9 months in and its getting worse....

[GEM33]

Im back again to moan. I just need some tea and sympathy please ;-( Im feeling so awful. I feel like my life has completely stopped. I dread night times. My relationship is suffering. We are arguing loads. I have no energy. I cant see light at the end of this sleepless tunnel and I am absolutely DREADING going back to work. Oh and Im totally skint.

DD is now hitting 9 months. She has been waking hourly every night of her life since about 2-3months old. She is a complete boobmonster.

over the last 2 months it has gradually got worse. Now she doesnt just wake hourly, she wakes 10-20 times a night. She started sleeping on her side and then falling off her side and waking herself up and she cant self settle. even when i get her to fall asleep without boob (rare) she almost always needs boob to get to sleep. Apart from waking so many times, now she has started having 1-2 hours awake time at night ---like now. Dh is upstairs rocking her for me while I have come down to get away before I strangle someone. (figure of speech, obviously Im not seriously going to strangle anyone).

I cant go out in the evenings as from 7pm I am pretty much tied to the bed getting dd back to sleep. we have been co sleeping until last week when we decided to put her in her cot with the side off by the bed. ok so still kind of co sleeping.

dh and I are having mega arguements as we are so tired.

I was supposed to go back to work after 6 months as we cant really afford me having this time off but I just couldnt hack work right now being so sleep deprived. My only life line has been dd's morning nap when i get 1-2 hours extra sleep if im lucky. When i dont get this nap with her I feel like a total zombie.

Now I am on the 3 month count down to go back to work. I am a shift worker. I just dont know how I am going to survive. I am seriously dreading it.
My zest for life is slowly deteriorating. I used to be a sex maniac (I know! even up to a few months ago i still was) but now I just live for the thought of sleep and try and stay in bed after i settle dd. It means I see less and less of dh.

I am totally unsupported by my own family and when I try and explain to people what dd is like at night its like they have no understanding of how sleep deprived I am. Then they come out with all this advice, the ones without kids are the worst. When we try all these techniques like pick up put down or cc or stay in the room method, alter the distance we sleep from her, stick to routines, dont stick to routines, etc etc, something else happens like, she gets a cold or it'll work for so long then she gets worse. I dont have the patience to try anything most of the time and just go for the quickest easiest route (boob/rock) because I cant physically move sometimes.
Anyway, I'll shut up moaning now. Ive shared this and its been cathartic. Thanks for reading.
ps;I do actually totally adore dd and we have some amazing times in the day. I dont want to sound like a total bloody washed out miserable old trout. (although thats exactly how i feel at the moment).

Have a and you have my total sympathy. Have a read of this on the 9 month sleep regression and 12 Alternatives for the All Night Nurser might help too.

My DD started waking up loads in the night around 9 months. At 3am one buggy my fuzzy brain realised that she was wriggling around so much she was getting her feet caught in the bars of her cot. I filled the gaps with soft toys and it improved. She still probably wakes once or twice, but she is ff, so DH can deal with one of those. It's the 5.30 ish wake up that wakes up DS too that I dread.

As I'm sitting here with a finally quiet baby who we eventually left to cry it out tonight I truly sympathise with you. Ds has always been an awful sleeper. And people tut tut and say things like, "yes, I'm also tired, ds was poorly last night do we were up". And I KNOW that one night bad sleep us not the same. We had had made huge progress with broken nights only every 2 or 3 and then 3 weeks of good sleep that I'm still struggling with the shock of our regression.

Sorry, shouldn't make this about me. Just wanted you to know you are not alone.

Lots of sympathy from me. DD was the same. (except the long naps - 30mins max here)

She's now 14 months and I'm getting a longer stretch of sleep at night (usually 5 hours in a row) without me having done anything to change it. All efforts to change things earlier just didn't work - I think with some babies you just have to wait it out....

Some things that helped me cope:

Chocolate lots of it!
Just lying down on the floor with her and resting for 10mins while she crawled all over me. It's surprising how much better you feel.
Walking outside EVERY DAY rain or shine.

