Misery loves company: to ride it out or Something Must be Done- pick your camp :)

[DreamingOfAFullNightsSleep]

Hello again all- may the sleepers continue sleeping, the new arrivals due or here get the idea very quickly and the rest of us see the light at the end of the tunnel!

Another newbie joining!!

I have read everyone's posts and I'm sat here hoping that things will improve if we just perservere with what we're doing.

My DD is 5, nearly 6 months old, EBF and up until recently, we were co-sleeping. In the New Year we decided to put DD in her cot in our room, it started off quite well, and by the 3rd night she was sleeping 3/4 hours at a time...but then she got ill. We brought her back into our bed until she got better and started in the cot again 2 weeks ago.

She has naturally brought her own bedtime forward from 10/11 to 8 and now around 630-7 she is ready for bed.

We feed or rock to sleep which we really need to put a stop too as I don't think it's helping her to learn to self settle.

She will now wake between 3-6 times before 10 then will go for about 2 hours and then usually up every hour. It's bloody exhausting. I am one of those optimists who is hoping this gets better when we start her on solids.

I did bring DD into our bed last night as OH was away and she still woke up as many times as she would in the cot, so I'm confident that moving her hasn't disrupted her sleep.

Here's hoping for more sleep all round tonight.

Thankyou for all the cold remedying suggestions! cot is propped at one end and i managed to get a 30min nap out of dd earlier today in the sling. fingers crossed for more

We have been having some weird naps too recently. Oscillating between one and two per day... at the weekend, the one 'lunchtime' nap (ha!) was at 3.30 pm.

DS does seem to be doing some longer blocks at night since he started crawling last week. Last night he did an almost unheard of 4.5 hour stretch between 9.45 pm and 2.15 am. Of course I woke up every hour in that window wondering what was wrong with him... and then he woke up again at 3.45 and didn't go back to sleep till 6 am. And that was with his head on my tummy...

Hello offside. If it makes you feel better, I fed DD1 to sleep at the beginning of the night till she was over 2 but it didn't stop her naturally learning to self settle during the night from long before then. It may just happen!

And DS2 self-settles like a pro when first put to bed. Doesn't stop the continuous wakings and need for assisted settling for the remainder of the night.

Self-settling's a fecking con.

hello offside sounds like we are having similar experiences. mine is 5 1/2 months. I was up 4 times from 8 to 12 last night then again for an hour or so at 2.30, 4.30 and 6. I'm currently typing one handed pacing the hallway with dd in the sling as she can't nap in the day without being upright/moving.

telling myself its good exercise

How much are people's 4/5 month olds napping? Feel like a spend all day every day battling to get DD2 to nap at the moment .

DS2 can manage 1:45 to 2 hours awake time at almost 6mo, so that. Length of naps varies from 20ish minutes (the one and only cot nap I get in the day) to a usual max of about 60 if it's on me or in the sling, although I have sometimes extended the odd co-slept nap to two hours with regular application of boob. As long as he's fairly cheerful when awake, I don't worry about the length of naps themselves, but I do keep a hawk-like eye on the length of time between naps.

Elphaba DD's awake time varies depending on how long the last nap was but I feel like I spend my whole day getting her to try to have naps, even though she usually only help 3. Do you find it hard to have a social life

Oops, got cut off, was going to say do people find it hard to socialise around naps? So hard to say when we'll be free or to engineer a nap if they need one when you're at someone's house or out for coffee when you get past the newborn stage.

Awake time, theoretically, shouldn't be dependent upon the length of the preceding nap - and that's a theory both my DSs actually subscribe/d to (!) Even if DS2 had had a two hour nap, I'd still do anything it took to get him asleep two hours later. If he'd had a 20 minute nap, I might try slightly earlier, but only if he started showing sleepy signs.

No, no problem socialising around naps because he naps mainly on me anyway. If we're out, I just stick him on the boob at the appropriate time and demand an extra hot chocolate to get me through the next 40 minutes Either that, or stick him in the sling with some white noise and pace around for a bit.

At that age I found the snoozeshade a godsend as he was so nosy. He only did 30m naps then so I tried to get him to sleep after 2 hours awake. He'd usually have 3 naps a day, sometimes four. I found it affected my social life less than it does now.

