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

999 replies

ElphabaTheGreen · 11/06/2013 21:29

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! Grin

OP posts:
DreamingOfAFullNightsSleep · 24/04/2014 20:56

Argh, there isn't even a clue as to when Ann will take on new clients this time

ElphabaTheGreen · 24/04/2014 21:32

I've been thinking about how to do it tactfully Dreaming and I think I've thought of wording that's not too cheeky. PM me your name and email and I'll send it to Ann when I return her evaluation form. Smile

OP posts:
DreamingOfAFullNightsSleep · 25/04/2014 18:47

Thanks elph have pm'ed you.

have delayed bedtime and now rhyme all overtired that'll help tonight's bedtime, right. .. anyway, off to the melee it is

charlied2002 · 26/04/2014 21:36

Hello, sorry to hijack this one but Elphaba, are you talking about Ann Caird? I'm seriously considering using a sleep consultant for my DDs and came across Ann's website and loved it but see that she isn't taking any more people on :-(

Do you mind me asking how you have found using a sleep consultant and any do you have any advice/tips? DD1 (2) has always been a terrible sleeper although I thought we had pretty much cracked it recently until everything went wrong again with illness and a trip away. Now we have DD2 (3.5 months), it is so hard getting up for both of them in the night and I just don't have the time I did before to spend with her trying to do gradual retreat training etc.

Thanks very much and sorry again for the hijacking!

HearMyRoar · 26/04/2014 21:38

Go elph! :o

I'm sorry to say dreaming that your part made me laugh! I think it was just relief that it's not just me driven to swearing and stomping of in a huff. Though with 3 of them I am impressed you kept to the single expletive :)

After throwing all my toys out the proverbial pram we had a talk and decided that the real point of all this was just to make it so dh could do bedtime. So since he has been doing really well with naps he was up for giving a bedtime a go and it was a success! Yay!

DreamingOfAFullNightsSleep · 26/04/2014 22:33

Ahem. I may have said it very loudly and clearly though. With maybe another 'fuck it all' but I was on my way downstaris so hopefully out of earshot Hmm I am happy to report that since, no child has yet told me to fuck off

It is Ann Caird charlied and if you read back through this thread you will see where elphs ds started out and how far he's come. I have also seen her praises sung on a gentle parenting fb page. I am beyond excited there's hope yet for me through Ann. Due to horrific bedtimes, bad nights and overall tiredness I can report DH and I are barely speaking. For days now. We're polite. Just. But also kind of avoiding each other [sigh]

charlied2002 · 27/04/2014 11:01

Thanks very much Dreaming (love the name, says it all!). OH and I have never argued so much and so badly as we have for the last two years over DD1's sleeping (or lack thereof). He's of the "shut the door, leave them to CIO" school and I couldn't be more the opposite.

I've had some success with gradual withdrawal techniques, although they have been very slow and still involved quite a lot of crying from DD1 (although I think more from crossness that I am no longer holding her hand/rubbing her back/sitting right next to the cot etc rather than real distress and that has kept me going. However, now we have DD2, it is just impossible for me to be in two places at once! Also desperate for DD2 to not go down the same route so would love some advice from Ann!

However, as she is so busy, I'm thinking of talking to this lady www.sleepnannies.co.uk/sleepconsultant.htm for some advice and a sleep plan for each of them.

Personally I'd be happy with us all in a family bed on the floor but I think that really would be the last straw for OH!

HearMyRoar · 27/04/2014 13:40

Just a thought but perhaps if the miraculous Anne is all booked elph could ask her to recommend some other consultants. She is bound to know them and so can say who is any good and who will follow a similar philosophy.

I think that once it is starting to have such a bad effect of your relationship with your dh dreaming Something Must Be Done for everyone's sake!

Hello charlied, welcome to the thread. It must be extra hard when you have such a different view on things to your dh. Thankfully me and dh share the same ideas pretty much when it comes to parenting. In fact I think dh is even inclined to just let dd continue cosleeping then I am, but then he isn't the one getting kicked and shoved all night Hmm

ElphabaTheGreen · 27/04/2014 21:48

Hi charlie - if you read from about the 27 Feb, that's when I first started with Ann and I describe what we did in quite a bit of detail. The gradual withdrawal bit didn't actually start until after about two weeks of groundwork. That was so effective that, by the time I started withdrawing, we had pretty much zero crying. It was amazing.

