Even if you don't have an answer please hold my hand?

[turtle23]

DS2 is 16 months and has slept through the night twice I think. Every time he is teething (a process which seems to last 7-8 weeks per tooth) he cries in his sleep a lot, waking me, but most horribly wakes up screaming at some point between 330 and 430. I am assuming it is teeth related as he gouges at his face, only quietend with BF/medicine. I have tried pretty much every remedy there is beit medical/homeopathic/plain old silly.
When he finally does get over it he is in the habit of waking. He screams regardless(is a different scream, but still bloody noisy) waking up DS1 who is 3. I haven't slept past 4am for...well I don't actually remember when it was but I think it was once since he was born and I think there were a few nights when I was pregnant with DS2...you get the idea.
My rambling point is wtf do I do when he is well. I have tried letting him scream. I have tried wake to sleep. I have had him in bed with me. I have tried giving up BF, tried so many things.
I am a nervous wreck from lack of sleep. Before you say it...no, there is nobody to help and I am a single parent. Ex has had DS2 a couple times and has said never again at night til he sleeps. Sob.
Yes, I guess I just need a very un MN hug.

Poor DS1. He's chronically sleep deprived too as a result. Is so unfair. DS2 at least is able to nap during the day. DS1 wont nap. If he does he cant get to sleep at night.

I think your ex needs to get a grip and have DS2 at the weekend for you and if he really finds it such a trauma then leave DS1 at home with you. You can explain this away to DS1 by saying your going to have a 'special mummy and son' weekend together. You sound like your on your knees and the only person to give you a break is going to be you ex. INSIST.

You also sound like you need to think about some sort of sleep training. I know it's disturbing but leaving him to cry (when he is not teething) Is painful But I found it was the only thing that saved me from totally crumbling from sleep deprivation. For me it took a 4 days and the first night was 3 hours of crying but if you stick to your guns then it should work.

I hope you sort something out there is nothing worse than sleep deprivation.

Sorry no advice but would give you a hug if i could. I would give your ex a dirty look at the same time. Hope things improve soon. x

Ex just wont. Took a year to convince him to have them AT ALL and I spend my if insisting. :(

Re the sleep training...he just screams. I left him for weeks when he woke at 4. He alternates screaming/playing on his own/babbling and just refuses to go back to sleep. Then, when everyone has given up and is getting on with their day he will fall asleep at 9am and sleep like the dead. I have stayed up to see if there is a noise, blacked out his windows...
Every once in a while he will sleep til 515. These are nearly always the nights that DS1 decides he needs a wee at 415 or the neighbour decides to have a screaming match with his wife. SIgh.

My if? MY LIFE. Stupid keyboard.

I'm so sorry turtle23. I really don't know what to suggest. Hopefully it will improve with time and the end of teething (it finally did with my DS, around 18mo IIRC - all a bit of a haze now).

I agree with longislandicetea that your ex does need to take responsibility, and give you a break. Your ex can't expect to refuse to have your DS2 overnight now, but start taking him again when it all gets easy - that's really unfair on you. Do you have a contact order/access agreement in place (sorry, not sure of the terminology back home)? Could you try and get something drawn up?

Do you have any family who could help too?

We are in the middle of divorce/contact negotiations. He is a stubborn immature little shit who takes no responsibility for anything. My family are all in the States. I will survive. It was pretty much the same with DS1(though he stopped this malarkey at 13 months and although H and I were together he didnt help then either.)

I think I just needed to cry out loud and say poor me. Sympathy party over.

Oh we all need a bit of sympathy now and again! But you need some sleep too - really hope you get your ex sorted pdq.

This really is quite extreme waking for his age. Might it be worth a trip to the GP to make sure there is not anything which might be causing pain? I think sometime we write off all pain in babies to teething when it could easily be something else - UTI or something similar?

Agree it's always worth getting a view from a GP to rule out another cause.

But I disagree that it is 'extreme' waking, given that turtle's DS is only 16mo. My DS was similar at that age because of his molars coming through (waking 5 or 6 times per night, up by 5am) and MN is full of parents with children who are also poor sleepers at the same age. As with all things, it is just a phase.

Turtle- I feel your pain, I was in a similar situation this time last year, but without the added difficulties of a divorce and a nut job soon to be X.

I'm just going to drop the LO off at nursery and then I'll be back.

Ok turtle, I'm back.

I had a similar problem with DD when she was about this age. The sleep derivation is soul destroying. I found it so difficult. And I wasn't going through a divorce and I had the support of my DH and my in laws (my family is also in the US). So my respect to you for having not completely lost your mind.

Ok, now I'm going to get bossy.

First step- Take DS2 to the GP, tell them your problem and ask them to give DS a check-up. This will probably be completely useless but you can then put your mind at rest that there is nothing else going on.

Teething- When he's teething preempt the 4 am waking by getting up to give him Calpol or whatever before he wakes up. If my DD had a dose at 7pm, I would get up at 2am, wake her up and give her another dose. I found the dosing syringes best for this and she went back to sleep fairly easily afterwards.

Night feeding- I'm not sure if you want to night wean, or how much you are feeding at night anyway. I used an abridged version of Jay Gordon night weaning technique. It was a bit easier as I had DH to help as well, but I think when the time is right you'll be able to get through it on your own. Needless to say, it's not something to attempt when he's teething. It will be hard and it's even harder when you're half crazy from lack of sleep anyway. It's just one of those times when you have to work the hardest when you feel least able to.

