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!

I do agree that it's a strong possibility, but what a BALL-ACHE! Nursery are used to dealing with dairy intolerance so they're stocked up on soy milk but it's so hard to get him to eat for us at home unless it involves lashings of dairy (yoghurt, milky Weetabix, cheese on everything). I tried him with oat milk once and it got chucked with accompanying furious facial expression.

I might get some soy yoghurts to try him with at the weekend and try hiding non-dairy milk in things like porridge and see if even a little reduction makes some difference...

oh bugger we have swampy nappies. I thought normal?!

lurking.

exhausted.

cosleeping.

but I feel that's the way I want to go.

lo often seems to have tummy pain at night. dairy? dh would never tolerate the idea.

I thought normal til i discovered not.... elph, no no no, soya will not be a good substitute until you know he's not intolerant 30-40% of dairy intolerant babies are soy intolerant. For me, Dt the not very Angelic At All is dairy intolerant soya ok, Dt the Terrible is dairy, soya and egg intolerant. The dietician said you have to exclude all three for 4 weeks to see if there's improvement, then challenge with each separately. My opinion, unasked for and probably disliked, is you'll have to go without all three, and if it means he has to have meat for protein so be it. Dt the Terrible loves dairy. he sobs to have some when dd has cheese on toast, or Philadelphia, or ice cream. I find it very sad and very hard but he's happier and has solid poos!!!

I think it's easier for us giving up dairy as dp won't eat it (just because he doesn't like it) so we rarely have any in the house. Also it means I am used to cooking without, in fact when we thought she should be having dairy I had to make a special effort to get some for her. It is annoying that I can't eat it at all at the moment though as I liked to have it when I ate out as a sort of treat. I found that when dd was only having one feed in the evening I could have a yoghurt at breakfast and she would be ok but now she is feeding loads again I have had to stop :(

Her sleep definitely improved once we sorted the dairy and oats. It really is worth it even if I do miss yoghurty muesli as she is so much happier. So, though it is a pain I would give it a go. Personally I found that you could see a noticeable difference in less then a week, which then spurs you on through the other 3 :)

Can't he get enough protein through beans and lentils and stuff? DD is a monster for beans of all kinds.

Why are mine so fussy?! Baked beans is about as good as it gets here!!!

To be fair dd will pretty much eat anything apart from eggs. She is what nursery refers to as 'a very good eater' :o

He's an awkward boy. He eats everything they put in front of him at nursery. Every. Thing. At home, you practically have to go, 'Hey! Lookit that, DS!' then point to something imaginary, and stuff food into his mouth. He'll graze happily on fruit, rice cakes, one Weetabix and milk spread out over the entire day, mini shredded wheat, digestives and yoghurt, but the only thing resembling a full meal that I can get into him is if we go to Frankie and Benny's, where he'll devour an entire child-size portion of tomato penne, washed down with cheesy garlic bread and bananas and custard. It's obscene and infuriating.

I take your point about cutting out all three Dreaming but I cannot restrict his/our diet that much. Most of his meals are at nursery and accommodating for that much restriction would probably mean me having to send his food in with him which I don't have time to prepare. I think I will just try a dairy-free trial, possibly over the long weekend. If he does turn out to be dairy intolerant, I may need to bite the bullet and let them give him meat at nursery to make up the protein and calorie shortfall. Hear Lentils, beans etc are great for protein but very low in calories so with small children you need to combine them with something more calorific like coconut milk (a bit exotic for the nursery cook, methinks), cheese (no good if we're trying to be dairy free) or nuts (they won't let nuts near the nursery in case of allergies).

I would also give up breastfeeding before I gave up dairy. If it was a choice between BFing and Cadbury's, I would hand DS to DH and check myself into a hotel far, far away with my Medela double pump and a vat of antibiotics for the inevitable mastitis, returning only when DS had forgotten my boobs ever featured in his life. I have sacrificed my sleep, my social life, my TV watching, my sex life, my hobbies, my own bed and any semblance of 'me time' for this child, I AM NOT SACRIFICING MY CHOCOLATE.

Greetings!

I was on this thread, but dropped off. Have been lurking a bit but haven't posted in months.

Update is: DD is now 1 year old! Still wakes approx 4 times a night, sometimes taking up to an hour to be settled :(

Over the past fortnight she's cut way back on breastfeeding, and now only has the odd feed during the night if DH can't settle her. She has 4 teeth now and I find feeding her uncomfortable and that it's changed her latch a bit. Honestly she doesn't look for breastmilk and I don't offer it to her, so I think over the next week or so she'll be weaned. I'm not scared about mastitis or anything as I don't get engorged and I remember what weaning DS was like and all was fine then.

But.... and this is where my experience as as mother should help me... I cannot cannot cannot get DD to go to sleep for me, and I really struggle to settle her during the night. WTF can I do??