That's not to say that his naps don't drive me FUCKING bonkers. If it was down to him, he'd have three ludicrously short naps and a completely impossible bedtime of 5pm. This would be fine if he was an only child, I'm sure, but I have to get a nursery run and dinner made in there somewhere. So the last couple of days I've tried four ludicrously short naps, last one ending at 5pm. He's now raging at me about being all out of sorts and discombobulated and really he just wants to go to bed so he can rest well before waking me repeatedly

Thistooshallpassthistooshallpassthistooshallfuckingpass...

DD2 rather annoyingly won't sleep on me, well hardly ever, and certainly not in public where it's far more fun to be irritable and nosey. She also won't nap in the pram so nothing to put a snooze shade on. Why don't I have easy nappers?!?

Oh, the hours I have wasted stressing about naps! Particularly at that age. I was fortunate that DD did and does nap in the pram so I used to time going out so that she could fall asleep on the way there or back, although you did have to block her view entirely. Works less well now she's older as she knows a pram trip might mean going somewhere and chats to herself to stay awake (my theory anyway).

Life got so much easier once we got to two naps as you can sort of plan around that!

We are more or less better in our house finally, except DH who has spent the day on the sofa moaning quietly. And we seem to have got past the marathon bedtimes for now which is a blessed relief. Of course the trade off for this is an earlier first wake up and therefore more wake ups overall...

Well it's been a dreadful week here. Horrendous nights on tues & wed, when he had a fever, then 5 wakes on thurs & fri, so a bit better than being up most of the night but still rubbish. Yesterday he came out with a rash (following last week's mmr) but otherwise seemed ok just a bit whingy & clingy. Tonight he went to sleep fairly quickly but woke and fussed the first 3 times I put him down and then woke again an hour later. This does not bode well!

He's also wanting to breast feed all the time including during the day which he never does. Not sure if it's just for comfort or if there's a way it can help to clear the virus from his system. Anyone else experience this after 12 month vaccinations?

Raspberry I too have always stressed about naps. Even when he slept well at night he was a dreadful napper and would only sleep 30m at a time. I often had to pound the pavements with him in the early months and I still do for his after lunch nap although usually he will continue to sleep when we get home now so I do now get some downtime. He used to fall asleep easily in the car but not any more, plus as he sleeps longer it's less convenient, especially now he's not in his class 0 seat.

We didn't get more BFing after the MMR Attitude but I think it's a comfort thing as we get it when DD is ill. Sounds like you've had a tough time with the 12 month jabs, hope it passes soon.

Well still rubbish here plus he's up for the day at 5:30 which is such fun. Hope everyone else is doing better.

Not really. He'll do two or three hours straight in his cot at the beginning of the night, then it's full co-sleeping in the front bedroom thereafter where he basically wants to sleep on the boob all night. In his defence, he's got a streaming cold and his first two teeth are making a bid for freedom, but it doesn't make me feel any less exhausted.

Early starts after an already broken night are the worst, Attitude. for you.

Thanks Elph. That sounds familiar. It's like I have a newborn back, he wants to sleep on me and comfort suck. Even trying to co-sleep hasn't worked as it's not enough to sleep next to me, it has to be on me! God I hope this passes soon, I'm exhausted.
3 weeks till Ann, 3 weeks till Ann...

On the plus side he did drink some milk from his doidy cup after lunch. That is progress

She's got a cough.. Again! Aaarrgghhh!!

Piriton! Quick!

Hello all!
While still miles better than those you you with titchy babies rather than rambunctious toddlers I am tired due to three weeks of ill children. DD, virus, DT1, same virus but developed into a chest infection, Dt2 now has it. Can't they just speed the whole process up?! I think I'd choose 1 week of godawful hell compared to this, which includes full cosleeping with whoever is coughing the most so needs propping up crap.

Anyway. Mine were all early nap droppers and spent long times awake. My dts were down to 2 naps a day by 6 months easily, and both DD and Dt2 were on one nap by 11 and 12 months respectively. Naps are the work of the devil and a royal PITA. Under 1 you stress about fitting the 2 in. Under 2 you stress about them getting their nap at a reasonable time for a reasonable amount of time and over 2/2.5 you do all possible to prevent a nap It's exhausting.

Good luck to you all. If all else fails try

'Lo, stranger!

Headache. Snot. More snot. No prospect of sleep. Grump.

Somebody summon the nanny. Mother's tired.