Misery loves company: riding the mo fo out into Part II

[ElphabaTheGreen]

In our last exciting instalments:

Needles was at breaking point with a screaming 10 mo DD

Hear had experienced the magic of ONE unbroken night!

Dreaming was continuing to confound all with her ability to manage three children on four or five minutes a night, thanks to DT the Terrible.

Stitch was still having her sleep eaten by...erm...Stitch.

Poppy was pondering how the actual fark she was going to manage a newborn on top of BabyAmex's night time shenanigans.

And the desperate Elphaba had turned night duties entirely over to DH with mastitic results.

Join us with your stories of misery and woe in this, the most sleep-deprived corner of MN!

four or five minutes' SLEEP a night is what Dreaming* is managing three children on.

Salut!

Not officially checked for reflux, although my DH is a doctor and doesn't think she has it I think she does, or something like it, so I've made an appt with her GP for next week.

I agree with the separation anxiety, as she's much more clingy during day too.

The truth of the matter is, she is just not a sleepy baby. Seriously I think that if I didn't put effort into getting her to nap or sleep then she really could just coast along and sleep a few hours in every 24. She just wants to PARTY!

DH is much more rigid than I am. Very keen to do CC, or CIO, and he can really switch off his mind for it to not trouble him. I'm much more of a wuss and can't listen to her cry.

Hello,limeflower here after a nc.

Elphaba,I've read one of your last posts on first fred and nearly fell off the chair laughing.Ouch,ouch,ouch for mastitis.I had it once,it's shit,painful and it strucks sooo quickly.Ibuprofen helps,it's anty-inflammatory unlike paracetamol.The doc at the hospital said that DS might not want to take anything from infected breast as the milk slightly changes the taste(goes salty or sumfink,can't remember).He was right,DS didn't want to take it.
Hope you'll recover quickly.

Poppy,how are you feeling?

Dreaming,any chance to separate the twins so the diabolic noisy one can wail express his voice uninterrupted for a while?

Sorry for dropping off the thread,not much time here as I've got 1000's of things to do (garden mostly so can't postpone)and I'm back to work.Working the nightshifts only,coming home to find out that little sod DS has woken up ONCE during the night and loudly requested to be taken to OUR bed.DH has complied of course so I'm booted out of my own fucking bed while DS sleeps spreadlike an eagle happily taking half of king size bed Am I suppose to move to his cot?

On the good side my friend has DS for a few hours so I can sleep without being interruptedyeeeeeeaaaah .First time I went to collect him he burst into tears when he saw me.
I can't believe that he managed to fuck up my sleeping so much that even if I have the opportunity to sleep undisturbed I still wake up every couple of hours wondering why I've slept for so long.

I just remembered one of the phrases that makes me howl with laughter "this shall too pass"...I can't believe I dreamt of a sibling for DS,I'm afraid he's going to be the only one...

Signing in zzz

Well Stitch finally went to bed at 10pm. She had two naps today which messed up her bedtime and is cutting another pre molar.

I also appear to have a tummy upset. I do not anticipate a great night.

We are back home now from my Aunt's, so at least I am in my own bed.

Ohh shiny new thread, good job Elph!

How's your DH holding up, Is it wrong that I feel slightly vindicated for you (albeit vicariously)?

I must say that, like yours, my DH is pretty good, but sometimes the only way to experience someone's shitty reality is to walk a mile in their sleep deprived shoes.

BaldLime I'm ok, considering the DD's new habit of waking up at 3am for the day. She's doing this every other day now, I might die.

I know exactly what you mean about broken sleep; the few times I slept in the guest room I woke up dozens of times. The little toads have us conditioned!

Stitch being back at home will help and she will sleep like an angel. You'll see!

I wonder if MiniHear has cracked it?

Hello everyone! Lovely new thread :o

Dd is currently down to 1 wake up and no feeding! She is only having an evening feed at the moment which has me all worried about calcium intake so maybe I will give some dairy a go. unfortunately her 1 wake up is a corker and involves screaming enough to wake the dead...thankfully we don't have any neighbours. I am thinking it must be the back teeth she has coming through so I am hopeful that we might get another full night once they are sorted. Gosh! :o

needles I seem to remember dd being similar at 10 months. I think that's about when I joined this thread. We just ended up getting her up if she wouldn't settle in the evening and watching Carl Sagan on YouTube. He has a very calming voice I find :o

Hope you feel a bit better for being home stitch

3am waking is the pits! Argh, poor poppy

Hear I get the feeling you're close to graduating from this thread

I was worried too, so I started DD on a multivitamin and because she's BLW'ed it also gives me some peace of mind when she's having a rare picky food day.

we got ten unbroken hours last night

Whaaaaat! Wow. How are things going tonight? I think you have just become my shining beacon of hope.

