Jan 2013: Part 5 - Food is for fun - Sleep is for wimps...

[Pascha]

Here we go again

Birdies yes I wake him if he's sleeping for too long in his naps but generally don't need to for any other than the late afternoon one.
I think that's key to keep the loooong sleeps for night-time!

He has about 30-40 mins in the morning,
Anywhere from 1 to 1.5 hrs at lunchtime,
No more than 30 mins at around 5pm.
And yes he always sleeps through even with a 30 min nap in the late afternoon. He doesn't always need this last nap though. Sometimes he will nap at 5.30 till 6 and still go down perfectly at 7.

Even when I've had the occasional entire day in the car and he's slept "too much" he will still sleep on the dot of 7 - I think because he's so used to it his body clock now does the job.

Hi all trying to.keep up but life suddenly hectic with school plus return to cubs etc. Dd1 skipped into year 1 happiky on her first day...then realised her mistake and has been being dificult ever since! I am a mean mum and have literally just kissed her and shoved her through the door!

Also trying to rejig Ivy routine as she was having to be woken up fpr school run but is then shattered and grumpy til bedtime. She went for nap at 9.15 for just over 1.5 hours and went back down at 1 so hopefully she will be happier later.

Ooh we also have crawling (almost) sadly she isgoing backwards :)

Bugsy you can hook it under the slats?

Charlie good sleeper too. He wakes at 7 ish back down at 8.30 for an hour then has a nap around lunchtime, a tea time nap about 5 n then bed at 7 at night. I'm very lucky

Also been AWOL due to nursery run/too sodding busy but I have been reading on the go.

Danny is getting dangerous. I have just rescued him from under a knocked over photo frame which he pulled down while pulling on the broadband wire The little bugger can slither faster than I run!

Jealous of the babbling Birdies I get squeals and some a-a-a-a-a-a-a but not much else yet.

Just got back from DS1's first swimming lesson without me in the pool. Scary stuff, specially as he's the youngest and the best in the class and the rest have all been doing it for a term already.

Sniggering a bit at birdies posts
So he wakes about half 7/8 has boob then breakfast at 9. Sleep for about half hr at 10ish dinner at 12.30ish sleep for about an hour around half 1ish bottle (which he rarely finishes) at half 3 tea at 6ish boob as and when but was ready to sleep at 8 last night.

I find he'll nap soon after food and the 10 one only started yesterday before that he slept 11-1 then 5-7 then bed at 10, so fetching in the morning snooze has made it better for me I think, esp becauae I struggled to fit in dinners my old way and he'd be eating dinz at half 8 at night!

Lolli the tooth still wrecks :( I cant go in earlier appointment now either cos of dps full time selfish) ive got two 30/500 cocodamols left and my friend who has them on prescriptions giving me a strip of them monday illicit cocodamol dealing!!

Urgh. We have hysterical screaming. Again. It's like this nearly every night. He screams inconsolably whilst I rock / pat / shush do everything in my power to get him to sleep and he just screams. I could understand it if I was doing CIO and he was being left in his cot, but he's in my arms with me doing everything I possibly can to get him to sleep, and STILL he screams. I'm starting to wonder if I might as well just do CIO anyway, since he's already crying. I must have seriously screwed him up somewhere along the line.

DH is trying now and I can hear the screaming getting louder. I'm going to have to brave going back upstairs again.

Anyone want to trade lives? Please?

Cupcakes i have 4, you do not want to trade! I can't leave the room without ww3 breaking out, the baby is on springs and madly getting around using an amusing combination of lungeing, crawling and sitting...and somehow this is all backwards!!!

Oh and i'm going grey and i'm only 33 :)

Just remember he will grow out of this

sorry not helpful but you have my sympathy and can i offer which solves most things

No thanks Cupcakes :)

This LO usually goes down ok around seven, its the bloody prolonged night wakings that kill me.

DM has just informed me that he properly crawled forwards for the first time while I was out of the room

Oh so sorry cupcakes I, like apple offer sympathy and even though that'll do bugger all about the screaming.

We have crawling of sorts too apple. It developed from Molly leaning forward to get something and figuring out that even if she had leaned forward so far she'd ended up flat on her tummy, she could stick her bum up in the air and wriggle back to a sitting position. So basically, she leans forward from sitting, goes onto her knes, straightens her legs so her bum's right up in the air, moves her hands forward, (sometimes collapses at this point) shuffles her feet forward and continues along those lines until she has reached where she wants to be. It is pretty amusing to watch.

Got a couple of (sympathetic) laughs from birdies' manic desperation and lora's prescription drug dealing. Hope everyone's got lovely things waiting for them this weekend (like sleep...)

go to octane again woooo 8pm

He knocked his mouth on his chair when he fell over today (only fell from sitting ffs) but he still had a bleeding lip :(

Cupcakes what have you tried and whats the daily routine he's in? look at me pretending I'll have a clue how to help

cupcakes I always like to find an answer for everything (you've prob all noticed haha!) so there's got to be something that causes crying like that (no not you, you haven't screwed him up!). I know you've prob covered everything but last night X was really unsettled and I remembered the last time that happened I had eaten a tonne of chocolate. And yesterday I did the same and she was very upset (feel very bad now). So if you are bf could it be colic? Or are you feeding him late and that's unsettling his tummy? Or is he going to bed too late so is overtired? Or could he have a sticky out label rubbing on him or a crumb in his nappy (don't laugh everyone, this defo can happen and can really upset them!!).