I'd say 3.5 months is way too young to be looking for any sleep training options. Only She Who Must Not Be Named thinks babies that young can be shoe-horned into some kind of sleeping-through-the-night craziness. But the one you linked looks like she might be effective for a two year old. Why don't you start a thread on the sleep board to see if anyone's tried her?

Hear Ann said to me she doesn't know of any others that use the same approach she does, so I don't know if she could/would be able to recommend anyone else. Most other sleep consultants just cut straight to the behavioural approaches, which is exactly what never worked for DS.

Still getting one brief wake up most nights here, but he did an amazing unbroken 8pm til 7:30am on Saturday morning. I kept wondering why I had so much energy that day. He also almost pulled another 2.5 hour nap in his bed today which I managed to avert by opening his curtains and uncovering him at the two hour mark, which pissed him off no end but meant he had a nice long run around in the garden this afternoon, and we only started bedtime about half an hour later. I don't think Ann would agree with the later bedtime after a two hour nap, since she thinks that's what he should be doing, but I know DS. He'd have been swinging off his curtains for an hour if we'd stuck to his usual bedtime.

The project Ann's left us with is getting DS to walk himself back to his bed and get back in if he gets up at bedtime or in the night. He's got it down-pat at bedtime. If I hear him at his gate, I just say 'back to bed DS', without him even needing to see me, he goes straight back, I cover him up, and that's it. Night times are more of a work in progress. We've had a couple of nights of rage for 10-20 minutes before he'll throw in the towel, huff back into his bed, I cover him up and he's asleep in seconds without me needing to hang about. Ann's rationale behind it is 1) if he gets up in the night, he's welcome to do so as long as he does it quietly, then gets himself back to bed when he's ready and 2) he doesn't start relying on what is essentially a big cuddle whenever he gets up in the night (i.e. picking him up and carrying him back to bed), and potentially start waking up for more. We'll see how we go.

On a completely separate subject, how do you all go getting vegetables into your lot? DS is on total vegetable strike, here and at nursery. It doesn't matter how well concealed they are, they Do Not Pass His Lips. The closest we get are baked beans, chips Hmm and the odd pea if the wind is blowing in the right direction. Oh, he also loves the veg swimming in MSG in a Chinese takeaway Hmm Confused Pasta sauces are my best bet, but he'll only ingest what's clinging to the pasta, so probably nothing that would constitute a portion size. Fruit is acceptable, vegetables are not.

OP posts:
HearMyRoar · 28/04/2014 19:57

We have the pox! Argh! Just when it was going so well with dh doing bedtimes. Tonight she was just all over the place and it had to be mummy again. Think the smbd plan is going to have to go on hold again for at least a week while she gets over the worst.

And of course it is the worst possible week for either of us to take off work. Bloody typical!

elph dd may be the crappiest sleeper I know but she eats like a star. The only thing she consistently refuses is eggs. She is a fruit monster but is also pretty good on Veg, though she is having a potato phase at the moment. I did persuade her to eat roast parsnip the other day by telling her it was extra special potato. She loves to munch on a really huge raw carrot and will gobble pretty much anything if I stick it in a dhal. Bless her :)

ElphabaTheGreen · 28/04/2014 20:41

Oh no, Hear! DS had it when he was 10 months old (cheers, nursery Hmm). There was really only two nights of hell with the itchiness. He wasn't coordinated enough to scratch himself at the time, which I suppose was a good thing but he was pretty unhappy. We got some foam anti-itch stuff from the chemist which was considerably less messy than calamine which I just found was a PITA. She's also old enough for you to get Piriton OTC which should also help with the itch and have the quiet bonus of having a sedative side-effect

OP posts:
charlied2002 · 29/04/2014 10:12

Phew… read back to Feb, then read back a bit more.. and a bit more…

Sounds like Ann is a true miracle worker Elphaba, did she give you any tips on avoiding things falling apart?! When did you make the move to a bed rather than cot? That is one thing I am wondering about doing with my DD1 (just turned 2) as she loves playing "bed" with pillows and duvet but things have been such a nightmare lately I am terrified of making things worse by making changes. Could really do with some impartial advice!

Dreaming, I really don't know how you are still standing. I have a friend whose DD1 is the same age as mine, and she has DT boys two days younger than my DD2. I may not mention this thread to her!!

