November 2014 - the one where we all get a good night's sleep

[moggle]

Here's hoping, anyway...

sorry ladydolly couldnt remember who'd mentioned it - but thanks anyway . My carriers should arrive today - v excited! Just hope dd likes the caboo. She will only fall asleep in my arms & its very restrictive so will be great to go hands free!

Is any other mums of 2 finding it hard to get good daytime naps? Dds naps always clash with something eg getting ds ready for school. Poor dd has to wait either til I've finished sorting ds & can hold her or til she gets in the pram & by then she is already overtired. How do you do it?!

By bedtime she is sozzled & cant stay awake to finish her feed. So we're now having to top up at 8/9 then she is waking at 2am & 5/6am too. we used to feed at 7ish till 11pm & 4am - would love to get back to this!

Yeah naps are an utter pain with 2 for the exact reason you describe omama! Last night dd2 went down easily enough around half 8, not a peep all evening and then in ruined it by attempting a dream feed at half 11. She just woke an hour later as if I hadn't done it at all so won't be trying that again. Night was shit after that.

Sneaking off to get my hair cut now. Left dh with screaming baby and rampaging 2 year old and panic in his eyes. He's just going to have to get on with it, this is my life every day and I kind of want him to see how hard it is wrangling them both especially in this weather..mean, I am!

I'm admiring everyone for seeming to have and know patterns and putting so much thought into sleep. I'm not really sure what I'm aiming at!

juulie we aim for SOME sleep. We have very little patterns and no routine so to speak of. We have a time I take him up to bed and put him in a night sleep suit and feed him and rock him to sleep and try to put him down. He doesn't always agree though.

Daytime he generally has 2 big naps a day but they can come at any time and any place he chooses.

juulie we have no routine. She rarely sleeps unless I am holding her and i am all about the path of least resistance at the end of the day when I am tired, so she still naps when she is tired enough in the day then goes to bed when I do. Should really do something about that soon...

If I wasn't trying to get into a routine I'd go mad. I'm so tired, today all I could think of was "at 7pm I'm free" terrible as that sounds.

Had some success with encouraging DD to take a bottle this evening... Realised she was pushing her head forward onto the teat and gagging herself, so DH fed her so that her head was turned to the side (towards the TV!) and she couldn't move her head that way. The other thing that helped was that we got her dummy and let her suck that for a bit, then swapped the bottle in, then when she started to get upset swapped the dummy back in for a bit so she'd calm down. It took a long time to drink only 25ml but by the end of the session she was pretty happy and drinking pretty fast.
She then puked it up but I think that's unrelated! We just need to make sure we try this again tomorrow and the next day and then keep it up ... Got a night out booked for the 17th feb...

Cat, Happy, Anna, it's giving me something to think about hearing your different experiences and efforts. I'm aiming at bed before midnight tonight. When sleep will happen is another story. We got 6 hours straight the past 2 nights tho which has been great: 2 til 8! After her main sleep I sometimes try to catch up by lying in but it's very on and off then. I'd be better off going to bed earlier I think. Good luck with the sleep tonight folks :)

Well done with bottle Moggle.

Thanks Cat for advice on highlighting!

Good work moggle DS still not loving the bottle and I have been slack with trying to encourage it. Last time was less traumatic but he still wasn't sacking on it.

OH gone away for 4 days now. We shall see how this goes!

juulie we dont have much of a routine either! All i try to do is follow a loose bedtime routine between 6-7pm. like happy my dd will also only fall asleep on me - we've just got a caboo so at least I can get on with stuff while she sleeps now. daytime naps have been a struggle as I dont always catch her before she is overtired & if I go out in the morning & she sleeps til lunch then our evening is screwed!! Am trying to pay closer attention & stuff her in the caboo as soon as she yawns - last 2 evenings she's been settled by 7.30pm. Wahoo!!!

juulie one more baby without routine training here. For the moment we put her to sleep/nap when she looks tired. With her it's a waste of time to try to get her down when she is wide awake. But when we follow her with bed times she seems to get it that going to bedroom and being put in sleep bag means it's a night time and we are going to sleep. Last few weeks has gone down withou too much fuss - feed, Ewan the sheep, lights off and she is gone, while we still can have some time for reading, mostly somewhere after 10.30pm.

Only routine we have here is run by DD herself lol. It seems to be her going down for the night around 11/11:30 and up anywhere from 6-8 then have a feed and go back down for anywhere from 20 mins to an hour and a half, then the rest of the day she naps/feeds as she pleases!

strawberry the going into the sleeping bag and nice quiet feed with minimal lighting seems to work too, I might try creeping it earlier next week and see what happens

Juulie, another one here with very little routine so far. I keep trying but she is having none of it really and marching to her own tune! She still cluster feeds all evening until she falls asleep so bedtime routine isn't getting any earlier much to my annoyance. Generally, bath, story, feed (for hours!) is eventually followed by sleep at some point. She seems to drop off any time between 9 and 11.

