Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Parenting

For free parenting resources please check out the Early Years Alliance's Family Corner.

Screaming to the left of me, snoring to the right...

4 replies

nomoralfibre · 17/11/2009 10:36

... a shocking night with my 3 month old daughter and my partner. She is not yet able to settle herself to sleep, which I think is pretty normal at this age, so I sit up in bed (breast)feeding her until she drifts off (often a mutually satisfying experience at least initially but occasionally frustrating as she still doesn't always find getting the milk out easy, due to severe tongue tie treated quite late on) while my partner slumbers quietly by our side. Finally she sleeps and releases the breast. I slowly manouvre myself to a standing position and gently lower her into the cot beside the bed.

About 50% of the time I don't completely screw up the transfer and she will remain lightly asleep through her inevitable startle reflex and snuffling snuggle to find comfort and I know that, barring disaster, she will settle into deeper sleep and I will be on the road to a few hours of blissful kip myself. I get back into bed with the minimum of noise possible but my partner, perhaps disturbed by a bedspring pinging or a floorboard creaking, mirrors our daughter's move from deep to light sleep and, as is his wont in light sleep, starts to thrash about and emit terrible, mega decibel, rumbling snores. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah comes from the cot, fuck fuck fuck (sotto voce) comes from me as I lift howling daughter back out of the cot, soothe her and settle her on the boob again and listen, seething with resentment and tiredness, to her suckling as partner's snores fade gradually into silence.

We had this cycle umpteen times last night, culminating in me saying, I thought under my breath, at 5.45 am "oh my fucking lord. honey, please please please can you stop snoring", which he somehow heard and took as his cue to stomp downstairs to the sofa muttering about how he hadn't had any sleep! At this point the girl woke up properly, wreathed in smiles and seemingly ready to start the day.

Anyone have any advice?

OP posts:
WorkingStudentMummy · 17/11/2009 11:38

Oh dear nomoralfibre I do feel for you...

How about perhaps giving DP a light prod (just enough to prompt snoring, etc) BEFORE you're ready to put DD back down? If he starts up while she is still comfy in mum's arms maybe he won't set her off? While my DD was still sleeping in our room (she settled beautifully as soon as Daddy's snoring was in the next room!) whenever I would pop a hot water bottle into her moses basket/cot until she was ready to go back in and leave a soft toy (that I'd been wearing inside my jumper for half the day! Full of mummy smell...) in with her. I don't know if it was that she was just starting to settle better anyway or if these things helped (don't forget to take the hottie OUT again!!) but things did generally seem to improve...

nomoralfibre · 17/11/2009 11:51

ooo- I can tell you've been there, WSM.! Those all sound like great ideas. Thank you.

OP posts:
meep · 17/11/2009 12:01

do you have a spare room?

My dd2 is 7mo and dh is pretty much a permanent resident in our spare room. When she settles herself in to a good sleeping pattern he comes back - but if she is ill/teething and finding sleep difficult he moves out. It means I can feed her in the night without being stressed about waking him up or dh waking her up!

I think a lot of coples do this but never admit to it!

Although I would prefer to have him with me - it has made the nights more bearable and we have plenty of years left to sleep in teh same bed !

Interested in this thread?

Then you might like threads about these subjects:

nomoralfibre · 17/11/2009 12:18

We don't have a spare room as such, meep but our older 2 could maybe share for a while. They're going to have to at some point anyway as the girl will eventually nick one of the available rooms. Really hate the idea of kicking him out of our bed but I'm not sure if we could take too many nights like that on the trot and you're right about us having lots of time to sleep together when she's older. I guess I'll see if she settles any better over the next few nights and if not suggest that we give it a go. Thanks.

OP posts:
New posts on this thread. Refresh page