December 2012: the little monsters continue to surprise us.

[MaMaPo]

I for one have a very surprising baby.

Thanks for all the congratulations! DS is still driving me potty with his refusal to nap so I'm surprised DP hasn't asked for the ring back

eggs DP would like to work on it but I'm only just starting to enjoy longer sleeps! DS has been doing 7-8 hour stretches at night which has been amazing!

right better go. I fed DS to sleep, put him down and he woke up. Tried comforting him but I am all out of patience and he just wants to wriggle and crawl around his bed so I've left him in there for a bit. He is having a little whinge but mostly he is busy playing with his toes/blanket/mouth/ the cot bars etc etc etc...

One loooooong wake at 1:15-2:30 but i think his teeth are bothering him. I feel like shit, it gets better right? Right?!

Apparently so, Pidj! At the grand old age of 35 I let my mother sleep through the night. (She is 17,000km away which also helps.) But seriously - it will get better!

This teething lark is a big pain. C is flinging herself around furiously today and has been biting me, pulling hair etc. Luckily it didn't affect her sleep last night (she went 7-5, then back down until 6.15am) but I am not so confident about tonight. She has napped a lot as well - is that good or bad?

Oh emily - that's sad!

Willyou, glad things are improving slightly.

Am being lazy today. Sat inside drinking tea and eating cake. Fatso.

Some people swear by good naps=good night Mama. I think it's all random!

Aw Emily, youre doing much better than i would be

I'm sure it'll get better Pidj >crosses fingers, toes, legs, arms<

I'm playing bare bum roulette right now. J's red raw, cries when I change it. He's crawling around bare arse to the world with sudocrem everywhere. In looking at my long pile cream rug and cringing!

Evening all. For what it's worth I can find no correlation between naps & night times (or anything else for that matter!). All pretty random in this house!

What is depressing though is how history is repeating itself....I decided to google 'early wake ups & nap routines' as everything is based on the apparently common ( non-existent!?) 7-7 sleepers. Anyway, the results included a mumsnet chat thread. So I thought, let's see what words of wisdom they have....turns out I was the original poster 3 years ago!! Asking exact same questions about dd1! I did write though that she had just started sleeping through & it was dated August, so it gives me hope it might just happen any day now! There is hope pidg!

Hope your carpet survived willyou

Lazza, I just read some threads on that issue and am interested by the idea that if the first nap is too early and too long, early mornings will persist. I find it hard to keep C up beyond 8-8.30am, which I feel is very early, but she'll sleep for up to 2 hours. Consensus seems to be that I should slowly push that nap to 9.30-10am, and limit it to 45mins or even 30mins. Then the afternoon nap can be 1.5-2 hours. It seems bonkers that now that she's finally napping I should be waking her up!? I'd love her to sleep until 7am though - 5am and 6am is just a little early.

Who thinks I should try this?

What time does she normally sleep from and until Mama?

Lazza I can believe that was rather frustrating! But in the wisdom of mums net I'm sticking with "this too shall pass".

Pidj repeat above motto.... it has to get better, we all (used to) sleep through the night.... so it must get better... right?

DS managed 1 decent nap today :( he has gone down for bed ok but I know it will take him a bit to drop into proper deep sleep so I'm sort of hovering around our bedroom door in case he starts to squeak. I find if I dash in and shush him he goes off back to sleep quite well... today at least

mama I know that's the theory but I never managed it with dd1 and so don't hold out much hope this time round! At least dd2 does sleep longer for naps, as dd1 had reflux and never napped longer than 30-40 mins. I'm just rubbish at making them stay up when I know they're tired (& grumpy!) especially as it usually makes her grumpy for rest of the day! I'm also VERY bad at waking a sleeping baby! But I have heard success stories with it so maybe worth a try!

You're right nutella, I tied myself in knots trying to 'sort' dd1's sleeping. Best thing I did was just accept she's an early riser....still is! If dd2 started sleeping through it'd be much easier to cope with.

Just waved off DH, away till Fri....by which time I will be a sleep-deprived wreck!

Pfft don't bother mama. Dd slept 7-7 from 14 weeks. An hours nap in the morning and two at lunch. She now wakes between 5:30 and 6:00. Everything changes once they're in a bed

If I kept ds awake until nine when he'd been up since five it would be traumatic for all involved

Nutella, she starts bedtime routine at 6pm and is usually asleep by 6.45pm. She has started sleeping until 4.30-5am, when she wakes for a feed, and it's hit and miss whether she'll go down again. If she does, it's until 6.10 on the dot!

I just feel that if she could add another 45 minutes she'd be sorted, and that would be a good 12 hours. Still, it's only recently that she's dropped her late night and early morning feeds and started sleeping (almost) through, so maybe I won't rock the boat too much just yet. Added to that is that we're often out and about in the afternoon and I doubt she'd often be able to get a 2 hour nap in - so waking her from her morning nap (which is invariably in her cot, where she sleeps best) is probably not a great idea.

Whatever. In less than 2 months we're going to be taking her on a roadtrip where she won't be in much of a routine, so it'll all go out the window. And then it'll go out the window again when we add in the jetlag of being back in Australia!

Mama if i was you i would try it if you are unhappy with what C is currently doing with her naps/sleep. But if its not bothering you i would leave it until you were bothered IYSWIM

Pidj like others have said this too will pass. Those teeth are pesky buggers. We were lucky with the first couple but these last 2 teeth have been completely different and have caused alot of bother.

