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?

Wow count that's great!

Kitty, re: the hysterical bit during the day, I've been there. You just get a bit resigned to it at night, the worst bit I find is getting up in the morning, that's when it hits.

First night in own room made absolutely no difference, good or bad, same with all the other changes we have made! She woke up at 2.30, dh settled her, then 4.30 for a feed. Then awake at 7 but happy to play in her cot for half an hour, exactly like dd1. Dd1 woke up twice though

One of the annoying things dd2 does now is wake up at least once, often twice, in the evening, just needing resettling. Anyone know what I can do? It's a pita now as we can't really leave her on the bed any more, the cot is really low and the bars aren't wide enough to put your arms through, so I am having to contort myself into all kinds of positions in order to pat her, without looking her in the eye, but so I can still peep at what she is doing, while trying to avoid cutting off a major artery.

cosmosis congratulations on your anniversary :)

sorry you can't go out tonight. have you thought about lunch at the weekend? dp and I did this and left the kids with friends for our anniversary last month. it was lovely, and easier for our friends to entertain awake children than force them to sleep.

bumper out of interest, why do you avoid looking your dd in the eye? I do try and look the their eyes, assuming it will be comforting for them. should I not?

So I can't see the pleading I think she gets distracted by us. When she sleeps on the bed dh or I duck down behind a pillow (I know, I know...) as she is worse when she sees us.

Just spent 2 hours trying to get both kids down. Dd2 is being a nightmare to get to sleep since she has been crawling. I tried transferring her from the bed, sound asleep, to the cot in the spare room, BIG mistake! And dd1 has been trantruming and waking dd2 up - arrrrghh! And I am going to have to go to bed myself soon. This is no life :(

bumper i had to do that with the boys and do it with merryn as well, i basically end up with my head under the duvet, as if she sees me she is all smiley and wants to be awake and play

does anyone else have a baby who is sick really easily if they cry, we have had a few evenings, tonight being one of them, where merryn has been harder to settle and despite being rocked etc she will still cry and within minutes ie two/three mins of crying, she coughs, gags and then is sick! there is no way we could ever leave her to cry, or do controlled crying, not that i could, but if she is sick that easily!

i think partly tonight it is because she has a bit of a cough, so just when her sleeping and settling was improving a bit we will go backwards.....

bumper how good is dd2 at crawling, only at that stage we had one side of our bed against a wall and then i built a 'barrier' around them of pillows/duvet etc so that if they woke they wouldnt be able to crawl/roll off the bed, well i would hear them in time (over the moniter) before they managed to get over the pillows etc? worth a try? oh we also had one of those bed guards like for kids beds, but once they started trying to pull up to stand that went straight away! but tbh we just got a futon in the end so if they did fall they didnt have far to fall!

mama i think eye contact soothes some babies and stimulates others, you will know with yours what works :) xx

and much kudos, dealing with poor sleeping twins! i have five but have had them one at a time,the thought of twins fills me with horror! (they run in my family as well)

Like you say, we usually hear her before she crawls very far and we do barricade her in. But she has to go down in the cot at some point in the evening. Should I just wait till she is in a deeper sleep?

Dd isn't sick from crying but she does seem to be sick when she has a cough or a cold. We had weeks of it, you have my sympathies.

Hi there Mama - do I remember you from the original newborn sleep nightmares thread? Sorry to hear you're having the same issues as the rest of us, and twins too. Can't believe your DS1 woke every 40 minutes until 10 mo - how on earth did you survive?

I use exactly the same method as you to get my DS to sleep at bedtime - comforting in the cot. I found that the screaming crying reduced over time. Now I usually have about 10 minutes of mild protest and mad thrashing about before he succumbs.

Bumper I'm with you on the cot gymnastics. Tonight I had to put the dropside down and sort of flatten myself on top of DS with my cheek against his (although that does make me go wibbly still - it's all soft and pillowy). Depending on his mood it's either shushing, snoring noises (!) or singing - tonight a couple of rounds of 'Hush Little Baby' did the trick.

