April 2011 - cake-offing, gin-guzzling, wine-sipping, dreams of sleeping

[fraktious]

Thread 3!!!

Oh, and where is Frakk? I want to ask her some nosey questions!

caramel - you may be onto something there. He has started to get upset about doing a wee in his nappy after he is dressed for bed and frequently yells for me to come and change it for him. I wonder if the sensation of needing a wee is waking him, when previously he would just go in his sleep?
I need to be a bit firmer about putting him back in his own bed, but when I'm half asleep and he is all lovely and cosy and wants to snuggle, it is nicer and easier to just haul him in

ILike - enjoy the museum. We must take the boys, DS1 would love it, but it seems a trek!

ILTMIMI - No, we're not co-sleeping. We've tried bringing her into our bed on the really bad nights but it doesn't help. She still screams and doesn't fall asleep, I don't sleep because I'm conscious she's not asleep and I'm scared of her rolling out/me rolling on her, and DH doesn't sleep because he's been relegated to the very edge of the bed. I suppose if it meant she slept, then I'd do it but as it doesn't seem to help it isn't something we've seriously considered.

DH has been trying to settle her for 45 minutes so far tonight but she's been crying hysterically for most of it. She had a feed and bath, followed by another mammoth feed and seemed zonked out but only lasted for 15 minutes before waking. I'm sat here feeling absolutely desperate. All I want is one half decent night but after this performance I know we won't get it tonight. It's getting to the point that I'm scared of the evening - it's like our lovely, smiley daytime baby changes into a screamy little night time monster :(

If he can't settle her this time, then we'll try another feed. Wish us luck...

frak is here! I?m trying to write up a mammoth research project that I?ve steadfastly ignored for the last however long and is due soon.

Star you poor, poor thing. I have no advice but lots of and sympathy and some fresh DH made

I have no idea how those of you with 2 do it.

Bugger, M just woke!

I remember those feelings of dread when it comes to night times Star. I really hope things improve for you and that you all get some sleep. If you would like any advice/thoughts just ask, and if you don't want advice come here and vent whenever you need to.

I'll let you know how it goes Ali. We went to the aquarium and Eye about a month ago and that went really well. We're doing trips like this now before I becomes mobile, at the moment he's happy to snore away in the sling.

Ah, there you are Frak. Here are my nosey questions (I was mulling them over while feeding at 3.30am last night!), please answer or ignore.

Do you only speak French at home?
Do you miss speaking English?
How will you go about teaching M both languages, and which language do you talk in when it's just you two?
What language do you dream in?

I have no idea why these questions popped into my head, I am really fascinated about bilingual children, it's so clever!

Star I hope tonight gets better for you.

I've just popped on here to aska quick question. I've just bee expressing and one of my nipples is a funny shape. God this is hard to describe, its like the nipple part has migrated to the edge of the aerola(sp?). I first thought blocked duct swelling, but I don;t think it is. It's like a little hernia on my nipple. Anyone got any ideas? It's not sore, just really weird looking.

ohmygod we're on the 3rd wakeup since F went to sleep at 7:30. Hope he hasn't been taking notes from Star's LO!

At least he's waking up happy and is being fed back to sleep pretty easily. Although I suspect the amount of farting suggests there's a poo on the horizon (he hasn't had one today). Hopefully that'll be it and we can all sleeeeep!

Fizz, no suggestions here, I'm afraid. I'll look more closely at my nips next time I pump tho.

ILTMI Funnily enough I was wandering the same things about bilingual children this afternoon. DH's cousin is visiting with his wife and 1yo DS for a few days so we can all meet the newer additions to the families.

Cousin is English, but speaks about 5 different languages, Wife is Bolivian (spanish speaking) and they live in Paris.

He speaks English at home,
She speaks Spanish and is learning English, (it's good enough now to have a conversation, we visisted them in Madrid 4 years ago not long after they'd met and cousin had to translate for us). She's also learning French, they moved there about 2 years ago for cousin's job.

They are hoping to get their DS a nursery place soon so he can start picking up French outside the home. They don't want to confuse him too much but obviously want him to be able to keep up with his peers when he starts school etc.

Fizz Sorry can't help with the question,

Buck we've not managed to get T to sleep yet. He was in bed for an hour from 8.30-9.30 and we thought he was down, but then he's been awake since. Happy, wanting to chat, play and feed loads. I so want him to go to sleep.

Fizz - that sounds alarming! Is it in addition to your nipple, or is it like the nipple has moved?

star how r u getting on?

buck has it arrived yet? Hope so and ur all sleeping.