As it is, I settle DS (3.5 years) for bed and DH sorts out DD. They both go to bed at a similar time, so this works quite well. DH is a softy so walks her around and puts her in cot when she's 95% asleep. He does the same for nightwakings. I feel so guilty that he works full-time and I'm a SAHM and yet I suck at nighttime stuff. DD just prefers him at night :(

We haven't got to the sleep training stage in earnest, tried it once or twice, but but properly.

Just would love to know why she wakes so much and when it'll stop. I know everyone on this thread is asking the same, so I know I'm in good company!

Need and

(Waves wearily)

Hi all

I think I might be over this lack of sleep thing & trying to be positive that things are getting better.

3 hours and counting since she woke. Still punch drunk tired, still trying to crawl....

I'm not feeling the optimism this week

Hello everyone.

I've been staying away because frankly I'm scared to jinx myself, but DD has been sleeping through (or waking up only once) every night now for well over a month

Here's a rough timeline:

• Co-slept since birth
• Got progressively worse at 4 months with multiple wakings
• Hit the 9 month regression and started waking up every 45ms
• It took us 1 to 2 hours every night to settle her/get her to sleep, by lying next to her
• She was never left alone and we never tried sleep training
• Fed multiple times during the night
• Did night weaning around 13 months. Very small improvement in number of wakings
• Finally moved into the nursery. Bigger improvement in settling at night (I think we were waking her up and she kept expecting to see us back in the master bedroom). Still loads of night wakings though
• Finally started going in, whispering sweet nothings and lying her back down on the cot with one dummy in her mouth and another in her hand (control freak that DD is)

We did this consistently for about 4 days in a row and this is when we noticed the big shift.

We both refuse to let her cry, so for the first two days we had to run like maniacs dozens of times; sometimes I just stood outside her bedroom around 4am as there was no point in leaving.

I think the trick was to do the same thing over and over and over... she got bored (god knows I did too) and got the idea.

Above all, she now does the mythical self-settling thingy; wakes up in the middle of night and goes back to sleep by herself.

I don't know if it was anything we did, I think mainly she was just ready.

Having said that, on reflection - and this is hard to admit - I now realise she was a lot more independent than I was willing to consider.

Anyway, like everyone keeps telling us, everything is a phase do no doubt I'll be carping here again in no time. If not, there's always the new addition to keep me busy. Ahhh.... newborn cluster feeds!

PS: Sorry, this was all me, me, me, me. I'm going to read the thread now and keep up with all the news, if I'm still allowed on the thread!

They sleep? Eventually?

(Looks at small irritable tyrant fighting sleep on my lap)

Oh thank god. Can it be now please?

woo hoo poppy there's hope yet!!

well.

starting nursery was a fuck up. ds promptly came down with foot and mouth which possibly explains last night's moaning and shouting and wind.

spoke to happy hippy doctor about wind (again) and she mentioned dairy. we had a mega swampy nappy today but it was sweet bf smelling. I insisted it would have to be through a referral.

then I remembered ds probably cried all day at his first nursery day due to feeling crap from hfam. and so was full of wind. still a referral has gone in as dh won't entertain the idea unless a clever doctor wots trained lots us telling him.

picked ds up from 2 hour nursery stint (he'd seemed fine at home) during which he'd cried the whole time.

and what did the food refusing monkey with hfam decide to actually ask to eat? my hastily thrown together lunch of weetabix and MILK and YOGHURT. we'll see how that turns out.

I'm sure he's not dairy intolerant but it would help me sleep better to be told not!

needles that sounds great re self weaning but I've no advice re settling dd as my failsafe method is the boob .....

would a sling work?

Yawns

One day they will sleep.... Until then, pass the matchsticks. Though after a shocking night, where i can confirm that losing your rag after rocking one or other twin all evening til 11pm and shouting at them both to go the f*ck to sleep, last night was tolerable. Co sleeping from 10 for Dt the Terrible, though with DH til 2, Dt the Not Very Angelic At All slept through, dd slept through. And, best of all, Dt the Terrible fitted in 3 feeds from 2am onwards but slept til 6:45! Not happened in months it was ace.

poppy my problem is I've spent up to 2 hours trying to settle my menace and crack. He howls. He keeps DH and his twin awake, though often dd sleeps through it. He is a tough cookie. Attempt 5 at sleep training may be happening next week though. Gulp.

Sorry, what a ramble- I can confirm that my horrendous parenting moment of shouting at my babies did not get either to sleep. Funny that

elph I hear you on the chocolate. It's my main reason for wanting to stop bf now...

Oh god if I was to start drinking.....

I have up sodding everything after the worst time with reflux: tea, coffee, soy, dairy, egg, citrus, fuzzy drinks, chocolate. When she dropped to barely any weight I felt I had no choice. I walked her 6 hours a day and loved on sodding jelly worms.

Fun times

I think she's still struggling a bit but its not bad enough to make me give it all up again. She's off medication and neither if us have any cows milk.