Really wish I'd discovered this thread a year or so ago when I was tearing my hair out as it only seemed to be my DD that wouldn't sleep. Every other baby her age slept through at least most of the time (or at least so their parents claimed Hmm). Bedtimes for us were a screaming nightmare unless I bent over her cot rubbing her back for hours on end, ruining my own back in the process! Night time wake ups meant me lying on the floor holding her hand/rubbing her back, sometimes for up to an hour, sometimes 7 or 8 times a night…

She has now been known to go to bed like a human being at 8pm, consistently sleep through the night and if she wakes, either to resettle herself or to be settled very easily with a few words.

So why am I here? Because its all gone horribly wrong (yet again). And this time I'm really really struggling to do anything about it because of DD2. OH and I are having huge (whispered!) arguments at 3/4/5 am then i usually end up lying on DD1s floor, hoping she goes back to sleep before DD2 wakes up demanding a feed…

I was hopeful before last night that things were improving again as she went to bed without too much fuss the previous three nights - only 10 minutes or so of calling out for me, no tears and then blissful peace and by 8.45 too! Two wake ups each night, but settled back with me outside the door shushing.

Then last night was another screaming battle for an hour and a half, and when she woke up, DD2 did too so had to go and feed her, meaning DD1 worked herself into a right state (because I was no longer just outside her door) so was another hour and a half on her floor before she consented to go back to sleep deeply enough for me to crawl out commando style, avoiding all creaky floorboards! She is a total mess today as she cannot cope with poor sleep anymore.

I'm also desperate to avoid making another Rod For My Own Back with DD2 but don't really know where to start! I'm not expecting her to be sleeping through the night or any such nonsense (if she did 11 - 5 by 6 months I'd be screamingly happy, especially if DD1 also managed some sleeping!) but am thinking I need to try and teach her to self settle at the beginning of the night and after night feeds - so that means no rocking/feeding to sleep/dummy/patting right? How the bloody hell do you persuade them to go to sleep then - without howling anyway?!

charlied2002 · 29/04/2014 10:19

Hear, I would second the piriton. Both my DDs had the pox recently (which was the start of All Hell Breaking Loose). DD2 was too small for piriton but actually seemed OK as it was a mild dose of pox. But it was amazing for DD1, completely stopped her scratching so she only has one small scar on her tummy which was the first spot to appear.

Sadly, although I was very excited to have a legitimate excuse to dose her up on piriton, it didn't have the sleeping effect I expected and she still woke up several times each night (the piriton did work when she was younger and reacted to insect bites. She slept through three solid nights for the first time in seven weeks! I was gutted when the reaction cleared up ).

ElphabaTheGreen · 29/04/2014 13:38

charlie Ann left me with a 'Staying On Track' document. She also lets you get back in contact with her at any time (for a small fee, obvs) if the wheels fall off.

We switched DS to a toddler bed because he went into total cot-refusal after the last round of pre-Ann sleep training and he was in with me from 7:30pm, which was grim. My reasoning with the toddler bed was 1) maybe it would remove the negative associations he had with the cot and 2) I slept on his floor for a week to get him used to it and it was much easier to reach onto the toddler bed from lying down than stand up and dangle over into a cot. Again, this was all pre-Ann, so all that happened was that DS became worse with every passing night, and I'd usually wake up with him on the air mattress with me. Once we started with Ann, though, it was absolutely brilliant because when we started doing lots of playing in his room, it was dead easy to casually chuck a toy onto his bed for him to then get up himself and play with on his bed, and thereby get happier with the whole idea of his bed being a nice place to be. There was also another week of sleeping on DS's floor with Ann's programme, but that was after a lot more groundwork so it was a very different experience to the first attempt and he was sleeping through happily or only waking briefly after about two nights, helped, I think, by the bed because I could just reach a hand up to him from the floor without having to move much and he could see me easily.

How's the pox coming along Hear? Anything more from Ann Dreaming?

OP posts:
charlied2002 · 29/04/2014 14:18

Hmm that's very interesting Elphaba about encouraging your DS to play on his bed, I'm wondering if DD would prefer it if we made a big fuss about her new big girl bed etc and did some playing in and out of bed. We do playing in her room a bit anyway, both with me there and without when I'm trying to settle the baby - she is quite happy to get all of her books out and look through them for a while.