Ali hope ur also In the land of nod now

fizz how strange. No, never had that. Could the pump be on too high a setting?

S is going 3 hours even thru the night. So I'm doing two maybe three night feeds. Dh said we should try settling him rather than just feeding but I said that's starving him and won't work. Should I try a cluster feed? Any suggestions? S will be the dreaded 16 weeks next week !

Morning all. Thanks for all the positive thoughts for last night.

We were up every two hours, with a blissful three and a half hour stretch of sleep before getting up at 7am this morning. A big improvement on the hourly wake ups that we've had of late. Crucially, at each wake up she fed and went back to sleep straight away which meant that we weren't awake for hours trying to get her back to sleep. I'm still knackered but feel a million times better than I did yesterday. Hooray! Fingers crossed tonight is more of the same :)

Buck and Ali - hope you both managed to get your DSs down the night in the end.

Fizz - like Ali said, is the lump in addition to your nipple or do you mean it has moved? Once I didn't notice (don't know how !) that P wasn't latched on to my nipple but was sucking next to it instead. I ended up with a big raised lump on my areola in addition to my nipple but the lump went down pretty quickly.

Kitty - no suggestions I'm afraid (you've heard enough about our sleeping/feeding woes of late!). We have a pretty similar debate here though. DH also says that P can't be hungry every time she wakes (she never feeds two hourly during the day) and wants to try and resettle her sometimes at night (as in he'll get up and do it rather than me). I worry that she might be hungry or thirsty and think it's easier to just feed her, so always do. We did agree last night that if she woke hourly, I would only feed every other hour and that DH would settle in between. For what it's worth, P did cluster feed yesterday evening (three feeds between 6.30 - 8.30) but still woke up two hours after going down and then two hours after that etc. She's a mystery to me! I think our LOs are the youngest in the April group though, so hopefully it's just an age thing and they'll start going longer at night over the next few weeks.

glad you had some improvement Star.

F did sleep, and woke up at 4. Still no poo, though, and Screamy McScreamerson is back.

I've just given him some more gaviscon, if that doesn't help I'll bust the calpol out.

Nipple update it wa still there this morning but was a bit ouchy. Massaged it in the shower and it kind of popped and thick milk came out. Does that sound like a milk blister?

I'm sitting in the car park of edinburgh zoo waiting for my friend! I'm praying the rain stays off!!

Just place marking and sending to the sleepless sufferers.

I'm no expert Fizz but am sure I read somewhere that expressing thick toothpastey milk out of a lump can be a sign of a milk blister. Hope it's improved and the rain stayed off at the zoo.

Have had a lovely day with DH and P but am now trying to prepare myself for the usual night time saga. P fell asleep at 7ish after a big feed, stayed down for five minutes and is now crying while DH tries to put her to bed. And so it all starts again!

Does anybody elses LO virtually always cry at bedtime? We sometimes have nearly an hour of crying while we rock, cuddle and shush/pat her to sleep. Is that normal ? She's always asleep or seems tired when we put her down but usually wakes up within a few minutes and then gets really upset, resulting in a marathon session of rocking and patting her to sleep. P rarely really feeds to sleep, unless it's the middle of the night. Does anybody have any bedtime tips or success stories they'd like to share?

With F I feed him to sleep, he wakes after about 35mins, feed him back to sleep, and that's usually him sorted.

Except when he doesn't drop off & starts biting/grabbing me or flailing wanting to play. I get frustrated, put him in his cot to entertain himself till he gets bored & cries. If it's been long enough, I'll attempt to feed him to sleep again (otherwise he'll puke everywhere & need full pj/bed change, and start from scratch), or DH and I take turns to pace with him till he either tires himself out or persists long enough to feed again.

There's no way he'll sleep happy without boob. Without boob (whether in the car/pram/sling) he always cries as he drops off. If he can't fall asleep he gets angry = vicious circle.

It's a bit wearing, really. So I'm feeding him to sleep for as long as it works. Only problem is that no-one else can do bedtime. I'm not overly worried, I want to do bedtimes when I'm back at work, and presumably it'll all change with weaning anyway. I can't see myself having to BF a 14yr old to sleep!

He finally pood just before bathtime (fed him with him sitting upright facing me, with him sort of squatting in my lap. It seemed to help!). But he still wasn't happy. Gave him some calpol (teeth? tummy?), and he slept for an hour before waking for his second bedtime feed.

Hope he sleeps through till 4 now. I need to work!

