June 10 babies have arrived. Now we are all sleep deprived!

[CantSleepWontSleep]

Welcome to 'the other side' ladies. Long may we all continue to post!

ARRIVALS
27/04 (due 23/06) - SunshineDay - Faye - 3lbs 2oz
16/05 (due 02/06) - Meggymegmegs - James (Jimmy) David, 7lb 1oz
19/05 (due 01/06) - whenwillisleepagain - Alice Emily, 8lb 7oz
21/05 (due 21/06) - Gizmo - Hester Rose - 6lbs
23/05 (due 9/06) - greensnail, Alice Elizabeth, 7lb 2oz
24/05 (due 8/06) - Saucepanman, Gabriel, 8lb 4oz
24/05 (due 31/05) - minimoonumber2, Sebastian Robin
26/05 (due 24/06) - GibberingGinger James Alexander, 5lb 13oz, & Douglas John, 5lb 15oz
28/05 (due 30/05) - GoodName, Fergus, 8lb
28/05 (due 31/05) - mampam, Tilly May, 9lb 11oz
28/05 (due 4/06) - jo807bump - Hannah May, 5lb 7.5oz
04/06 (due 07/06) - perkster - Sidney James Perkins Berner, 7lb 11oz
05/06 (due 31/05) - dinosaurinmybelly - Zoe Leila - 6lb 9oz
07/06 (due 02/06 ) - AlwaysHopeful - George, 7lb 13oz
07/06 (due 07/06) - MrsC09 - Rufus Jack
08/06 (due 01/06) - PogueMahone - Magnus Gabriel, 8lb 14.5oz
08/06 (due 11/06) - woofie - Laurence Elliot (Laurie) - 7lb 11oz
08/06 (due 21/06) - sunworshipper - Romola Ann Bettina, 5lb 15oz
09/06 (due 08/06) - LittleRobbo - Summer Dawn
09/06 (due 09/06) - Boobz - Constance Ella Reed,
11/06 (due 02/06) - Justbeme - 'Nobody' (boy) - 8lb 9oz
12/06 (due 02/06) - roundabout1 - Lauren - 8lb 14oz
13/06 (due 18/06) - Virgo1979 - nameless boy! 7lb 9oz
14/06 (due 30/06) - monthlymayhem - Hayden, 7lb
14/06 (due 08/06) - MrsAlwaysRight - Alice Rose, 9lb 7oz
14/06 (due 15/06) - Millymollymoo - boy
15/06 (due 31/05) - RnB - Artemis, 7lb 9oz
15/06 (due 29/06) - playftseforme - Rory 6lb 4oz, and Fergus 6lb 8oz
16/06 (due 17/06) - Chestnut100 - Daisy Belle 6lb 14oz
17/06 (due 01/06) - Madamfreckle - Emma 6lb 6oz
17/06 (due 30/06) - MonkeyMargot - Atticus Fox 7lb 8oz and Rafferty Bear 7lb 14oz
17/06 )due 04/06) - Suzy1975 - Samuel 7lb 14oz
18/06 (due 23/06) - earlyonemorning - Edgar William 7lb 8oz
18/06 (due 13/06) - sobloodystupid - Stella 8lb 8oz
19/06 (due 22/06) - Gaelicsheep - Robin 6lb 14oz
22/06 (due 14/06) - Fillybuster - Mia Rae 9lb 3oz
24/06 (due 16/06) - Nizzynoodles - Samuel James 10lb 10.5oz
24/06 (due 17/06) - summerhols - Lilly
25/06 (due 17/06) - Barbeasty - Ruth Damaris Rose, 9lb
26/06 (due 16/06) - JoKettle - James Lennox, 8lb 7oz
26/06 (due 29/06) - MrsDmamee - Elyssa, 8lb 5oz
28/06 (due 26/06) - imkeepingmum - girl, 7lb 11oz
28/06 (due 12/06) - Georgee - Anna Rose, 7lb 15.5oz
28/06 (due 12/06) - Elena67 - boy, 9lb 5oz
29/06 (due 17/06) - bluesnowfalcon - Corey, 8lb 11.75oz
29/06 (due 18/06) - theperfectbaguette - Clementine Jemima, 6lb
29/06 (due 26/06) - RubyReins - Luke Douglas, 7lb 14oz
29/06 (due 25/06) - Ilovemyterrier - Jeppe Sebastian Fagerlund, 7lb 6.5oz
01/07 (due 30/06)- LaTrucha - Daniel Timothy, 8lb 11oz
3/7 (due 29/06) - CantSleepWontSleep - Jeremy Francis, 9lb 4oz

Hi, sorry I have been out of the loop for so long. Last few months have been a bit of a blur. In and out of hospital twice with nasty cases of mastitis so now doing half and half breast and formula. Romola is amazing, feel so lucky to have her in our lives. She is certainly keeping us on our toes.