No change here. In fact separation anxiety at bed time and evening wake ups have made things even worse. But Elphaba, you have made my day. If he did it once he can do it again (and again) and if your DS can do it, so can ours

Elphaba,that's fantastic!Did you manage to sleep through?

Poppy,my deepest sympathy-3am sounds no fun.I was wondering how are you coping being pregnant(and tired) and looking after your DD.You're so right about walking in somebody's shoes-DH once entertained DS for a whole hour so I could have a lie-in.DS was at the stage of being alert but still too small to hold the attention for too long.By the time I went downstairs DH was sweaty-he ran out of ideas how to entertain DS despite claiming a couple of weeks earlier that this is easy-peasy.Yeah,right.

Hear,what do you do to get her back to sleep?

Stitch,I have the same with DS-if i let him sleep more during a day then it's hell at the bedtime.Premolars sound painful,ouch for MiniStitch.

I limited breastfeeding DS as I'm back to work-still intend to feed him for a while but once or twice a day.He's alright with that,reduced milk intake means eating more solids-we went to MIL today,he scoffed soup,whole lemon sole fillet and stuffed his face with strawberries-he ate 10 of them!Thank goodness I bought some more today but what a pity the don't last longer.

Anyway,wishing all of you peaceful night! :)

Wow Elphaba, brilliant stuff!

Improvements here too. Premolar has cut today and Stitch has just had her first feed since bedtime. Have had a lovely evening watching tv with DH and reading my book :)

Poppy, Stitch went through a middle of the night wake up phase at some point. I used to take her in the sitting room and cuddle her under a blanket in the dark with on the tv until she got sleepy. Have you got black out curtains?

What what what?! poppy, hear and elphaba, what fantastic news!!! And stitch I'm sure you too, once those ridiculous teeth are through.

It would be very wrong to say if you all graduate from this Fred and leave me I'll be miserable as sin wouldn't it?!

So, the clearly depressing news for me is I do have to Do Something and night wean isn't it? 9 wakeups before 10pm last night. He was basically being rocked to sleep, sleeping 5 min, waking again.. it is 10 days post MMR and both have the rash though, plus I ate more dairy chocolate so windy and unsettled Dt1 too. He never made it off a chest. Bloody fucking awful. He vomits if left to cry still, howls in the cot if you try to settle him there... Argh!! And he has been booted out of his and Dt2's room, months ago. Thin, crappy partition walls here though, you can hear him all over the house, never mind in Dt2's room.

Feeling very demoralized today. He won't have dh either.

Do you think if i paced/ rocked to stop him screaming and waking dd and Dt2 but to achieve night weaning that'd help, or just swap one sleep prop for another?

needles my dh is a doctor too, a GP. I have a good friend who is a paediatrician. I am a paediatric physio. Didn't stop us getting to 11 months before finally accepting Dt1 has reflux, despite both being prescribed gaviscon at 14 days old (though twas mainly for Dt2), and realising Dt2 was cows milk protein intolerant at 6 months old... Stopping dairy cured his reflux. Dt1 finally added in domperidone too and went dairy soya and egg free at 13 months. And has mostly stopped puking!! It did look behavioural to me . Everyone said "oh my baby screams and arches backwards too and wakes a lot" . Then I realised there were degrees of this and we were way worse than "normal". Neither of mine present as typical refluxers to me- until now, I've finally realized what all the little bits add up to. Good luck at the GP.

Oh, and needles I'm not sure Dt1 will ever be a good sleeper. After all, I didn't sleep through til I went to school, up 2-3 x a night, every night. So what did I expect, 3 good sleepers?!

So here's my rant:
In 3 months I will lose my "3 under 3" badge. I am feeling like nothing will have changed. Am i ever going to get any sleep? Will dd hitting 3 make things easier at home? Will everything have stopped being such a struggle and refereeing match (think pushing, hair pulling, scratching by Dt1, snatching by Dt1 and dd, general clingyness and competition for my attention by all 3). Feeling tired, stressed as I don't think I've the energy to night wean and dh won't help and just generally worn out with no signs of improvement.

Right, at least that's off my chest :D

Yay for MiniElph! Tell us about how great the night was

BaldLime you've been swapped for lemon-sole and strawberries, but at least your DC has good taste

Well done, Stitch! I bet it felt amazing to have a peaceful night; I have my fingers crossed you'll get a repeat performance tonight. Our bedroom is ridiculous just now: blackout roller blind, this (which by the way it's very effective but ugly as hell) and blackout curtains. We're living in Scotland and it gets bright very early, but not a chink of light is coming through those suckers! Anyway, I'm really scared to take her out of her cot/our bedroom in the middle of the night in case she gets used to it. I don't think I could cope with it getting worse!

Dreaming sounds like he's unsettled because of the MMR, poor little one and poor you! I don't know about night weaning, it certainly wasn't the silver bullet for us, but might work for DT.

From what I remember, it sounds like he only really settles on you, so I'd be very weary to start pacing/rocking to sleep in those circumstances. But hey, what do I know?

