Misery loves company: anyone want to join me on a support thread for those desperate and demoralised by their 8/9/10 mo sleep?

[Suchanamateur]

Bloody sleep regression. It's like 4 months all over again but worse because it felt (briefly) like we were getting somewhere. Feck. Anyone else want to share tales of woe or is it (a) just me or (b) way too depressing to post about..?

[ElphabaTheGreen]

Has she been checked for reflux, Needles? There's also the nine month sleep regression which could be making her worse than ever at the moment plus separation anxiety. Both/either could explain the wanting to not be put down. Dreaming is the reflux expert around here.

Right. I'll go start the new fred, then, shall I?

[NeedlesCuties]

:(

DD is nearly 10 months now and the night wakings are very frequent (usually hourly) and they almost always involve me bfing her. Had mentioned on this thread that we'd brought her cot back into our room and taken the side off so she could co-sleep with me.

Past few nights she's been crawling around when half-asleep, waking herself up, waking me up and just generally no one is sleeping. She's also a very light sleeper, so lifting her or making noise = eyes open, awake.

In my wisdom I decided that tonight I'd put her cot side back on, but keep her cot beside our bed. DH is now upstairs with her and she's screaming, wants to be carried around asleep, doesn't want to be lowered into her cot alone etc etc.

How in the name of all that is good can we settle her? Just leave her to cry? Take away the cot side and co-sleep forever?

He's sitting on floor beside her, holding her hand and stroking her back, but she's screaming her head off :(

Am panicked a bit as DS was never like this as a baby, he always slept in his own cot, so she's really throwing a curveball to us.

Help me please >waves little flag

[HearMyRoar]

45mins! Amateur! I consider anything under an hour to be pretty good going round here. Dd is currently specialising in the 3 hour wake up complete with kicking, screaming and on one memorable occasion waking me up by standing over me and slapping me I'm the face

It sounds like whatever the eventual sleep training result is this has been a valuable learning experience for your dh. :o

[ElphabaTheGreen]

Ride the mo fo out, DH!

Best watch out in case he joins us on here. Be wary of any newbie joining us complaining that he's been woken two or three times a night EVERY NIGHT for the past THREE nights and that it's KILLING him.

Poor Mr Elph. I shouldn't poke fun as he is really very good 99% of the time, and his efforts do appear to be making headway for this present phase of the moon but he has dropped some clangers over the past few days.

[PoppyAmex]

Elph your post just made me laugh out loud.

I'm with Stitch on this one, let him ride it out

[StitchAteMySleep]

Elph, no let him experience the truth of sleep training and deprivation. So easy to be judgemental when it is not you.

[ElphabaTheGreen]

Well I'm finding it all mildly amusing to watch DH having to work out the stealth techniques that I have honed to MI6 levels over the past several months.

I think he turns on every light in the house to make the three metre journey from our bed to DS's cot. He assumes I must have owl-like night vision since I have never turned a single light on in the interests of keeping everything as boring and unstimulating as possible. I'm toying with explaining the principles of pupil constriction in response to light, thereby making subsequent night vision more difficult, but we'll see.

He also sounds like he's moving furniture whenever he makes to leave (before DS is heavily asleep...silly man! What do you think the outcome there might be?) I know every creak of that bedside chair and with my Shoalin monk-like array of bodily contortions can ascend with nary a sound. I then skip back down the hallway like there's landmines underfoot. I'm sure he finds every creaky floorboard.

HA! And he's just begged me to come in and feed him back to sleep because he's tired and is bored sitting there after a whole exhausting 45 minutes! Cheeky bloody man!! DS is just lying or sitting there, intermittently whimpering irritatedly so no, DH. No I will not. Or I'll accuse you of letting him wrap you around his little finger and see how fair and accurate you think that is you tit.

[ElphabaTheGreen]

With the cabbage leaves I've been stuffing down my bra I probably smell less like delicious milk and more like not-so-appetising sauerkraut!

He's in a separate room so unless he's got the olfactory prowess of a bloodhound we should be OK.