Will now catch up with everything. Greensnail - congrats on moving to Devon. Have been spending lots of time there with my parents and trying to work out how we could afford to move back.

I am so tired. Fergus was up insisting on being fed 5 times last night before 3:30, I stopped counting after that. I felt so mad at him and his dad sleeping soundly next to me.

He is such an awful sleeper, I dont know what to do. Have tried routines but he is different every day and he is so hard to get to nap, I need to feed him to unconsciousness or drive him around endlessly. He used to occasionally go down in his bed ans go to sleep but now looks likes he is going to sleep then suddenly he just cries until I pick him up. How do other people get their babies to sleep (and yes I do go by his sleepy cues and the time).
At night it take a couple of hours to get him to sleep properly (feeding). I start his bedtime routine (bath,feed,bed) at about 7:30, and spend the next two hours getting him to sleep then I just go to sleep too. If I go away once he has gone to sleep he seems to notice and wake up. I am quite fed up. When oh when will this improve.
Anyway sorry for the negative post but its hard to be happy when you are tired.

Oh bought a good book for walking with prams if you are in scotland and like that sort of thing. Its for wheelchair users so works very well with prams. Its called walking with wheels. 50 walks in scotland. Dont know if you can get a similar thing in england.

Oh Goodname, that's horrid - of course it's hard to be positive when you're so sleep deprived and you shouldn't feel any obligation to be so.

Hmmm, where to start with non sleepers? Well, forgive me (terrible postnatal memory) but is he your first or do you have to be up and about for his siblings?

If it's just you and him then I would be seriously tempted to take to your bed for a few days. Sounds like he's a very clingy baby & hasn't yet learnt to self settle, which is something you'll have to teach him in the long run, but to try now a) won't work b) will make your rest even more disturbed and c) often has the effect of causing friction with other halves who tend to lack flexibility in these situations.

So I'd choose to treat getting some rest for you as a priority, before you get to the point where you can't sleep even when he's asleep. Hence my suggestion you spend a few days where you're in bed and dozing as much as possible. Will he sleep next to or on top of you? Is a dummy a possibility?

In my experience (and I've done a full range of approaches from highly routinised to utterly hippy approaches to babies) running a routine with babies below three months can be very tricky, precisely because they keep changing their habits as they develop. And they need frequent feeds, and every experience is novel and tends to wake them up...it's very hard work. So you might find if you try a routine in a few weeks time it will work better than it has so far.

Otherwise, if you've got sibs to deal with, then is there any way you can rope in some help? It's probably only for a couple of months maximum - so maybe you could budget some cash to pay someone for the short term if family and friends can't help? I'm sure the key here is to sort out adequate rest for you in the short term...Fergus will learn to sleep eventually, even if you have to do some sleep training later, but crucially you need to stay sane in the short term. I do feel for you: there's a reason sleep deprivation is used as a torture technique.

Goodname - I don't think I could add anything to what Gizmo has said but feel for you with the lack of sleep and the partner who seems to be sleeping like a baby (whoever made up that simile??). Leaves you feeling very on your own. I was just wondering what Fergus weighs now? I found Romola started to settle a little bit better once she reached 10 lbs but having said that it seems to be two steps forward and three steps back. Does he sleep on his back? The other thing I have done which flies in the face of advice but is the only way to get her to sleep at all is to put her down on her front. She seemed to feel much more 'earthed' that way.

goodname - :( Its so isolating when you feel you're the only one up with the baby in the middle of the night, isn't it. I remember feeling like that with DD1 when DH was sleeping soundly. I remember feeling very frustrated with the baby in the middle of the night.
One silly little thing that helped me was to look out of the window - I could always see a couple of houses with lights on and it made me feel a little less alone as I knew other people were up. Of course, this might not be so helpful if you can't see many houses from where you are.

In terms of routine, we're really not in any sort of routine at the moment with Alice. Just when I think some sort of pattern is emerging, it all changes again. I remember from DD1 that starting on solids was a real turning point in terms of routine, as her day started to have a proper structure of mealtimes, and milk feeds and naps started slotting in around them.

lol at 10lbs being a magic weight sunworshipper - J weighs 14 and a half pounds, but is still almost as bad as it sounds like Fergus is!!

