Sleep Nightmares Part III: At 3am No-One Can Hear You Scream

[CountBapula]

I've been moaning about documenting my 8 mo DS's 'challenging' sleep patterns on MN since he was three weeks old. He's still waking every 2-3 hours at least and the other thread's full, so here's a shiny new one for all you parents of hardcore sleep refusenik babies.

Who's with me?

He had neurofen as well at bedtime, which did help a bit I think.

He was just so restless all night, the other night when he came in with us he slept from midnight till 6, last night woke up every couple of hours and was tossing and turning in between

Those of you with one child - will you do it again? I bumped into a friend with two, two years apart yesterday and it got me and DH talking. But the thought of having a second non sleeper makes me feel ill. And to do this again then have to get up and deal with a toddler - I just don't think I could do it.

Yes, we do want two, just not sure when we?ll have the energy to ttc again! I?m 37 this year as well so not really got that long left, and I don?t want a huge age gap. I am telling myself we?ll get lucky and have a sleeper next time!

We are due! My sister didn't sleep through till she was six but my mum got pregnant with me accidentally when she was nine months - and I slept through at twelve weeks. So I like to fondly imagine the same will happen to me! I'm 29 - for another month anyway!- so have a while but like you don't want a big gap. Guess he'll sleep an we'll forget and do it all again!

Funny, I was thinking about this yesterday and planning to start a thread about it at some point. DH and I always assumed we'd have more than one (I'm one of two and he's one of five ) but I think these first few months with DS have made it hard to imagine having another very soon.

I did think the other day that we could wait 'til DS is 3 so that he'll be in preschool for some of the week, so I'd not have five full days of newborn + toddler. Only thing there is I'm 33 as you know, and DH will be 44 this year so we don't want to leave it too long.

My brother didn't sleep through until he was 2 and I wasn't much better apparently so I clearly have dodgy sleep genes :)

how interesting.. was also having this conversation this afternoon! Some of my antenatal lot are starting to think about ttc again (babies are 6 months). I'm an only child and really don't want DD to be. But after the night I had last night (still too traumatised to talk about it), I can't even consider it yet. Plus, not actually sure when I could find the energy to even try!

The older ones of my group are already trying but they are in their 40s. DH is desperate for more, he's one of five too and is thinking of retraining as a childminder. I'd need assurances we could afford a night nanny if this all happens again!

Interesting thread :)

ooh lots of newbies, sorry you are all having such a hard time :(

re having other kids, well i have FIVE! the eldest was my worst sleeper of the lot and then the next two werent great either, then we had ds4 who was AMAZING a baby that slept, he spoilt us! and now we have dd who is ALMOST 6mths and her sleeping is haphazard but copable with in the main.

we have had a few rough weeks, esp with daytime naps but they seem better the last few days, and she has her first tooth and the second one is almost through as well so i think her naff sleeping is teething related, i have been giving her calpol and teething powder, the poweder def helps she loves it!

those of you with dummy issues, we went through this and now at 6mths she is quite good at keeping it most of the time and i am hoping once we loose the swaddle........ that she will learn to find and put it in herself...... but am thinking thats a bit off yet as there is no way she will sleep without being swaddled.

i am finding she is generally quite good from 8pm-11pm, then feed then sleeps till 4ish but sometimes needs the dummy before then, has a feed at 5ish and then sleep is a bit haphazard with needing the dummy and sometimes a pat to keep her asleep.

our other issue is that in the day and the evening she sleeps in the carrycot ont he bugaboo, but she is too big, too long for it, but i am loathe to chage it tothe pushchair seat incase she then doesnt nap/sleep int he evenigns and i cant put her upstairs in the evening yet as ds4 is still in our room and she may wake him? and also she sometiems needs the dummy put in and thats easy to do when she is downstairs int he pram, i dont want to have to dash up the stairs all the time.

anyhow i will just say this that even the crappest of the crap sleepers get htere eventually, our ds1 did as did the next two boys and they now sleep really well, they are 11, 8, 6 and then ds4 is 3 and generally a good sleeper. so i am just holding onto that thought that they all get their eventually and that is without controlled crying/cry it out etc. just lots of gentle encouragement and persuasion and trying to establish a routine as they got older etc.