DS went down at 10 ish for a couple of weeks then a few days ago suddenly moved it to 9. I did nothing different. I truly think most babies are laws unto themselves!

We've tried yesterday and today to get DS to take a bottle of EBM so that we can try and go to a gig soon. Both times have resulted in a very upset little boy and upset parents too!

He took bottles absolutely fine in hospital and when taking formula top ups the couple of days after but not tried since.

Any tips other than perseverance? It seems so cruel and selfish to try and force them on him but at the same time I'd love a night out.

amy better that than being chained to him until he can hold a beaker! And there's always the dreadful scenario what if you had to go into hospital for some reason. If you do a search I'll bet there have been countless threads on it over the years which may give tips.

Our DS goes down at 7pm just because one week thats what he started to do. He started getting nightmarishly ratty down at the TV with us and was clearly overtired but couldn't switch off so we just put him upstairs in the dark for a nap and he just kept sleeping! So we twigged his pattern had changed. He's now in a 7-7 routine, but its not really us thats done it, its himself. We had to get a monitor sharpish!

Having our evenings back has majorly improved our stress levels though. It gives a bit of balance back.

I think I'll be glad when we can start putting dd upstairs at bedtime. she's still down with us til we go to bed as her evenings have been so unsettled & worried she will disturb ds. Once she consistently goes down at 7ish we'll do it I think.

The only bit of routine we have is bedtime bath, feed n bed usually down 7/8pm and other thing is a 45min nap on school days around 8.20am on school run n sometimes naps longer if pop somewhere after dropping ds1 at school.

We have refused bottles all along here from first try at 4weeks ds1 refused too n never did take one.

I am just waiting on a nuk bottle in post to try we have a nuby with breast pump n a tommee tippee one both unsuccessful I have a whole set mam self sterilization one's but reluctant to open in case he refuses. Also got a yoomi bottle which will try too.

We have nuby (not tried), medela ones that are hard work and TT closer to nature. Will try a nuby today I think and also got the cheapest ones possible coming from Asda tomorrow. I just hate seeing him upset and it's hard to motivate myself to persevere. Silly thing is that he's unlikely to even need to feed the night we go out as the act we want to see starts at 9.30 so we could just leave house as soon as he's down at 9 but it'd be nice to go out earlier and have a few drinks and have someone else do bedtime!

Morning All

I disappeared from the thread for a few days as my mum had DS over the weekend so it was nice to have some couples time.

Just back from the Doctors and the bloody reflux is back . This time it's the silent one which I think is worse . Out comes the Gaviscon, fingers crossed he doesn't get constipation.
U
We've had DS on quite a regimented routine from 2 weeks old and he started sleeping through from 11-7 at 6 weeks although switching to FF at 6 weeks coincidentally helped he now happily does 7-7 at 11 weeks.

Morning All

I disappeared from the thread for a few days as my mum had DS over the weekend so it was nice to have some couples time.

Just back from the Doctors and the bloody reflux is back . This time it's the silent one which I think is worse. Out comes the Gaviscon, fingers crossed he doesn't get constipation.

We've had DS on quite a regimented routine from 2 weeks old and he started sleeping through from 11-7 at 6 weeks although switching to FF at 6 weeks coincidentally helped he now happily does 7-7 at 11 weeks.

Morning All

I disappeared from the thread for a few days as my mum had DS over the weekend so it was nice to have some couples time. ?

Just back from the Doctors and the bloody reflux is back ?. This time it's the silent one which I think is actually worse. Out comes the Gaviscon, fingers crossed he doesn't get constipation.
U
We've had DS on quite a regimented routine from 2 weeks old and he started sleeping through from 11-7 at 6 weeks although switching to FF at 6 weeks coincidentally helped he now happily does 7-7 at 11 weeks.

On the subject of neglected older children: DC1 said last night "Home isn't a very nice place anymore." When I asked why, she replied "we don't get to do things I want to because you have to feed DC2." I may have turned away so she couldn't see and cried, but I might be a bit over-emotional because of DH's operation too. I do try to fit in things she wants to do around DC2, and am very sad that she thinks it isn't nice here.
We came back from my parents yesterday. Today has been just DDs and I. I have successfully returned library books on their due date (minus the one I can't find anywhere), made pizza from scratch, made biscuits from a packet not from scratch and I forgot to start the timer so they are burnt, remembered to put the rubbish out for tomorrow, kept the 3 of us alive. The house is a tip, especially the kitchen as I have cooked with help from a 3yr old, and I am counting down the hours until bedtime (about 2hrs hopefully for DD1 and 4-5 for DD2 and I). Tomorrow I have to get all 3 of us out of the house by 7.30am to be at pre-school on time. DH should be home tomorrow but not until very late, as there are problems getting him home. We are 2-3hrs from London in good traffic, I can't drive, MIL won't drive on the motorway, FIL has an afternoon hospital appt, SIL and BIL and my parents are at work and can't get the day off at such short notice. SIL and FIL are currently planning to drive down after SIL has finished work so rush-hour time. I would be surprised if they are back by midnight, but at least he will be back and that is great.