I also advocate sleeping on the front, even though it is against guidelines. We'd get pretty much no sleep if we didn't do that.
Or if you have him on his back, are you swaddling? I still rate the woombie highly if you want to swaddle.
Are you winding him thoroughly enough? J often seems as though he's nothing more to bring up, but then wakes up a few mins after I've put him down because there is still a bit trapped, which can take a while to bring up.

Still haven't had a chance to catch up but a friend just alerted me to this link and it totally cracked me up, so thought I would share :)

goodname - That sounds rubbish! Could it be wind? Emma has started settling much better since having more success with getting gripe water down her. It seems I only need to give her a couple of doses (one early afternoon and one in the evening) for it to help.

Also I still advocate the 2-hour rule although we're not always good at it (and suffer as a result) i.e. try never to let him stay awake for more than two hours at a stretch during the day then put him down to sleep. When I do this with Emma she will usually fuss a bit for 5/10 minutes or so but then settle.

As far as possible during the day, I'd try not to feed him to sleep. Feed when he wakes up, let him stay up/have a kick about for a while, then put him down to sleep again within 2 hours - before he needs another feed and before he is over-tired.

Finally, I think my nights would be a whole lot worse if we were sharing a room with DP! As it is, Emma usually wakes 3 or so times a night but as she's in my bed and I feed virtually in my sleep it does make a BIG difference to my exhaustion levels. Also, I'm not constantly looking over at DP thinking 'you lucky so and so - snoring away happily...' etc (as I did after DS was born).

I don't know if any of that will help??! Good luck.

Anyone have any experience with a child with a habitual cough? DS has been doing it for the past 6-8 weeks. It's especially bad when watching TV, having stories read to him etc but not so bad when out and about and doesn't do it when asleep. It drives me totally mad as (when really going for it) he coughs every 10 -20 seconds. To start with I kept asking him to try to stop but I'm now trying to just ignore it which is easier said than done! Do you think that's the right course of action? I'm assuming it's a reaction to Emma's arrival on the scene.

I've now read back over some more of posts and would like to add:

MrsAlwaysRight - What an EPIC tale!

DIMB - Totally with you on the b/feeding lack of weight loss thing. I've hit a wall with a good stone and a bit to go. Wondering what kind of healthy 'breastfeeding diet' I can go on which still involves a good daily dose of chocolate and carbs!! I've said it before but it does make me better to reiterate it, I really lost the weight properly after I stopped feeding DS (he was 18 months). I think my body was clinging onto it in case of famine (fat chance)! I really want to get back into exercise more but have a really bad shoulder which isn't being helped by feeding positions/carrying etc. I did have a fab swim last week but it seems the only time I can go is between 9 and 10pm. I was a bit pumped afterwards and couldn't go to sleep for yonks!!

Gizmo - Glad you haven't melted! I remember being so pleased when DS first found his thumb. It did make for a lot more peaceful nights. But I am now cursing that same thumb nearly 4 years later...the cause of very goofy teeth. (But he does suck it A LOT and regardless, he's still got a brilliant smile...so I wouldn't worry!)

Oh typos galore!... Meant to say: it does make me feel better to reiterate it..

Yesyes to MadameFreckle on the two hour thing and the sharing the bed thing - co-sleeping with DS2 and DD has made the baby days a totally different experience from the tunnel of depressed exhaustion I went through with DS1. But learning to feed lying down is a bit of knack - perhaps one to learn through a babymoon?

I know what you mean also about the thumb sucking: DS2 cracked it at about 8 weeks old and now at rising 4, I am encountering reproachful looks from the dentist. However it has been worth it for nearly 4 years of sleep.

I like the picture of Greensnail staring out of the window looking for signs of life. Or you can always post on Mumsnet...which never sleeps

Filly your link!!!

"I could wear one of those" arf!

Well I think our Measles saga is finally over! DH and I managed to get our jabs done at hospital on Saturday night then went out for a lovely meal. Alice didn't need feeding luckily as although I had frozen some milk and had a few practice runs of her feeding from a bottle, the steriliser decided to pack up that night!