Habitual waking- I will spare you the details of the many times I screamed at my DD for waking up at some ridiculous hour and refusing to go back to sleep. It was ugly and I am not proud of myself. This, I think, is the hardest one to tackle.

What eventually worked for us was a "morning time" light. You can get clocks that do the same thing, but we just used a light on a timer. (And I mean a decent digital timer, the ones with the dial aren't reliable enough). Set the clock to come on whenever you think is reasonable and then DS2 needs to stay in bed and be quiet by whatever means until the light comes on. I'm not really sure how to best achieve this if your DSs share a room, but you're smart and I'm sure you can think of something. When the light come on, you get DS2 out of bed and saying- morning time or whatever you say in the morning. For the first couple weeks you have to be on the ball to go in the room and get him up when the light comes on. But after a while he should learn the difference between morning time and night night time and hopefully act appropriately.

Although the bad news is that when you get all of this sorted his daytime naps will be screwed.

Alright, bossy over. I hope some of this helps, if not ignore it all. But I'll offer my hand for holding until you get through it.

Take care and good luck

my 18 month old DS has been the same - in his case, there were a lot of ear infections causing the wakings, but even once they were pretty much cleared, he was waking and wanting to party at 3 am. I had words with him more than once. We still have him in his cot in our room (no space for him to move yet), and did used to bring him into our bed immediately he woke, and then I'd feed him, then we'd lose our tempers with this wriggling loon in bed with us - it was getting really bad. He is also teething, but quite frankly I don't care at the moment - I have 2 wisdom teeth coming in and they aren't enough to stop me sleeping

We've just resorted to a mixture of controlled crying and PUPD - it's been 10 days or so now, and he seems to finally understand that once he is in his cot, he bloody well stays there until the morning.

every time he whimpers, we lie him down in his cot, say 'sleep' and pat him on the chest, then walk away. Someone on here recommended this to me, and although DH and I were totally knackered when we started it, I decided enough was enough, and we've gone for being TOTALLY consistent - same response, every single time DS stirs. We do this at bed time - he goes down in his cot, we leave the room, he yells for a bit, we return, lie him back down, leave again. we're not doing the proper CC timings as he gets too distressed after more than a minute or two, but after 3 or 4 returns last night he was asleep. the first night took 3 hours at bed time, and again from 3 am until 6 am. Work was fun that day... second night 2.5 hours, third night he had a fever, 4th night he was up every hour, etc etc finally last night he took 10 minutes to go to sleep , and although he woke a few times in the night, went back down each time with no fuss. He doesn't have a night feed anymore - no matter how much he claws at me for one. We give him water every time he wakes instead (and he has a feed before bed and first thing in the morning). If there's a way you can start this training just before your ex has them for a day, maybe you could get some sleep during the day too, although I appreciate this may not be totally straightforward.

I will also say, I feel like a very cruel mummy for doing this, but, god, I also feel like a rested human again, so I think it's totally worth it.

good luck, and I'm also here for hand holding if you need it!

Hi, I am wondering if the sleep balance of your son is wrong. You say that he sleeps at 9 in the morning. My DS (10 months) used to sleep from 9 until 10 or even longer and used to wake up early in the morning between 4 and 5 or in the middle of the night wide awake. It would take hours to get him back to sleep because he just wasn't tired. Meanwhile, I was ridiculously tired and had no energy to do anything. We even considered sleep training.

I then read that at a certain age too much napping in the morning can cause them to wake up early or in the middle of the night.
I reduced his morning nap and then gradually phased it out. Now he has a decent lunchtime nap (1.5 to 2 hours) and sometimes 10 minutes at around 10 to avoid overtiredness. He usually sleeps 11 hours straight in the night now. If he wakes up in the night or early in the morning he quickly settles back to sleep with milk because he is tired enough to go back to sleep.

Maybe you could gradually reduce his sleep in the morning. If he wakes up at 4 or 5 give him milk/calpol/whatever and try your best to settle him back to sleep until 7. Then try and push his morning sleep out further and further until about 9:30 and reduce the time he sleeps to half an hour or even less. Then try and encourage a longer lunchtime nap at around 1.
The transition phase was not that easy because my DS was a bit irritable because I cut his morning sleep, the time when he caught up on the lost nighttime sleep. But as soon as he slept more in the night he would last much longer.

For us changing his daytime routine has really helped his nighttime sleep. It is still not perfect but so much better than it was and we managed to improve things without controlled crying.
Could you write down your son's daily routine to see if there is something obvious (like the morning nap) that needs tweaking?

Have already forgotten what I was going to say....
*Done the GP check. He gets ear infections about half the time with teeth so am considering having my post redirected to surgery we spend so much time there

*BF is only last thing (630ish) and First thing but not before 5.

*When he sleeps at 9 he sleeps 1+hours then wont again really. Maybe 20 mins in afternoon. He goes to bed like an angel and sleeps til at least 4 without actually waking. It seems silly as he is always ready to start day at 5 no matter what but the difference between 4 and 5 to me is years apart

*DS1 had extreme teething too. He would get fevers, blood blisters and tear his skin off if I forgot to cut his nails every night. I guess I should count myself lucky that although DS2 gets the blisters he doesn't gush blood :(

*Ex is refusing to have them for 2 weeks in the day too. This is why I'm cracking I guess

Will try and reply more in a bit.......