Mama could you try to move bedtime or even naptime back by 10 minutes per day to see if it makes any difference?

Rug survived, but J's bottom is now agony. He flinches if you go near it and is hysterical if you touch it. I could actually cry for him. I think tomorrow we'll decamp to the conservatory (laminate floor) and he can be bare bummed and poo wherever he wants. I cannot bear to see him in such pain. Any suggestions will be gratefully leapt upon like a rabid dog. He's still going too. It's such a terrible shame.

A curse upon these nasty bugs and nasty teeth upsetting our babies and driving us up the wall.

Poor J some good ideas here

Buggering blocked duct. Dp wants me to stop bf because of them. I probably should, ds doesn't seem to care at all, doesn't seem to get any comfort from it...I just really wanted to go until a year.

mama DS brought his bedtime forward to 7pm and we have accidentally pushed it back to 7:30/8 in the last couple of days who knows what makes a difference, he wakes at the same time if he goes off well at 7 or moans and fights till 9.

willyou I've said it before and people probably think I'm crackers but honestly chamomile tea is the business!
It was amazing when DS had a very sore bum (when we went to grandmas he had the runs for a few days guess it was the change of water... Even though he was only getting boob). I used it for washing his bum with cotton wool and put it in his bath as well. He also had lots of bare bum time. I think if you can leave the nappy off that is the best.

I made up a large jug of tea with several chamomile tea bags in and left them to stew. Hope he feels better, poor love. X

Oh, poor j! I think loads of nappy off time, maybe without anything on at all, including cream! Clean, dry bum, and let the fresh air work its magic. But I am No expert. Best of luck.

Thanks all. I'm willing to try anything Nutella so I shall chamomile it up to the max. The plan is to take up the rug, strip him off and let him poo wherever whenever and I'll just bleach the floor.

Right, yet another attempt at catching up (must try to mnet more frequently!)

Congratulations Nutella.

Welcome Lazza.

Really hope J is better soon Willyou, sounds horrible for him. I've always found metanium works well for nappy rash, but it hasn't been too severe.

In terms of naps/bedtime routines. We're pretty lucky in the morning as N tends to sleep until 7 wish his big brother would also lie in that long though. He then has his first nap at about 9.30, lasting around 30 mins. The rest of the day is a little more random depending on what else we are doing but he generally has a good hour in the afternoon at some point, and sometimes has a third nap later on especially if we are out in the car. At bedtime, we do bath, book and boob as we are almost always still feeding to sleep. I was managing to combine this with reading DS1 his story, so that they would both be asleep at the same time. This has been scuppered recently though, because as soon as N goes in DS1's room he sees the big boy toys and starts to get giddy again. He then crawls over to pull himself up on the toy garage or kitchen, and have a good nosy round for something inevitably unsuitable for him. We've therefore switched things round a bit and DH takes N downstairs to try and settle him. Sometimes this works, but more often than not I end up feeding him to sleep after DS1 is sorted. The slightly later bedtime doesn't seem to have affected wake up time or napping for the rest of the day though.

Right, I don't know what bt I need to do something about these night wakings. I am shattered. She's been awake for over an hour, 3rd wake of the night. Will snooze on me if I pace around with her but keeps waking. She's too heavy for me to walk around forever but I know she's tired. Have just left her in her cot for a bit. She's not crying, just shouting. Hope it doesn't wake dd1. The thought that I'll no doubt have to go through this all again in a couple of hours is a killer. Then survive the day & repeat tomorrow night, and again etc etc.

Second wake and feed here. Bloody teeth.

Have those of you with older babies dropped the cot base? O isn't able to pull to standing yet but I 'm getting nervous. He was squeaking sporadically and probably would have settled on his own just now but when I went in was hanging on to the bars looking like he was contemplating it..

Utopian ds started doing that so we lowered it at the weekend.

Lazza poor you it must be especially hard with dh away. Does she self settle at all at nap time? I found that once ds did that it made a huge difference to night time

Utopian, we haven't dropped the base - no need at the moment.

Lazzaroo, agree with spotty about self-settling and how that improves nights. (Not that you know it around here last night. So tired!)

Our night was odd ds woke at ten and I fed him (first night feed in four weeks bar when he had a temp) I'm not sure if he was hungry but he took a full feed and cleared the blockage so that was fine. Then I woke at 3 to dd coming into bed with us and ds having a moan. No idea who woke who or if something woke both of them anyway dp put dd back to bed and I just left ds and they both slept until 6:30

Thanks all. She doesn't self settle at all. Sometimes feeds to sleep but is mainly rocked by me. She settles really easily for naps and first thing at night though. Then it all goes wrong. Wakings and sometimes for a very long time. She eventually went back to sleep at 2.30am but woke again at 3.30....and 4.30....ad 4.50! slept on me then till 5.50. Looking keen to go back sleep now!! It's alright for some!

Am hoping things will improve again now she seems to be feeling better & have her appetite back.

We haven't dropped cot base but then we only qualify for this thread by two days so we're not too mobile yet (& she sleeps in a gro bag which helps at night!)

Not yet, Utopian, he's pulling up and attempting to cruise but hasn't tried in the cot yet!

7:15-5:30 with just the one 30 minute battle wake up :o

I sit in the rocking chair with him, i also can't walk him for long!