Oh 4madboys your posts do cheer me up. DS has just woken up after 45 minutes AGAIN and I am just so fed up with it all. Seeing you say that he will improve eventually gives me hope!

Hello all, sorry to see so many new people have had to join us. Let's hope some of us can move on soon

We have a 3.3 yr gap btw and it has been great, dd1 is (mostly) fab with dd2 and very self sufficient. I've neglected the poor thing a lot :(. Dh is also 46 this year so I'd say no particular hurry on his account Count.

I had awful pg insomnia. At one point I sobbed on the shoulder of the pharmacy assistant in Boots when she refused to sell me any sleeping tablets, even herbal ones.

Camping was good btw. Dd2 was no worse than usual though it was a bugger trying to get her and dd1 both asleep in the same space. And everyone did a pitying look at me when she kept waking in the evening and telling me they did CC...

Dd2 is going in the office her own room tonight. We'll see how that goes.

oh meant to say i was away at the wkend, the first night was dreadful and my mum helpfully as i was trying to get her to back to sleep for the millionth time (she kept going to sleep and waking after ten mins obviously freaked at the change in surroundings) said i was just making it hard work for myself and i should just leave her to cry yada yada yada......

we ended up having a huge row (she disagrees with my parenting and us having 5 kids, thinks we make life too hard for ourselves...) but in the end agreed to disagree and then on the next night in the hotel at the wedding she actually stayed int eh room wiht dd and ds4 whilst they slept and thankfully dd DID sleep like a dream the second night, i think it was teeth and change of venue that freaked her the first night.

so i have heard all the 'i did cc, i gave mine weetabix at 6 wks to fill them up, blah blah blah' whatever, i will do things my way and as i have four older ones who appear to be turning out just fine, i think i must be doing an ok job

good luck bumper!

bigkids they do eventually improve i promise, ds1 didnt sleep through until he was three years old and we had ds2 by that time!

i had to pmsl at someone asking me WHAT we did differently (sex wise) to get a girl after four boys, quite frankly with four kids we did nothing differently and given how little sex we were having i am amazed i got pregnant again (but i seem to be very fertile) but just the suggestion that we must be at it like rabbits and trying all different techniques made me pmsl, sex is way down the list of priorities once you have a bunch of kids, sleep is MUCH more important, thats not to say i dont like sex and we do, but we realise that this phase is very much one where its important to get all the sleep you can and you get a sex life back eventually, as our five kids proves

am having a bit of a nightmare. For the last two nights DD is waking every 15 minutes or so, screaming her head off. I thought it was her teeth (I'm guessing, she's my first and has no teeth as yet) and gave her calpol and a homeopathic remedy but it made no difference. She eventually came in to bed with me last night but that made no difference either. She just wants to be held all the time - and drops off immediately if I do that - like when she was newborn. She's been worse this evening than last although seems to be settling a little bit now (presumably because she's just knackered). Any ideas as to what's going on? This is really bad, even for her. I'm also having to walk her four hours a day to get naps so I can't really be up all through the night as well.

Any suggestions would be most appreciated, the end of my tether is very much in sight..

"end of my tether is very much in sight."

YY, I said this to DH (who travels so much I'm a loan parent for most of the month) who said, "No you're not." I burst into tears. If only I had known then how much worse it would get. I feel like every time I get to the end of my tether I have to frantically manufacture more of it just to stay there.

Ok now I need to go back through the thread to see what rules you are all following.

A quick question though: Do you PU/PD or do you just let your DC cry and keep shh/patting them? DD always ends up passing out in my arms when I try to PU/PD even though I put her down the moment she stops crying.

Kitty that sounds awful. :(

Could she be ill? They get a bit more clingy when unwell, don't they - ear infection? Might explain the screaming? Maybe get her checked out at the doc's?

It sounds like you really need to get some help - walking four hours a day plus being up all night is going to make you completely exhausted. Do you have any friends or relatives nearby who could take her for an hour or two so you can sleep? Or even a local babysitter/mother's help?

Comrade I tried PU/PD once and it just got DS really agitated and didn't make him go to sleep. So since then have always just comforted him in the cot by any means possible - shhing, patting, cuddling, gently jiggling him back and forth, putting my face next to his etc.