Just wish Ann was taking on some more people (although I'd get in line behind Dreaming, think her needs are much greater than mine!)

Re your questions about veggies, my DD1 is also a bit of a refusenik - things that work for us (sometimes) are cottage pie type dishes, where she will usually wolf it down not realising that it is at least 50% veggies, veggie muffins, burgers etc. I also do a courgette pasta sauce with grated courgette cooked with lemon and garlic till very soft then add cream cheese. You could even blend it? The cheese seems to help the veggies stick to the pasta so they have to eat them Smile

To my total amazement she then ate some fried courgette and leeks voluntarily - I'd literally just put the veg there for decoration!

HearMyRoar · 30/04/2014 08:15

Hello all!

Poor dd is absolutly covered in spots. Mostly the itching seems to be under her hair, but the worst thing is that she has spots all in and around her privates (bottom and vulva) so everything she did a wee she would wake up in screaming agony and we had to change her nappy and apply liberal amounts of calamine. It was like having a new born with nappy rash. Argh. Dh has strict instructions to pick up piriton on the way home today.

charlie it sounds hard for you with 2. Personally I really don't believe in the rod for your own back idea. I have meet fat to mammy people who did ask the 'right' things and then couldn't understand why their dc didn't sleep. I think it's mainly genetics really. You have a baby who sleeps or you don't. Once they are older you can help them learn but when they are tiny you might add well just go with whatever makes you all happy. Of course, this is my personal views on it, others may disagree :)

With my dd her bad sleeping for the first year or so at least was mainly due to food intolerances, and no leaving to self settle was ever going to help her sleep when she had reflux and agonising wind.

Sorry, that's probably not very encouraging... :o

HearMyRoar · 30/04/2014 08:18

Sorry for all the awful predictive text madness there. Blame the lack of sleep. That's my usual excuse :o

charlied2002 · 30/04/2014 12:11

Thanks Hear, I do know what you mean - I tried very hard to do the Right Things with DD1, and actually early on she would go to sleep in her crib with her dummy and let me leave the room. (Then she would wake up 45 minutes later and scream the house down but that's another story!)

Things only really went wrong at about 5.5 months when she decided sleeping was for wusses and started waking every 45 minutes to an hour and being really difficult to settle again.

Cue giving up dummy via PPO - which didn't solve the problem and basically ended up replacing one sleep association with me as another - patting/rubbing her to sleep, co-sleeping, me sleeping in her room (when she got too bloody wriggly!), getting her up, putting her back down, crying in arms techniques, wake to sleep techniques, PUPD, feed to sleep, rock to sleep, hold hand to sleep, let her lie on my hand to sleep (with me on the floor and a totally dead arm!) and eventually gradual withdrawal having some success and then all going wrong again every time she cuts a tooth/we go away/she gets ill…

I'm not holding out much hope for DD2 - it really annoys me when people tell me the second child is always a better sleeper. How the hell do they know what my child is going to be like when I don't?! I'm crossing everything that she won't follow in her sister's footsteps but who knows! She is certainly a very windy baby and wouldn't be put down at all for the first few weeks, so I think we have made good progress with her now mostly sleeping in her crib albeit on her side (and her tummy a lot of the time…).

I think it is mainly the dummy that worries me - although I think she is different to DD1 there in that I think she will be the sort of baby that will learn to find and replace it herself fairly early on. She loves it so much that I would feel pretty mean taking it away - but it would probably be easier now rather than later on… Wish I knew what the right thing to do was!

charlied2002 · 30/04/2014 12:19

PS - sorry Hear, that was all me, me me! I do hope the piriton works for your DD to stop her itching so much (and hopefully to help you her have a really good night's sleep).

Can you give her some nappy free time too? I found with my DD's pox that the spots inside her nappy were the worse and the slowest to heal - probably due to the warm, wet environment. Bare bum as much as possible seemed to help, especially once the piriton had taken away the itch.

ElphabaTheGreen · 30/04/2014 13:53

I second nappy-free time. DS had it all over his bum and bits as well so we let him go commando for a bit to dry the spots out. At least the weather's decent enough to let her charge around outside so accidents don't really matter!

