distracted, anything that takes more than a few seconds of concentration is impossible. Plus I have loads of milk.

Feeding and sleeping seem to be 2 different problems, though both related ti this hyper activity if that makes sense? I'm not bothered about feeding her in the night. It's this manic playing for hours that's the problem, she wants to be up and moving, grabbing, playing. Being still seems to drive her nuts, she is always moving.

thanks for all suggestions, am trying to process them as best I can, keep them coming.

Sounds horrific.

A question-- is she weaned, so she has 5/6 meals in the day?

I think it might be time to stop BF at night. MY DS woke up to 9 times a night (which means basically piss all sleep for me) to BF even when he was 11m! We stopped BF at night, and would only give him at 6am, then 2/3 through the day, one at bedtime.

What difference would it make if your DD was crying if you are not feeding her, or if you are feeding her, but she won't sleep anyway? I think you have come to the end of your rope and second what the others have said-- get your GP to look her over until you are satisfied. Then decide on the sleep solution you are going to do, give it a week of trying the sleep solution to the letter and see where you are at.

go a see a doctor. they can evaluate the case and maybe give you some sedatives for DD, I knows its harsh but you NEED a few nights sleep

then in the meantime consider some tough love sleep training, it might be what you need?

This, have you been to the GP with her? Just to make sure there isn't an illness/allergy causing the sleeplessness and lack of interest in milk? And oodles of sympathy. Not being able to sleep is hellish.

some other ideas

minimise day time sleep, like 1 hour MAX, and get loads of fresh air and exercise

introduce some solids

try and give hungry baby formula at bed time?

move her to another room and let her cry it out?

GOOD LUCK

OK. I have been here. You need to get yourself to a hotel for one night. I used Premier Inn £39. Leave your baby with your partner with lots of expressed milk and or formula and go and sleep for a whole night.

Getting one unbroken nights sleep will help you beyond belief.

Next. It could be colic, it could be wind, it could be hunger, keep a diary, write down what is happening, naps, feeds, poos everything so you can begin to feel in control. You can then go and see your GP, Health visitor anyone else you can think of and tell them what its been like. Get support.

Does your 3yo go to nursery? Can you get a bit of support with them too?

Its really really hard. You are doing really well.

hth

We are doing baby led weaning but she eats huge amounts. Since day one she has swallowed everything, meat, fish, bread, pasta, fruit, veg, porridge,, everything. She even has pincer grip. She has 3 or 4 milk feeds, one at bedtime then 2 or 3 overnight

I've just realised that we haven't left the house since christmas eve, that's probably not helping

go see a hv. i was at my wits end at 7months with ds1 (self settling issues) and she helped us draw up a plan, visited after 2 weeks then 2 weeks again and it was sorted.

ds3 did the head shaking, not as bad, but he stopped a couple of months ago aroun 8 or 9months.

can you put aside a week before your 3yr old goes back to nursery (if she goes?) where you just focus on your baby's routine? i've found GF perfect after 6months, it's been a life saver. too little daytime sleep can be as much of a problem as too much daytime sleep. i can post the 7month routine if you want to give it a try.

It's been a long time since mine were that age, but I remember DS being to wakeful whenupmfor nightime feeds. He was nealy eight minths and my health visitor told me to drop nightime feeds. I simply stopped breastfeeding altgether and gave DS cows milk from a cup. He did start sleeping better after that.

Oh, andyoghurts can take the place of milk if she is not keen on daytime milk.

I'm afraid I haven't got any answers as my two were both terrible sleepers and while you are there it seems like an endless battle and that you will never get any sleep so you have my sympathy.

As I say I can't help with the sleeping (wish I could....) but this might help with the feeding as I do think the two are linked. My DD wouldn't take any expressed or formula milk at all and so when I went back to work (6 mo) she was only getting milk from 4 pm onwards. My amazing CM used to mix the ebm into her food to get some milk into her and that helped.

What really made the difference was at 12 months (which seems a long way off I know) when she could have cows milk cold from the fridge which she loved. Hopefully your DD might be the same.

I know you said that the night feeding doesn't bother you but I found that once she was getting milk during the day the night feeding decreased.

Big hugs and I hope you get some sleep soon. xx

First things first get someone to care for her so that you can catch up on some sleep, starting anything new with regard to letting her cry/getting tough will need reserves that right now you just don't have. Get as much family and friend support as you can.

Secondly get professional help, this is not normal behaviour and there may be underlying physical reasons that could be resolved that may help. For example nutritional deficiency in certain minerals and vitamins have been linked to behaviour as have allergies. If her sleep cycle is out of whack she could have a disrupted circadian rhythm (hormone cycle controls sleep cycle), see here for some information. There are treatments available like light therapy and melantonin you could talk to your doctor about. Push for a referral to a specialist if GP cannot suggest anything, you cannot continue like this.