Someone upthread was asking about night feeds. We used a sleep consultant at 6 months who was adamant DS needed fully night weaning. I was a bit dubious about this - maybe that's why it didn't work. Anyway, now he's 8 months and going longer between feeds in the daytime, and eating more etc, I feel a bit better about reducing night feeds. We used the method whereby you reduce the duration of the feed (if you bf - if ff, reduce bottle size) over consecutive nights. First night 10 minutes, second night 7 minutes, etc. We did it more gradually, I think. Then comfort back to sleep as above.

We did manage to eliminate feeds between 11 and 6 for about a week but ruined it by letting him cry at bedtime for a few nights as part of gradual withdrawal - I never left his side but even that traumatised him and he got really clingy for a while.

TBH I am dubious about night weaning as a sleep training method. DS still woke up and I still had to shh/pat him back to sleep, so didn't really make much difference to my nights! Maybe it works for some babies though.

I think you're right regarding nightweaning working for some babies. My DD wakes up and needs me to get her back to sleep. The feed isn't what she's waking up for.

I think that's why you see so many posts on MN saying "I need to stop feeding her to sleep" because once they no longer need/crave that to sleep then you can work on the next step of self settling. Well, that's my theory anyway.

Thanks for the tip re PU/PD. She just gets hysterical in her cot and is calm the second she is picked up.

Yes, I agree. Depends entirely on whether your child is hungry at night or not, and only you know that. My DS was like comrade's - woke every hour and needed to suck to get back to sleep. In our case, full night weaning was the only way to begin teaching him to sleep on his own - and we had a three hour and a four hour spell last night! If he was hungry, fed then fell asleep for three hours I'd happily still be doing it!

Well he went down ok last night, but woke at 9.30 and was inconsolable again. At 10.15 we gave up all other methods and I fed him to sleep in our bed, he slept pretty well then. DH is just worrying that he?ll start getting used to it (I don?t think he?s quite mentioned rods yet though) but he?s just as incapable of leaving him to cry either so I?m not sure what else we can do.

Oh and it?s our 10th wedding anniversary today. We were supposed to be going out for a meal on Saturday night ? our first night out together since he was born. But if he?s still teething like this we can?t go, it?s not fair on his babysitter.

Ahh, happy anniversary, Cosmosis! Fingers crossed for you that you get your night out.

Well, I was up much of the night ... because DS randomly slept from 8:30pm 'til 5:30am and I was awake from 2am worried there was something wrong with him!!!

Bloody typical. Bet he never does it again. Good job I went to bed at 9!

Fed him at 5:30 (boobs were about to spontaneously combust) and he went back to sleep until nearly 7am!

count! now you know how i felt the other week

so pleased to read that!

Count, fabulous news. I've had spontaneously combusting boobs once - the sheets took the brunt. I long for that sensation again.

Comrade, fancy going into business manufacturing tether? We could sell to mumsnetters. I'm sure it would be a hit in Dragons Den.

Have become an insomniac - think somehow it improves my patience in the night. By day, however, I am the nutty woman that people see walking a pram round the park in her pyjamas, laughing hysterically at everything.

Yay Count!

can I join? have 8mo dts. fed up of looking on MN sleep threads about "dreadful sleepers" who wake every 4 hours. If only! Then I find those with babies like mine, who wake every 1-2 hours (or worse), are all hiding in here

is there some developmental leap around 8mo? our early nights have improved this last week, with dt1 actually falling asleep in her cot the last 3 nights. (previously I had fed her to sleep, but she's biting too much when tired, so I've been rocking her, which involved backache for me and crying for her. so now, after feeding/rocking dt2, I put her in her cot and lie next to her stroking and holding her down and singing. she cried, it was heartbreaking, but no more than she would in my arms and went to sleep!)

night waking remains the same (every 1-2 hours, and have to sleep in my arms from about 1am or I get no sleep) but naps have got worse. they normally have 3 30minute naps a day, and I can rock them to sleep for at least one of them and pop in their cot so I get time to shower. but this last week I can't transfer to their cot without waking them.

finally, may I offer some hope as a welcome gift? my ds1 woke every 40 minutes from about 6 weeks old till 10/11 months. seriously - his sleep cycle was 40 minutes and he couldn't resettle himself. suddenly something clicked and he went to waking on 2 or 3 times a night! he kept this pattern up till about 15 months, and spontaneously started sleeping through, and has done ever since (barring nightmares and illnesses). so corners may be turned quickly and without warning.