Mama I noticed the same with naps at 8 mo. I rock/cuddle DS for those, and until a couple of weeks ago I could wait for him to go all still and dump him pretty haphazardly in the cot straight away without disturbing him. Now more often than not he wakes and cries, so I have to lower him gently gently and do the flattening thing described above. A couple of times he's even insisted on sleeping on me - for the first time since the newborn days (except he weighs twice as much and has really long legs). There is a big developmental spurt at 37 wks and in some babies triggers a massive sleep regression but for us it's only seemed to affect naps - night time sleep has suddenly improved dramatically.

Having said that, after last night's triumph I'm bracing myself for disappointment tonight. Surely a repeat performance is out of the question ...

Yup, it was. Woke screaming at 11pm. Giving quick feed to calm him down :(

We seem to have one good night, one bad. Last night was the bad one - he woke every hour again. I don't understand why! Although I suppose there is no reason for it.

DH and I had an argument at four am, he thinks all we've done is swap one dependency for another. So before he fed to sleep. Now he needs one of us hanging over the cot giving him a hug. We don't know where to go from here!

Well that serves me right for being Miss Smuggy McSmugpants, awake from 2.15, until I gave in and gave him a breastfed @ 4.45am, which he fed on for about 2 mins and went to sleep until 7, little rascal, and I know he didnt even get any milk because I have to use nipple shields and there was no milk at all left in there when he had finished. While awake he went from crying to making his happy noises to crying again, while I lay there praying he would just feckin go back to sleep, he kept sucking his thumb as if he would then waking up again. Lets see what tonight brings.................................................

count I'm impressed by your memory after months of sleep deprivation! yes, I dropped into the first thread, then just gave up and spent the next 6 months sleeping with a baby in each arm. sorry you didn't have a good one last night. mine woke at 8.00, 9.30, 10.30 then not till 12.30!!!! (after that they were in with me so I don't know, but feeling quite hopeful with a full 2 hour stretch in cots. not sure how many weeks we're at - too tired to do the maths, maybe 35? if night time sleep continues to improve I will put up with bad naps. but it's a bit hit and miss, some nights are better than others.

4mad everyone tells me twins are great, but I think that's crazy. I love them, and it's cute when they make each other laugh, but I would rather have babies one at a time. humans aren't equipped with enough arms for twins.

bigkids I think some babies wake because they're hungry in which case they need feeding, some wake because they fancy a snack in which case night weaning helps, but some just wake because they come to the end of a sleep cycle and don't know how to go back on they're own. I think this is the hardest type, my ds1 was like this. it's very easy to row at 4am when you haven't slept in months :(

Well last night we reached a new low.

Put him to bed at 7 as usual. He seemed happy and calmish and the CM said he?d had no teeth pain all day, so we left him chattering to himself. Half an hour later, still chatting, then it went quiet so we thought he?d gone to sleep. Then he started crying a bit, so I went up to try and settle him. Crying got progressively worse, we swapped over and I made tea. He was now screaming. This is now an hour and a half after he went to bed. We left him to scream for 10 mins while we ate tea. I went back up, almost got him to sleep when some fucker outside started being rowdy (and we live on a really quiet street, so this is unusual) and he got startled and re-commenced the screams. I lost the plot and slammed the door. DH took over. No joy, I took over again, gave him calpol and neurofen (though really don?t think teeth were the issue). Lost the plot again, slammed the door again, sat on the landing and cried and told DH I wanted to smother him and I wished we?d never had him and to leave him to cry. Went to bed in a sulk (it was now 9.30). thankfully DH was more patient than me and finally got him to sleep at 10.20. He woke after 40 mins and came in to bed with us. He still didn?t sleep brilliantly tbh. No idea what the issue was.

I am so ashamed of how I behaved, I just completely snapped ? but honestly 3hrs and 20 mins to get to sleep???? And then all you get is 40 mins???? Some fucking wedding anniversary that was.

Right, now that self centred winge is over, welcome mama, I have come across you a fair bit on the bfing section I think.

I don?t look in the eye either, he goes to sleep much quicker if you either look at him but with your eyes shut, or stare just above him with your eyes open. I think looking him in the eye keeps him alert. I have found he goes down easier when just staring at the white wall.