I clearly don't have much of a clue re the sleeping thing but there is usually a reason so I'm hoping you won't have to do the CC route

Oh cupcakes I remember DS1 did this when he was a baby and it turned out that he was more than happy to just go to sleep by himself, he didn't want to be cuddled to sleep

Mum called me earlier to ask if she could have the kids for a sleepover tomorrow night, I've said no up until now, but after a D&V bug this week I said yes yes yes!!
On the plus side of D&V I'm back down to pre-preggo weight whoop!

Ps lora can your friend supply me as well hahahaha! Am less manic now - attempting the octane miracle plan

Very impressed re the crawling babies.

pascha the babbling came out of nowhere so Dan will prob wake up babbling soon like X did, but I think this DVD I've got may have helped. It's brilliant! It was a present when X was born - it's called 'singing hands'. Expect you might have heard of it but for anyone who hasn't I can highly recommend. Is guilt-free TV time as they learn signs and songs and you can sing along!

birdies

Oh you poor thing cupcakes

Molly's crawling sounds hilarious angielka , that's cheered me up!

Hoping to go for dim sum tomorrow if that counts as lovely. I'm excited anyway!

Ooh singing hands you say? Ive got £40 asking to be spent in my paypal account (really should be saving it for the dire no pay month) but im off to try the tiny talk thing on the 19th and if I get the cringing feeling about the woman doing it I can resort to just this dvd. My aim is to just get him to be able to sign milk/tired/hurt etc so I dont have to faff.

On the cocodamol front you get some if you go and sit next to him wittering on for 7hrs while he's sat next to you at work... you'll need it hes a pain but you get to an age where you just accept people for their weird greasy long hair flaws and be friends anyway dont you :-D

Lora we went to Tiny Talk and LO loved it even tho I thought it was cringy!

Bunty which gypsies do you recommend??

Apple I will take your 4 for my screaming one. I rather like the idea of lots of children but don't think I could hack any more babies. Grey at 31 over here.

Lora DS has developed his routine of his own accord - and as I discovered recently it's Gina Ford. I've never read Gina Ford as thought she wasn't well liked. Perhaps DS got hold of a copy at the library last time we were there. Does GF involve hysterical screaming (from baby)?

Birdies - I don't think I ate a particularly unusual diet yesterday, though I did eat an entire bag of chocolate buttons the day before. The thing is this screaming thing is basically what he does unless he falls asleep feeding. And actually he often falls asleep feeding then wakes up 20 minutes later to do the screaming thing. He's done it since he was about 3 months old (up until then he always fell asleep feeding).

His naps are crap so quite possibly over tired, but we have the same screaming fits for nap times too, so if it is because he's over tired it's a bit of a vicious circle. I do check for sticky out labels / rumpled up sleepsuits, though can't say I did a crumb check in the nappy. When I got him up this morning I did realise that DH had poppered his sleepsuit up wrongly though.

After finally getting him to sleep at 8pm he woke at 9pm, 10.30pm, 12 midnight (at which point I brought him in to bed with me), 3.30am and then up at 5.30am.

In other news, DH promised to wash up last night, and I've just come downstairs and he hasn't. So I basically spent 3 hours trying to soothe screaming DS last night, and he spent 3 hours sat on his backside watching re-runs of CSI. FFS. Can I send him off with the gypsies too?

cupcakes I'm sure you've done some reading on possible causes already - have you googled old mumsnet threads along the same lines and looked at sleep websites? I'm sure you have, just trying to think about how to break the cycle. I've read a few things about the imprtance of allowing them to figure out how to get themselves to sleep, both at the beginning of a night/nap and when they wake up or come out of deep sleep throughout the night. We did nothing more complicated than putting Molly in her cot awake but drowsy (after a cuddle, singing, usual bedtime routine) and if she got herself agitated going back and giving her another cuddle. She now gets to sleep alone usually with no crying or fussing. Like lolli said, sometimes they manage better alone than we expect. We had a few times of her crying and then stopping just before we got to her (the benefit of a house where there's a flight of stairs in between you and baby!) If nothing here is new then ignore me, but the screaming is heatbreaking isn't it. Good luck.

Gotta say I love the babbling. We only have dadadadadadadadadada but usually accompanied by a serious expression and finished off with a wave, where she opens and closes her fist as if to say 'come here!' Glad I'm not the only one to get some laughs out of Molly Glorious

Ah cupcakes then you are doing better than me as I still feed to sleep to avoid her crying! I know I've got to stop doing that but I don't know how to really without upsetting her. I tried the no cry solution but I can't wake her very easily once she's fallen asleep at the boob. Re DH, I would be mad too. Definitely send himto the gypsies....

lolli meant to say that's great re the pre-preg weight! Though not the nicest if ways to get there!

We did actually have a good night last night (2 feeds only) and I didn't even do the Octane dream feed (I got too nervous of waking her!). I've got a feeling she was maybe too cold before as I dressed her in a bit more. Or too warm (as it was colder last night).

angiel I'm going to try to get X to do the Molly shuffle today!

lora we did a signing class too it was fun. The DVD that went with the class was rubbish though (but i cant remember what it was called). So def get one or both of the singing hands ones if you're planning on getting one (they're on Amazon). :)

That's it. I give up. 50 minutes of screaming is my limit so he's back downstairs sitting on the sofa watching Strictly with me. He'll just have to fall asleep in front of the TV like his granddad.

Oh and Birdies believe me, if I could feed him to sleep I would. He just doesn't fall asleep on the boob very often any more.

Cupcakes, have you tried moving his bedtime a little later? Maybe start the routine at 7 rather than 6?

lolli I used to start at 7 but moved it all forward as I thought the hysterical crying was due to over tiredness. Made no difference but on a good night he might be asleep by 8 if I start at 6, so I at least get a bit of time to wash up etc.