Thirdly sit down with DH once you have professional advice and form a plan of action whether controlled crying, stopping night feeds, upping food intake or whatever you decide.

Fourthly carry it out and stick to it for long enough to see if it works (may take weeks so persevere.

The British School of Osteopathy do concession appointments for children costing £10, see here for info.

Ds also 7mo, also not a good sleeper. I never get more than 2 hrs sleep at a time. Once I got a 4.5 hour stretch, never to be repeated. I would also be interested in 7mo routine!

He was also hyper at night until I weaned him from the boob. We now don't feed him at all between midnight and 7am, but still give him dream feed. Ok not dream feed exactly, more, he wakes up for umpteenth time, we feed him.

At around 3 he gets into my bed as wont settle alone. Tried Cc. Fail (5 hours screaming through to next feed). Could have written your post. dH useless as chocolate fucking teapot and says he is grumpy if he doesn't get sleep. Yeah, we'll sometimes I feel fucking suicidal with exhaustion. He is also unkeen on CIO for night waking, but won't getup in the night either. So it falls to me. I did it with DS1. Not a naturally good sleeper, had to fight DH from undermining me every step of the way, but now like a dream. I don't have the energy to sit up all nit every night putting dS2 to sleep. Just want him to go to sleep and stay asleep.

Got no family who live near and no friends that wou,d be prepared to take hi. For the night.

So much sympathy from me, it's shit. No one may have died from tired, but am pretty sure people have gone mad or been killed as a result.

I do think the feeding and sleeping are linked.

If she is eating that much in the day, she doesn't need 3 feeds overnight, which means your DH can help and you can try different sleep solutions without worrying about her not getting enough nutrition.

It's also possible at night that she is overtired. My DS slept better when he had very regular daytime naps -- I put him down for them at the same times every day, although it would take a while for him to actually go to sleep at the same time every day. Whenever we slipped and let his naptimes get random he would be really wakeful at night.

Oh, and if anyone back then had said to me, 'No one ever died of tired', I would have replied, 'Great, you can be the first'.

I don't know why sleep deprivation gets normalised and hushed up so much. It's freaking brutal.

I agree with those suggesting trying to establish regular napping and feeding during the day. Could you get a blackout blind for your room to create a dark, undistracting environment for her during the day?

Also, possibly a strange suggestion but has she had her ears checked recently? Both my uncle and my cousin toss their heads back and forth when they're lying down to go asleep and they both have serious ear problems. Could be completely off the mark but might be worth checking in case there is pressure or uncomfortableness there.

I really don't agree with using CC particularly when there seems to be a genuine problem so i would be more inclined to try to do the sleep rota for now and express so that you can get some sleep in!

As for putting your child in another room and ignoring them for a night/ a few nights to 'train' them (aka CIO) - no, just no. What a horrible, cruel thing to do to a child. Please don't even consider it.

Thanks loads, I really need a plan, lots of good ideas here.

Please post 7mo routine, have never tried gf and have no routine whatsoever now. Our routine has been about survival, and that is clearly not working.

I need a break so will have a night off. Dh is great but I have been a complete cow to him. Called him a twat on christmas day night, I can't even remember why. I am horrible at the moment, feel like I've been possessed.

Sorry am waffling, will write a better reply later. Thanks again, really needed this support

I would recommend Elizabeth pantley's no cry sleep solution over Gina ford.

We had what I called a 'light routine', in that we aimed to do things at certain times at the day but with a 15 minute leeway either way, and it wasn't the end of the world if life interfered with it.

I think at 7 months it looked a bit like:

6.30 or 7: woke up / breakfast
9 nap -- would sleep until 11 or so
12 lunch
2 nap -- would sleep until 4
6 dinner
8 sleep

Sometimes if he was really tired he would have an extra catnap around 5.30

Like I said, initially they may not nap at set times, but with any luck if you keep putting them down at the same time they will eventually do so. But every baby gets tired at different intervals so you may have to experiment a bit.

Some babies just go bonkers without a routine. It's worth a try!

Tell your DH you're sorry and that you really need his help to get through this. If he's great, he'll understand! I was so awful to my DH but bless him, he stuck around Don't be too hard on yourself, it's just not normal for people to be nice and fluffy when not getting any sleep for months on end!

Oh sorry -- also gave bottles 15 min before naps and bed, I think it helped sleep too.

If your baby is genuinely hyperactive a GF-style routine is not gonna be appropriate as it won't be possible for baby to do it.

Don't beat yourself up about what you said to husband. It happens under sleep deprivation. I said utterly unrepeatable things to mine. He was a little more restrained but still vile. We have forgiven!