Good luck Star, I'll be thinking of you.

Just re-read your post, Star. You didn't really want my pathetic ramblings did you! Sorry. It's not very helpful.

star sorry to hear of sleep issues. J was a really really bad settler - bedtime always involved lots and lots of tears, in fact sometimes the screams were so loud you'd be convinced we were chopping her legs off if you'd been outside the room sorry if this is obvious and youve tried already but the only thing which worked for us was holding her over our shoulder until she was in a really deep sleep (normally about 20 mins after falling asleep) - if we tried to put her in cot before she would wake up the instant we put her down. Now she generally falls asleep during bedtime feed or on shoulder while being winded but we can put her straight down without a 20 min wait. She also (touch wood touch wood touch wood) can self settle throughout the night even though we still have to help her to sleep initially. Sometimes she can self settle at the start of the evening but mostly not.

Good luck and sending you good sleep vibes. I know how depressing it is when they won't settle and you are knackered. I think you have to do what you have to do to aid sleep and forget any thoughts of making rods. If you've tried the over the shoulder and waiting for deep sleep hopefully someone else will have some
Better advice...

We have a kind of relay to get T to sleep - feed, then over DH's shoulder, feed, over DH's shoulder for as long as it takes. Which some nights is a bloody long time.

Star I think you just have persevere. Do you do bath, story etc? The crying is likely to be just tiredness, and some babies just really fight sleep. DS1 fought sleep so hard, but he did eventually get better and learn to switch off. No tips really - we feed, rock, pat, pace the landing, feed. The other night we just plonked T in between us in bed and he seemed happy enough - by the time we had read a chapter each of our books, he had dropped off!

Mega shopping trip today, Ikea and also winter clothes shopping for the boys and DH. I bought the T the cutest knitted trousers in Gap Poor boy is finally getting some new things having spent his first 5 months almost exclusively in DS1's hand-downs! Oh and we got his footprints done :)

Off to a family BBQ tomorrow. It will be nice for DS1, my cousin has two boys who are a similar age so hopefully they will have fun together.

Not a good night here. S has been grumpy most of today, leaving me feeling judged by an aunt. Fed him at 9 and tried and failed to settle him. Even left him in his cot with his mobile on as he was quiet... Then he wasn't. Got him up. Tried again at ten. Still fighting me. At 1015 tried letting him cry to sleep checking on him every 5 mins bug he just screamed and cried for 15 mins and I think that's stuffed our night up. The story from 1055;
Feed
Bed 1107-1135
Bed1139-1146
Bed1150-000
Calpol
Bed 1215-1255
Feed
And still sucking

why are disposable nappies so completely crap? F's woken up with a soggy back again. And I put a wrap over the disposable.

Flipping full on pj & sheets change at 5:30 on a Sunday coming up.

Hope your night improved, Kitty.

I am yet to find a disposable that can stand up to S' poo!

Not especially. I've had about 4 and a half hours sleep. Just told Dh after this feed I give up and it's over to him;
137-3
319-427
Feed
445-650
658-704
Feed
Give up

Kitty you poor thing All that feeding looks like a growth spurt, I hope it calms down for you today and tonight!

Buck - have you tried using cloth at night? I put an extra booster outside the nappy but inside the wrap to deal with the volume of wee.

Decent night here. 10.30-12.15, feed, 12.30-5.45, feed, 5.55-still sleeping.

We've just had a poo explosion too. Left P in her bouncing chair and came back to find a huge wet yellow stain spreading up her stomach and over the chair. DH and I had to perform a delicate two man operation to remove her clothes without covering her in gunk. What a way to start a Sunday!

Kitty - You have my sympathies. I know exactly how you feel, having had several nights just like that earlier this week. If it gives you any encouragement, the last couple of nights have been a little bit better with three wake ups as opposed to five or six and some longer periods of sleep. Admittedly one of the wake ups lasted for an hour last night but once I'd fed her and knew he wasn't hungry, DH took over so I could go back to bed. I know it's horrible but we've just got to tell ourselves that it won't last forever.

Thanks for all the tips on getting your babies to sleep. I'll be giving various different things a try. To be honest, I think we'd convinced ourselves that it was only P who doesn't go straight to sleep, so it's encouraging to hear it isn't just her who cries before bedtime. I wish she would more reliably feed to sleep just to speed the process up!

I love Baby Gap clothes Ali - they're gorgeous and the knitted trousers sound super cute. I think I might just have to start looking for some new warmer autumn baby clothes. Any excuse to go shopping really!