Alice has been really grumpy since having her jab but I'm not sure if its that or the fact she has got thrush in her mouth. Have got some stuff to treat both of us so hopefully it will clear up soon. She also had to have her 12 week jabs yesterday so her poor little legs are quite bruised

goodname I had many nights particularly with DD1 when at the time I actually felt I hated my DH because I was up with a screaming baby and he was snoring in the spare room totally oblivious! Sleep deprivation is horrible.

dimb I am starving all the time too! I am really craving sweet stuff all the time. I had lost all the baby weight by the time Alice was about 4 weeks old but last time I weighed myself I had put 5lbs back on. Am seriously thinking about re joining fat club (Rosemary Conley)

Can't remember who said about thumb sucking changing their life but I totally agree! DD1 did but stopped as soon as she got teeth. It has massively helped Alice to self soothe and she will usually pop her thumb in and go to sleep fairly quickly.

That sounds grim goodname. I sympathise too as ds1 was an awful sleeper and all-round grizzly baby, and I found the early months totally draining and couldn't shake the feeling I was doing something wrong (nonsense of course- some babies are just like that) Won't be much comfort to you now, but he turned into a gorgeous toddler who hardly tantrumed.

Just a thought- have you tried a transitional object for self-settling? Fergus is a bit young perhaps, but I found putting a muslin in ds1's cot with him transformed our sleep. He would snuffle around in it until he fell asleep- seemed to find it very comforting. In fact, it's still a bedtime fixture at 4 1/2 and is called his woofie (hence the name obv!) I started giving Laurie one of those tag blankie things in bed a couple of weeks ago and he's definitely beginning to attach to it and is now able to fall asleep by himself within 10 mins usually (just wizzling rather than properly crying). If they fall asleep independently they tend to stay asleep longer. Might be worth a try? Neither of my dss would countenance a dummy so I've found this a good alternative.

Hope it improves for you soon.

... It doesn't work overnight of course- takes a while for them to recognise blanket as a sleep cue. If you make it smell of you, that helps!

I'm another one for the post-pregnancy weight loss club. I sprang back to pre-pg size with ds1, but have plateaued (sp?) at about a stone and a half above my ideal weight this time I have constant raging hunger too dimb, so the double helping of chocolate cheesecake at dinner last night, for example, probably didn't help much...

Just gripping on to this thread by the tips of my fingers! Dodgy computer plus visitors are to blame.

I'm keeping up but feel I spend most of my life running (not actual exercise running you understand. How do you ladies who do fit it in?)

On the weight loss issue, I have merely cut snacks at the moment. This week will be a disaster as there are lots of meals associated with having visitors in a very rainy Aberystwyth. I seem to be losing about a pound a week though. As long as it's goingdown, I'm reasonably content. There is a LOOOOOOOOOONG way to go down though. About 3 stone

Hey all, just marking my place as back in building work hell - not easy with Seb & ds1 - having to call in a lot of favours from the neighbours which I hate doing. Anyhoo, hope everyone is enjoying the sunshine!

I completely empathise with the cheesecake (and you can add chocolate and ice cream to the mix too)!

I start my post-natal course tomorrow though, which has an hour of exercise so hopefully there will be some results! I haven't gone back to the running yet, because I was told that you should wait some time (over 3 months) before doing any high-impact activity to avoid doing damage.

Either the sleeping is getting better, or I'm so sleep-deprived that I am forgetting being woken up! We seem to be going for between 3 and 4 hours between feeds now and then at least hourly if I try to stay in bed any longer!

Just to add to everything, I have just applied for a vacancy back at work. It's the complete opposite of what I was doing before I left, with on-call, weekend and night commitments, but SO much more interesting/ rewarding and more likely to get me the promotion I've been trying for over the last 4 years. I am working on the basis that a) the company is completely male dominated and I don't stand a chance (especially as I wouldn't start until I go back in January) and b) if I don't get it then I will be applying to condense my hours in my current job so it really is two polar opposites.

HHHHHHHEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!

I'm just about at the end of my tether. Tilly is still bringing up her feeds. Over the last 5 weeks she has had very slow weight gain/no weight gain and now a slight weight loss. We've been to the GP who prescribed baby Gaviscon which hasn't helped at all.

By the afternoon Tilly's feeding all the time because she has brought up a lot of her milk so is obviously hungry, this means I can't do anything. I feel drained, I'm awaiting the results of a blood test to see if I'm anaemic. Our laundry pile is horrendous as not only is Tilly going through numerous outfits/bibs/muslins per day but I'm having to change all the time as I'm covered in sick and DH too.