One wake up so far. DH laid him back down, he muttered quietly for a few minutes (baby obscenities, I should imagine) then went back to sleep

[HearMyRoar]

You could try wearing lots of tops if you are sleeping near by. I found dd woke up to feed less when I started wearing a bra and a t-shirt in bed. I guess it stops all that smell of milky goodness getting out, otherwise I think it must be a bit like sleeping next to a delicious pudding or something :o

[ElphabaTheGreen]

Depressing Poppy! I just flipped the thread - I'm the longest standing regular (joined day 2 of the thread), followed by Hear (joined day 4) unless SuchAnAmateur, the OP, is still out there somewhere

[PoppyAmex]

Hey everyone

Just noticed we're hovering close to the 1000th post - yay or depressing?

Elph is DS feeling better?

Dreaming I think you should get DT2 to have stern words with DT1. On the bright side, at least one of them sleep. (joking)

DD had a few nights with... ONE waking! She was awake for an hour or two and then was up at 5:30am but it gave me consecutive hours of sleep, so I wasn't complaining.

Then it went crazy again as she's teething. Now she's waking up 2 or 3 times and getting up at 3am for the day!

She has done this for three nights and I can't convince her to go back to sleep and I can't even feed her back to sleep because we succeeded with night weaning and she won't take it. This SUCKS.

[HearMyRoar]

How about you just play it by ear. Try staying in the spare room but with the understanding that if he doesn't settle and is clearly in need of liquid because of the fever you go in and feed. My main concern about leaving it when he was ill would be dehydration if he won't take water.

[ElphabaTheGreen]

Aaaaaand he's just had to be collected from nursery with a fever, snot and horrible cough.

I'm hoping against hope that he emulates last night's pattern, but WTF do we do if he reverts to screaming?? DH says we have to continue but that just strikes me as horribly cruel After the last few days I've had I know I wouldn't want to be left to scream

[StitchAteMySleep]

[ElphabaTheGreen]

Well...with earplugs and spare room I had the best night's sleep I've had in a very, very long time, and DH reported that DS woke up twice and went straight back to sleep as soon as he laid him back down on both occasions!



I'm not going to get excited yet. Hope for the best but expect the worst is the way to the least disappointment in these situations.

(Elphaba crosses fingers, throws salt over her left shoulder and sees if anyone's selling rabbit feet on eBay.)

[StitchAteMySleep]

With dd1 I stopped co-sleeping first so that she was secure in her own bed, then dropped the night feeds. Dropping the co-sleeping involved her attaching to a jellycat bunny for cuddles and a singing seahorse for calming music first whilst I breastfed. Then bedtime in cot with bunny and seahorse. Once she got used to that she would turn on the seahorse herself if it went off and listen to it until she fell asleep. If she woke in the night the bunny and seahorse combo would help her settle again quickly (still does at nearly 4).

For dd2 I find she prefers her Winnie the Pooh lightshow and a tagged blanket for settling. Still doing the night feeds.

[ElphabaTheGreen]

Oh, and re: night feeds and co-sleeping, we've done it in one fell swoop here. I figure it's like ripping a plaster off quickly. If you do it in stages you just prolong the misery for everyone.

[ElphabaTheGreen]

Oh, I'm on antibiotics the size of torpedoes four times a day. The OOH GP had barely finished his morning coffee I was onto him so quick on Saturday morning. It definitely is in both boobs. The whole top of the left one is red, and the excruciating pain when feeding DS has externally presented itself as a blossoming red streak on the right. What the bloody hell did women do about mastitis before antibiotics? Do you think they died from it? Or was it less common because scheduled feeding and working mothers (main culprits for causing mastitis) are only a 19th century onwards phenomenon? Horrible.

[DreamingOfAFullNightsSleep]

Bloody Hell elphsounds super grim. That's just like my Dt1, he breaks us by night 6 of sleep training but maybe i should take the plunge and have another bash. For me, I feel its crap for Dt2 and dd who are mostly fine at night to have such a crappy exhausted mother.

I tried to put Dt1 in his cot at 4:30am this morning. He had had a bf and fallen asleep in bed with me, but he had also just fallen out of our bed so i was feeling guilty and desperate to end the sodding co sleeping. You guesses it- woke up and THAT was it. Plus he howled and woke dd, so both up by 4:45. Little Dt2 slept til 7:30. Poppet!