She refused to sleep all day. Is currently asleep on me.

Having a good cry. DP out for the night & my friend had to cancel coming to play. So it's another day solo with the sleep tyrant.

Yes. Don't let me drink

Ah, so the ol' Pick Up, Put Down worked for you Poppy Assuming my back would hold out for that many repetitions of leaning into DS's cot, my eardrums probably wouldn't as whispering sweet nothings and lying him down result in a redoubling of his screaming efforts. Maybe if I could set him up with a boob in his mouth and a spare one in his hand...see? There it is again. Yet another illustration of why boobs should be detachable!

My next attempt at clawing back more sleep before I'm carted off might be to keep him in bed with me and not feed rather than leave him in his cot without feeding in the hope that the absence of boob but close presence of mum might keep him asleep for longer than the forty minutes we usually get if he doesn't have boob. Dunno. I'm looking evermore longingly at the Piriton

Ah yes, Elph the boob effect.

Night weaning is an absolute bitch and there was a period of a few weeks where I panicked thinking "WTF have I done, I took away the only thing that will settle her back to sleep!"

Hope you don't mind me rocking up on your thread ladies.

DS2 is 16 months old and really not doing the sleeping thing.

Nights of 4+ hours in a row may be counted on 2, or maybe 1 hand.

He also feeds to sleep every night or is cuddled by DH if I'm at work.

I am very tired.

How come DS1 figured out falling asleep by himself and staying asleep? ?

We are on a minimum of 2 wakes a night, giving up and Co sleeping for part of most nights.

Yawn.

Hi all,

At 18 months Stitch is also graduating I feel. She feeds at bedtime (8pm) and sometime between 4.30 and 6.30am. Unless ill or teething she sleeps through.

It gets better :) Only in my case I was silly enough to get upduffed with dc3 so in a few months I will be starting all over again

Dreaming saw on another thread that you have got dt1 diagnosed with reflux and that has helped. I hope he continues to improve and you get more than 2 hours sleep in one stretch very soon. Not surprised you snapped TBH, think I would have been gibbering on the floor long ago in your situation x

Elph have you tried lactose free dairy? Lactofree do milk, cheese and yoghurt. Dd1 was a terrible sleeper until we switched her over to Lactofree milk, lots of griping waking her up and mucusy poos. I hear you on the chocolate front, I tried some dairy free chocolate recently, it is ok, but no match for Dairy Milk.

Oh Katie that sounds tough Watch crap tv and reach for the tissues. Sometimes a good cry helps you face another day.

I will be back soon I am sure, still no canines here.

X- post!

Maybe 18 months is the magic age. . .

Stitch As I understand it, it's the cow's milk protein that's a problem in dairy rather than the lactose. Lactose intolerance is very uncommon in under-2s as their lactase (enzyme which breaks down lactose, which lactose intolerant people are lacking) is at a higher level than at any other time in life, since milk is a main source of nutrition before two. BM is very high in lactose - higher than cow's milk I think. Maybe the proteins get zapped in the Lactofree dairy stuff when they get rid of the lactose...? Anyways, I've stocked up on dairy-free yoghurt, coconut milk and sandwich spread and planned a couple of vegan meals for this weekend. We'll see how DS goes. He's with the GPs today. We're off to Wembley!

Have a good time :)

I have run out of energy. For over 16 months I have functioned ok on no more than 2-3 hours sleep in a row, usually 5-6 in total. Not any more. I have suddenly become unable to cope. Losing my temper with dc and DH, dreading nights, feeling really low about the sleep situation as i can't see how its going to improve . I've done 6 nights consistently with no improvement and cracked. Multiple times. Admittedly before he was upped to maximum reflux meds dosages at 15 months and before his dairy soy and egg free diet, but he is a tough cookie to crack.

stitch, did you Do Anything for this improvement or did it happen naturally? please say naturally I've forgotten your due date, how's the squirming progressing?

jaggy I don't know either, my others have gradually just 'got' sleeping, just not Dt the Terrible... I make no attempt after midnight to return the menace to his cot, even if his twin wakes up, I go to him in his room, and back to bed with t'other! Ridiculous.

Yeah I'm seriously grumpy too. Sorry DH and kids.

I occasionally do a comedy attempt to put him in his cot and not bf to sleep. It does not work.

Like tonight, he just grinned at his brother and got up to the end of his cot to try and lift the curtains and look out the window . DS1 doesn't help as he finds him hilarious.

He's been annoyingly restless the last few nights and even with him in beside me he's waking up a lot and wriggling and grumbling till a boob appears.

Also wanting milk a lot in the day, I think my pg friends who visited recently were a bit horrified at the talked of lack of sleep and his frequent hopeful little face he does while saying 'mi' (not quite got the lk yet')

He can be distracted, but bursts into tears if he's really tired.

Lucky they're cute, eh!