And most importantly - time. This too shall pass. You will sleep again. :)

Have you seen the thread about Andrea Grace? There might be some helpful tips in there about how to handle this?

As an aside, I know people are being helpful when they say it's the 4/6/9/12 month sleep regression, but you sound pretty down about your DD's sleeping and I think practical advice is what's needed. There are things you can do to reduce the night wakings and reliance on the breast to get her back to sleep - IF that's what you want to do. Please take a look at that thread.

Poor you. Could you try getting dh to go in and cuddle her instead, with you and the boobs in a separate room? We did this with ds at 13 months and it worked very well. Yes some crying but with a parent, not alone. Try and tank her up with milk in the day as much as possible first. I do think in your case her boobaholic habit needs to be broken, for all your sakes . We did it when dh had the week off work..

thanks all. Youve all said helpful stuff. we are trying to break the cycle with dh rocking her instead of me feeding her back to sleep but she just wakes up properly and stays awake for 2 hours, like my op and now for example!
sometimes i ignore her little cough cries and she will go back to sleep but i recognise the different noises she makes as, cough, theres a chance she might self settle, and cough cry no chance.
she's a wilful little bugger i know that. i think i'll just have to keep hope that as someone has said here, one day, sleep WILL come.........and when it does there will be a MASSIVE post on here with the title HOORAY.
UNtil then, im just going to prop open my burning aching eyes and read some more threads ;-(

I don't have any advice about the sleeping at all, but I wanted to offer some reassurance about going back to work.

I was absolutely exhausted from when DTs were 7 months old. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to go to work all day having been up feeding them all night. I went back when they were 12 months, and within a month I felt so so much more human. The thing to remember is that you're not taking on a job in addition to what you do now, you're swapping x hours of childcare for x hours of work. I find work so much less mental effort than the constant mental effort of keeping two babies occupied, happy and most stressfully, safe. I also get time onthe commute when I am alone :) My brain turns off, I am responsible for only myself, and if I want to walk a different way to the office, or pop into a shop for 5 mins, or take the stairs instead of the lift, I can :) Such small things make such a difference to my mental state, and although I am knackered from lack of sleep, I am not nearly so exhausted from the 24/7 nature of staying at home.

It might sound like I don't do anything stressful at work. I do - I manage staff, manage a fairly large budget, and make technically complicated decisions all day. IMO that is all much much less exhausting than looking after small people who seem intent on hurting themselves and need all of my attention right now and then none of it for 30 seconds than then all of it for 10 minutes and none for 3 minutes!

That was a long ramble. But I hope it makes you feel less anxious about going back to work. It might be a good thing, not something to dread :)

Hi op. Just wanted to say I totally feel for you. Ds1 was a horrific sleeper for quite a while but he did eventually get better of his accord. In hindsight I think we should have tried some techniques to change his sleep earlier (he was over 2 when he finally started to sleep all night from a low point of waking every hour and a half between 3 months and 9 months). Hopefully some of the suggestions from other posters will help you.

Hang in there. It will get better at some point!

HAPPYASASANDBOY AND WOOKIEWOO- thanks for your posts!! Happy, you made me laugh, yes, I can totally see that even a stressful job (mine is pretty stressful also) would be much easier than looking after little people!! I really appreciated your post.
Wookie, yeah, I have this constant battle in my head. One day I'll say to DH, right, tonight we are just going to leave her in the cot when she wakes or right, tonight we are doing pick up put down then night time comes and with one eye open when the cry comes i just lift my top up and shove her on the tit quick to get more sleep!! every day i think, shit, should i really be doing something now before it continues or gets worse, then i'll read something that says its normal for a baby to wake and nothing wrong with continued night feeds etc. I'm just not strong willed enough for sleep training right now. then another part of me says, well she will sleep through when she is ready surely.............
(if im still posting on the sleep thread when she 16 that she wakes every hour, please shoot me).