So, to tackle the night feeds or the co sleeping first here?!

Hope your boobs are feeling better elph, antibiotics are the only thing that'll shift mastitis. A blocked duct is much more minor. Get thee to out of hours!!

[ElphabaTheGreen]

I think a penny might have dropped that boob is now off limits at night. He's been cluster-feeding like a newborn since 3pm!

Following a debilitating temp of 39.8 this afternoon, I am in the spare room with earplugs tonight. Sigh.

[ElphabaTheGreen]

Yes - expressing at night and in a hot bath and feeding DS if he looks even slightly interested. DH is off out to get a cabbage and I've begged some of mum's super duper arthritis pain relief. I figure DS is big enough now that it won't be an issue. And it might make him sleepy

[StitchAteMySleep]

Elphaba, have you been expressing?

Seriously it will get better if your DH takes over, dd1 was worse second and third night, but fourth night in turned a corner. She never took the water either, but at least if you offer if he is thirsty he might take it. Get some ear plugs so that you don't have to go through the trauma of listening to his distress. I hated doing it to dd1, but I was working ft as a teacher and just had no reserves left.

[ElphabaTheGreen]

Thanks gals. I do wish I could ride the mo fo out because I also agree that they come to it in their own time, just like walking and talking.

Stitch I do hope it takes a week but as with every other time we've tried sleep training he was worse last night than he was on the first night. One more wake up and an hour and a half more screaming on top of what we had the previous night. I wish he'd read about pretty much every other baby who is loads better by second night then virtually sleeping through by nights three or four. I'm just so worried it's going to go the way of every other time we've ever tried any sleep training i.e. he just gets worse and worse until we can't cope any more and it just becomes barbaric to continue, or he gets sick and goes completely back to square one.

DH went in and did the sitting with him for a couple of the wake-ups last night and he did seem slightly less distressed than when it was me withholding boobs, so he's going to do all the sitting with him now. DS won't take water off DH any more than he'll take it off me. He just sits there clutching his cup and wailing. Still smarting over DH's twattish comments yesterday so maybe if it doesn't work I'll at least get an apology

I feel horrible. I think the mastitis is in both boobs so I haven't bounced back after a day like I normally do. Lying here looking at the lovely weather outside and feeling very sorry for myself

[HearMyRoar]

I also wanted to say that my dd dropped her night feeds on her own. She went from around 6 feeds a night to 2-3 pretty much over night. We then had about 3 weeks of hellishness while she got used to the change. She would wake in the night hungry or just unsettled but not want to nurse so would then scream her socks off for an hour or so. We ended up feeding her water and bread and humous at 3 am on a good few occasions as this was the only thing that settled her.

She seems to have got through this now and things are better most nights. We still offer the bread and humous right before bedtime to get her through which seems to help. She hasn't had more then 3 feeds for quite a while now. Last night she just had a bedtime feed and this morning she hasn't had her morning feed which is a new one to drop. She is in a great mood this morning though which is lovely.

So, the moral of the story is even if you wait till he drops feeds on his own you will probably still have a period of screaming to get through. I guess the only difference is you might feel better for not pushing it on him but the result is pretty much the same I think.

[HearMyRoar]

Oh elph that sounds horrible! However, if you can't cope then doing the right thing for you is probably also the right thing for your ds. Not because he has you wrapped round his little finger (what tosh, he is a baby for heaven's sake!) or even because he needs to learn how to sleep (I firmly believe they do work it out on their own eventually...) but simply because he needs a mum who can cope with life and isn't too exhausted from being up all night to enjoy being with him the rest of the time.

Though saying that you need a solution that works for you, whether that is cc, gradual retreat, or riding that mo fo out. Its no good if the cure leaves you more stressed than the problem.

Oh, and in my opinion your dh lost any right to an opinion on the matter when he pissed of out and left you to deal with it alone. So he can sod right off with his ultimatums!

Humph! Well, that's my unasked for 'tuppence worth on the matter :o