Lunch is a good idea, don?t know why we didn?t think of that! Busy both days this weekend, but maybe next. Instead of out on Sat we are going to do Waitrose dine in for a tenner and actually eat at the table

that was a tough night, poor you. I've found once they get to overtired, then it takes ages to get into a proper deep sleep, which is awful because it means you can't relax once they first go to sleep.

eating at a table and without children sounds very posh and lovely. candles and too?

Ha ha Cosmosis it was our second anniversary last week and we did m and s eat for a tenner but despite best intentions never made it to the table because you can't see the west wing from there . Another thing to institute before DS is too much older!

Hi everyone. Sorry to hear it was crap nights all round. Ours was actually fine in the end. DS settled after a 5-min feed and went to sleep in the cot by 11:50 with a bit of a jiggle. Then slept until about three, when he woke with a leaked nappy - that's three times this week!! FFS! Another 5-min feed and up at 6. So we had 3.5hrs, 3.5hrs and 2.5hrs - pretty respectable for him given it used to be 2hrs, 2hrs and then hourly after that.

Cosmosis I feel for you. Pretty much all of the worst moments from the last 8 months for me have involved sleep in some way. We've had nights like that and they suck ass. In fact, our wedding anniversary was similar this year. We did celebrate in the end with a nice pub lunch followed by taking DS to the aquarium. You will both get out together in the evening one day - that's what I tell myself anyway.

bigkids I feel for you too. I'll never know why DS woke so much between 4 and 8 months but since nothing we did really had an effect, coupled with the fact that things seem to have improved slightly on their own, I'm starting to think that it's mostly developmental and some babies are just super-sensitive to the various leaps and spurts etc. Doesn't really help I know!

count re the leaky nappies, have you tried going a size up?

Thanks for sympathy everyone. by spooky co-incidence a friend offered to have him so we can have lunch (Liz you're not reading this are you????) after I moaned at her a bit.

cosmosis I was there with you last night. I didn't slam doors because frustratingly ours don't slam but oh there was shouting, crying, leaving DD to cry, telling DH I was leaving him (he was at work 250 miles away). I too am monumentally ashamed and tonight when DD cried because she couldn't settle, I was overwhelmed with compassion and a guilt that is flooring me - how I could ever feel anything but compassion for my tiny, gorgeous girl? Today and tonight are much better, although she keeps rolling on to her front now and I fear I may not sleep because I'm so anxious about it.

hope everyone has a reasonable night.

Hello, I've been invited to join you all. Thank you! My baby wakes up every hour of the night. At about three months, he'd gradually started to only wake every two hours but now he's right back to every hour again. The worst of it is the only way he will sleep is to sleep with me in the bed but then I haven't got any room. My husband takes up all the rest of the room. So I spend all night trying to get my baby in the cot, then being woken up by him (tonight I haven't even had a chance to get to sleep) before the baby realises he doesn't want to be in the cot and he wants to be back with me. So then I bring him back in the bed and there's enough room for me to settle him back down with feeding but not enough room for me to sleep too. So I try and put him in his cot again... And it all begins again. I'm exhausted now. Just had a mini row with my husband over it but he doesn't see how he could possibly help me. Sorry for ranting. Can I be in the club too?

Hi michelle, good to see you over here. Sorry to hear things are bad :(

Is it possible for your DH to sleep somewhere else tempprarily? It sounds like co-sleeping is the only way your DS will settle at the moment, and if you're bf it makes sense for you to be in with him and not DH. Feel for you - four months is such a tricky time sleep-wise. Can you talk to DH about it? It's just a temporary measure - lots of people on this thread co-sleep for survival - at least for some of the night. Will DS settle in the cot in the evening? If so, could you get to bed early and get a few hours in before DH goes to bed?

We've had another good-ish night. 8:20pm-11:40, settled without a feed then slept until 4:30 (though DH might have settled him once in between - too bleary to remember). Feeding him now. Definitely feels like we've finally turned a corner

kitty how old is your DD? If she's rolling onto her tummy of her own accord that's okay isn't it? As long as you're not putting her down that way ... could be wrong but I was under the impression it was OK past a certain age. I've heard a few stories on here about babies who rolled onto their tummies and started sleeping better, so fingers crossed that happens for you.

Ahh, DH settled him at 1am. But still pretty hood

Good even