Let's ask Elph, Stitch and Hear - they're the graduates!

I have no good news, in fact it just keeps getting worse

She's teething again and last night she woke up at 2:30am. For good. For the day. That was it.

I rock or pushchair him to sleep every time he ever falls asleep... You're probably right poppy

What a shame. Can you not get her down for a 'nap' poppy, at 5 ish so you get another couple of hours in bed before you have to get up? When Dt1 gets up at 4:30 I can sometimes get him to sleep in the buggy at 7ish so he has a quick nap then joins the others for breakfast. Makes him much more cheerful and I can keep him up til Dt2 naps too... Worth a try?

dreaming thanks for your comment, it made lots of sense. I also didn't sleep until I was in P1 aged 5 years old, my poor mum!

After the crappy night the other night my DH made the decision that we'd try to get tough with her on Wednesday night (last night). I left out a change of fitted sheet and jammies and told DH that I was going out cuz I couldn't deal with the crying >I'm a wimp<

So last night we took her cot out of our room and put it in hers. She defied our fears and went to sleep without fuss and was in her own room till 7am. Woke up pretty much every 3 hours, which might not be super, but it's much much better than her hourly wakings previously! I only did 3 breastfeeds, rather than the 10 that I had been doing!

Things might be on the up :)

Gosh, well done minielph! Let have another one tonight.

Dd was awake at 12 again but this time I shoved drugs down her as soon as she wiggled so it only took 45 mins for her to settle again and no screaming. Annoyingly she did then wake up at 4:30 am and then go back to sleep 30mins before I had to get up for work

dreaming I think I am the ultimate in riding the mo fo out, or what one mn thread once called bls (baby lead sleeping) so I would have no hesitation in doing whatever works to be honest. I have done all the 'wrong' things: cosleeping, getting her up if she's not tired, flexible bedtime, feeding to sleep, 3am bread and hummus, rocking, joggling, singing...you name it really. And you know what? her sleep has never been better! so my completely unscientific advice is do whatever causes you the least stress as in my experience it makes not a jot of difference. And sort you dh out. won't really is not an option. He needs to find some way of helping you out, you are a team and you shouldn't have to deal with it all on your own.

Evenin all. May I join? Sleep regression here....combined with a three year old who only started sleeping through a couple of months ago....we don't have many reserves to draw upon...

Gave aby hungry baby milk tonight in desperation....lets see....

"combined with a three year old who only started sleeping through a couple of months ago"

Welcome, Ruby but please say the above ain't true?

Yeah, it's true but can I clarify....we lived in a flat with unreasonable neighbours up and down...my husband WAS (haha, he ain't now!) a soft touch so we never cracked it. Don't worry...I don't know of anybody who had such long sleep deprivation...but at least it proved we are strong together...we fought now and again but never ended up resenting each other. This time around we're taking no shit hence the hungry baby stuff....

Haha...now my thre year old has woken screaming (grits teeth)...no wonder I look 60 :(

Ah the 3 year old night terrors. Dd1 had those and had mostly stopped by 3.9.

Stitch was good last night, but dd1 got up at 5am and woke her up so she was exhausted today. Been out visiting family so sleep pattern all messed up again, due to car napping. Only just got Stitch and dd1 to bed now.

Dreaming you need the ultimate rocking sleep aid.

Congrats MiniStitch on the tooth.Now you're going to sleep,aren't you?Why I've never seen this rocker thing before?It would have saved my sanity life!Hope you're in bed and catching on sleep yourself.

Poppy whereabouts in Scotland are you?I'm in the Highlands :) so nights here aren't dark.Currenty waiting for the new window for DS room but the link you placed might solve the problem-thought about perfect fit blinds but they are quite pricey.
2:30 hope you've had a chance of a power nap during a day?Any chance to let her play on the floor and have a kip nearby?

Needles that's a good decision.Once they now you mean business they sometimes stop playing up.Believe in your DH-mine is wayyyyy much better at putting DS to sleep.

Welcome Ruby :)

Dreaming I'll second Roar on DH.He's a parent as well so he should pull the finger out.

Elphaba must be still asleep...

I must say I'm definitely sticking to 1 child only!

So, I rocked and settled and jiggled until u could jiggle no more. Dt1 slept for a whole 2 min agree that (he's 10 days post MMR, did i say that? Grotty with it. Rash just come out, marvellous...) . Told dh to man up and take some screaming. It got a vomiting, screaming Dt1, who woke Dt2 (from a different room too) so puke on us, him, the carpet, and two wide awake crying babies and two cross tired parents. So, he's on the boob in bed with me. Natch.

Hi ruby, please enlighten me with all husband training tactics :) . Hope your stay here is brief. My 2 year old is having a spate of 4:30 starts. What's with these toddlers?!

Wow stitch why didn't I find this before?!