OP posts:
HearMyRoar · 30/04/2014 19:05

I love you guys! :)

After a day mostly nappy free, a bath of bicarb of soda, and a dose of piritone she is out cold without a single grumble. What would I do without you? :o

DreamingOfAFullNightsSleep · 30/04/2014 20:22

Oh no hear. Thank goodness for piriton. I was delighted after an allergic reaction to something proved dt the terrible does succumb to piriton Grin . I hope she's over the worst really soon and heals quickly. I've had all mine vaccinated. I watched the "Should I vaccinate against chicken pox?" thread on here recently with interest :) It'd tip me over the edge probably.

Charlie I agree with hear . I have treated all 3 children identically. dd slept 11 hours at 3 months old. Ebf, fed to sleep, never ever left to cry (pfb and all) . dts, same, fed to sleep, ebf. Huge sleep problems with both which both turned out to be reflux and food intolerances. However once those were sorted DT 2 just gradually started sleeping. I've never done anything to 'train' him and he often sleeps through now. DT1 is currently refusing to go to bed and making me want to stick pins in my eyes or jump out of the window rather than continue While he's sleeping miles better, it's still crap. Never sleeping past 10 on when you are the fuck around til 8:30pm is shit in my book. His kicking me when cosleeping is driving me to insanity too.

I'm at my.mums with the dc. no dh. .3 hellish night s so far. Dh coming tonight. Thank goodness. First 2 nights dt2 slept through. But DT 1 awful. 2nd night he wouldn't stay asleep as he had a cold. I couldn't eat my tea, spent all evening trying to settle him. He wouldn't have my mum. I lost the plot atb10:30pm and let him sit with my mum eating liquorice allsorts just so I could wash my face in peace. Last night both boys up constantly. bring on Ann. She replied to my email elph and will put me on a waiting list. ill email her again once we're home- 4 nights in scotland to survive first. hurrah!

HearMyRoar · 01/05/2014 10:26

Oh gods dreaming! That sounds hellish. Hope your dh turns up and take over so you can have a break.

Unexpected result of all this nappy free time is that dd just did a wee in her potty! I immediatly phoned dh at work to announce this exciting event... Maybe I need to get out the house :o

charlied2002 · 01/05/2014 11:26

Hooray Hear, that's very exciting! How old is your DD? We've had a few potty wees as I always leave it out if DD1 has her nappy off but have backed off recently after she seemed to get a bit upset about it and did a wee in the conservatory (hard floor thankfully rather than the lounge carpet!). Have got her one of these recently to make getting things on and off a bit easier and so she is aware of being wet:

www.thenappylady.co.uk/offers/flip-training-pants-by-bumgenius.html

I managed to wait until OH got home before telling him the first time - but only just!

Glad to hear she went down well after bicarb bath and piriton - how did she sleep?

Dreaming, poor, poor you! Hope you manage to get some rest today at least - can your Mum take them off your hands for a bit? I find being away from home is so hard, even with the extra help - and I've only got the two to worry about!

Good news re Ann though - fingers crossed she will soon start to work her miracles!

Elphaba, how is your DS doing? Is he still settling and sleeping well in his own bed?

I think you are all right and I should stop stressing for now about DD2 - she is actually being pretty good at the moment anyway, with usually only 2 wake ups between 11 and 7, going back off very easily after a feed and letting me put her back in her crib - often without dummy too which is a step forward. Obviously if she stirs at all, I put it straight in as I'm desperate to go back to sleep as quickly as possible but hey ho!

DD1 is still refusing to go to sleep any time before 9pm and still waking at night, but last night she seemed to self-settle twice at 11 and 4 (hurrah!) so didn't have to go in until 5.15. Managed to persuade her to go back to sleep for a bit by lying on her floor with a duvet and pretending to be asleep (think I might have stopped pretending at some point and drifted off!) but obviously not for long enough as she is very grumpy again today.

Think she is cutting her incisors though and has yet another bug so hopefully it might end one day?!

DreamingOfAFullNightsSleep · 02/05/2014 17:15

DH slept with dt the T last night. He claims "exhaustion" because dt the terrible "writhes around all night and wakes up at 6" and insisted on going back to bed.

AIBU to slit his throat while he sleeps tonight or should I just LTB? *

  • disclaimer- have watched my mum's husbands sky recording of 2 episodes of next season of game of thrones so feeling particularly violent