It's getting to the stage where I don't want to go anywhere as we're just covered in sick. Everyone at our mother and baby group notices everytime Tilly's sick and there are 2 other babies there that are exactly the same age as her and Tilly is now very noticably much smaller than them

Is there anything I can do? Thankfully, Tilly doesn't seem too bothered, she's still happy and a joy to have.

mampam - remind me, is she formula or breast fed? Have you considered milk intolerance along with the reflux - it's much more common than people realise. If breastfed then you would need to completely remove all dairy from your diet. If formula then you would need to get a specialist hypoallergenic one, which is either on prescription (maybe try and persuade your GP to just give a week or two's worth to see if it helps) or can buy but more expensive than normal formula.

Hi everyone, I also cannot stop eating chocolate etc. Have friends who opened a tearoom in town to conincide with birth of the baby so have spent quite a lot of time in there. Really could not care less about loosing weight tho, or anything apart from getting more sleep at the moment.

Thanks for all the comments, was crying reading them though as I was so tired. Last 2 nights have been just as bad or worse. Longest sleep was for 1.5 hours last night. Its so frustrating as I know he can sleep for longer as he has done 7 hours a couple of times and was regularly doing four, feed then 4 again until recently. Been walking round town trying to get him to sleep and trying not to cry this morning. He has a dummy but wont take it at night much just now. Have tried cosleeping and it makes little difference.
Woofie have just bought a sleepytot comforter which you can attach dummies too as well so will see how that goes when it arrives.
I try really hard not to feed him to sleep all the time but I do it sometimes and I keep trying to put him in his bed when he is sleepy and occasionally it has worked but normally he just almost goes to sleep and then suddenly starts screaming til I take him out. He has 3 ways to go to sleep, feeding, walking or driving. Thats it. Also he is already over 14lbs, hes a big fatty. I should nap when he does but I tend to lie there thinking I must get to sleep before he does and feeling stressed and not getting any sleep. I just need to know that it will get better soon, preferably in the next couple of weeks or months not the next couple of years!
Filly that was a hilarious link.

Hi Mampam,

Yes, I wonder if CSWS is onto something there? Have a look at Kellymom, which is pretty comprehensive about feeding problems. If Tilly is losing weight, on top of everything else, I think you probably need to push for a referral to a paediatrician - from what I remember of your LHA, I'm not sure anyone is going to have the nous to refer you unless you apply some pressure.

Oh dear Goodname I could have written parts of your post 8 years ago, when DS1 was a baby...I felt exactly the same, like the world had narrowed to a little tunnel with this gigantic non-sleeping baby blocking out most of the light.

If you've got to the stage where you can't sleep when Fergus is asleep, it really is time for a serious intervention. I would recommend not getting out of bed on Saturday morning but handing Fergus to your husband with instructions to take him away from your earshot, change his nappy regularly and bring him back every two hours for a feed. Continue that all day - I'm not kidding. Try for Sunday as well if you can: Fergus is as much his responsibility as yours and you can consider it payback for all those nights when he's been snoring and you've been trying to sort F out.

Because you've gone into insomniac mode, you probably won't sleep immediately, maybe not even for the whole morning, but you will be resting. And rest is something you urgently need, because this level of exhaustion can be very depressing.

What's Fergus like when he's awake? Is he fairly easy to soothe, or is he very screechy? Is the co-sleeping not working because he's lying there and shouting in your ear, or are there other problems with it?

Sorry if it sounds like I'm going off on one, but you sound at the end of your tether and that's such a sad place to be

PS please don't worry about feeding him to sleep all the time at the moment, that's fine and provided there are other ways for him to sleep - ie in the pushchair - it won't be a long term problem.

Plus, he's allowed to be a fatty - he's the same weight as Hester, from the sound of things - and it's a very good sign that he's not restless from some more troubling organic cause.

Hi everyone, first post on this thread, although I've been lurking a little while .

Just wanted to post something for goodname, I know exactly what you are going through and it is sooooooooo hard. Dd was a terrible sleeper to begin with, at her worst (which was almost all the time) she used to be up for an hour, down for an hour (and repeat) throughout the night. It seemed to get progressively worse (I was hallucinating in the end through lack of sleep, couldn't function at all in the day, she wouldn't settle in the day either....), until an epiphany at three and a half months when out of the blue she slept through the night. We tried everything - sleeping bags, taggies, feeding in the dark, no eye contact, no lights blah, blah, blah.... I guess what I'm trying to say is that she decided to sleep when she was good and ready and there seemed to be v little that we did differently that night to all other nights. There will be light at the end of the tunnel, but when you're in the midst of it it is v easy to lose hope. I've got nothing practical to suggest that others haven't already, other than one new thing that my homeopath suggested for the boys - we're putting a few drops of lavender oil into hot water under their cot - even if it doesn't work for Fergus, it might make you feel a little better.