'Sleep is for the Weak' for anyone with August/Sep 06 DC's

[justJAM]

GM, Cruise and anyone else with LO's born around August/September 06' - this is a support thread for when you have no clue as to why your LO is doing the exact opposite to what they were doing last week and when you are thinking WTF????
Post on here and we shall all compare notes and comfort each other!!

I was dreading putting DD in her own roon (I even started a thread about it) but she had outgrown her moses basket and would have had to dismantle her cot to get it through the bedroom door - so own room it was.
I didn't believe it when people said it would be fine but it honestly was. Everyone slept better. I still have monitor on low but do shut her door.

I have given up trying to extend DD's naps. She does 45 mins and is feeding every 4 hrs so it's kinda an hour on an hour nap which does restrict my day quite a bit but it has helped her night wakings.

I think ginger mentioned a while back about someone she knew's LO now only sleeping in their cot....I think I may have the same problem It seems that whatever approach you take there are downfalls to each. I am going to now start trying to get DD to take some naps in her buggy....fuck me I feel like I'm forver trying to achieve something...I long for when DD can stay awake for longer periods with getting cranky and crying.....I sound like a right whinger today....sorry.

after my saying I would give my beautiful baby son extra cuddles when he woke me at night last night, the little so and so gave me 5 opportunites for a cuddle between 7 and 7 I am hoping that he has had his share for now! Sleep well ladies

Justjame - how many naps is she averaging per day then? My ds does around 3 varying in length - anything from 1.75hrs to 30mins.

He pretty much naps 1.5/1.75 hourly until afternoon when he will have an extended wakeful period before bedtime. Does that sound like yours? I seem to be constantly putting him to bed!

Cruise, that's interesting because I was just going to ask about awake time. My DD naps almost 2 hours to the minute of waking. Most of the time for bang on 30 mins. There is generally one nap of the day where she wakes up crying and exceptionally grumpy so I try and extend that by sitting with her and popping the dummy back in. My question really was about extending that awake time before bedtime. Tonight she was due a last nap at 5.45 which I thought was a bit late but a bit early for bed so instead I had her in bed for about 6.10 therefore extending her awake time for 2.25 hours. Predicatably we had major meltdown but that seems to happen redardless of how long she's been awake. Do you think this is too long to be awake?

Her wake/sleep has not improved. Need I say more?

Hope you're feeling a bit happier Cruise, you sounded really fed up in your Friday post. I don't think you're a monster if you let your DS cry if he's just tired. I do let my DD but I'm there with her. I think sometimes picking her up overstimulates her because she seems to crank up the volume so I just gently shush and hold hands if need be (mostly to stop her from scratching her face) I personally couldn't leave her on her own to cry but if you're happy with that then it has to be what works for you. It's an approach I may well have to take myself when she's a bit older if she's still not settling. My mum was actually the one to tell me not leave her to cry. I think they were put under a lot of pressure to leave their kids to cry and she hated it. Again, it's personal though. I do think their is a lot of waffle surrounding dealing with babies though and I'm not convinced there is a middle ground. You either let them cry or you don't. I just couldn't get the baby whisperer or ncss methods to work at all. I thought they sent very mixed messages to my lo.

Pinktulips, great advice. I often need reminding of this when it's getting tough so thankyou.

Kbaby- congrats sounds excellent progress. Does he stay asleep? My LO goes to sleep on her own OKish but just doesn't stay asleep for long.

JJ Congratulate yourself on your successes so far. You've done a great job getting her to have such good naps in her cot. I'm sure you'll crack the next stage. You seem very determined and I agree with you, it seems like one battle after another. Here's to winning some.

Have a good night all.

well fingers crossed tonight will be differant, he seems to be feeling better and had three good naps today, ate a good dinner and had a huge feed before bed so touch wood he might stay down a while.

ginger, i know what you mean about there being no in between.... pick up put down and the other variations of the same only ever serve to enrage either of my two so i'm either doing something wrong or they're just not suited to alot of babies!

cant cope with thi. woke 6 times for suck last night. last at 5.55 after which he woke fully. so tired last night i felt sick. gott dd's b'day party today. i just want to enjoy being awake with my beautiful lo's. i am begging for sleep

Would like to say I had a good night but I didn't
I actually left her to cry last night for a while as I thought that maybe I go into her room too soon, and don't give her chance to settle herself. Resulted in complete meltdown,as she was so worked up, I had to calm her before she would feed. I felt like such a cow. Then couldn't sleep when I went back to bed for feeling guilty/trying to figure out another plan/DH chipping in with stupid suggestions etc etc

Feel sh*t this morning like I haven't got a clue what I'm suppossed to be doing with her! Little love is on her playmat laughing away so I know I'm doing something right just feels like sometimes I'm hopeless. Ohh what I'd give for 7 hours sleep....

cc - i feel exactly like you today. I msut bed a shit mother if I can't even get him to sleep when he is tired. I am gonna do a bit of sleep training as of tonight. I have had enough. how do yu get your lo to sleep when she wakes in teh night?

my dh got shit suggestions too. Alwasy so defensive. Sick of hearing that I am tired/lo won't sleep etc...... I want symathy!

ds was quite god last night.... only woke once for a feed and a ouple of times for his dummy in the evening and went down easy each time. he woke at about 1 and wanted up but that was due to a bit of a leaky nappy situation and he was happy to snuggle up to m and go to sleep afterwards and didn't wake up shouting in the early hours so improvements are being made.

sorry you guys didn't have the same luck... cruise, i tried sleep training in desperation with dd and it really doesn't work when they're too little. with ds i try and calm him down and put him down awake, leave the room while he's still awake and just keep repeating til he dozes off by himelf.... i learned from dd that it's not such a great idea to try and get them to sleep before you put them down. now that he's not teething he seems to be getting the hang of it so fingers crossed......

I normally end up feeding her back to sleep. Sometimes she has a good feed so is obviously hungry, other times I know she is just sucking for comfort.

She does have a dummy but it rarely gets her back to sleep in the night. I've tried water, shusshing, pu/pd. Like you cruise I'm weaning her off the boob and tonight she is on bottle b4 bed (just leaving boobs for night feeds). Not sure how she'll take it and we might have a real fight on our hands. I'm secretly hoping that when I introduce a bottle in the night she'll stop waking looking for a comfort suck

Sorry just managed to get on. I'm lucky if I can stretch DD to being awake 2 hrs, After an hour awake time she starts acting really tired again and If I push my luck she gets very grizzly and starts to cry...sometimes she can go 1 1/2 hrs.
And now she won't even go to sleep in her bouncy chair or my arms I have tried and she gets more cranky till I put her in her cot and she goes straight off so visiting people is now a nightmare as I have to leave to get her home to her cot. Her naps are 45 mins to the dot (a sleep cycle) if she does only do 30 mins I will keep her in her cot, she doesn't cry just chats away till she drops off again.
She had started to go through 7-6.30 again but did wake last night but just popped a dummy in and she did go back off till 6.30 when I drop kicked DH out of bed so I got a much needed lie in
Like you cruise I feel like I'm constantly putting DD to bed and feel very of mums who have babies that happily stay awake without a meltdown.

Also meant to say I'm with the anti CC method.
I couldn't imagine leaving a baby to cry for a min - ginger put it perfectly - they are little babies who think the sun shines and sets because we turn it on and off each day.
we are their entire world and they trust us to make everything ok and I for one will continue to make everything ok for my DD as long as I live.
I'm not saying as she get older there won't be boundaries, I think they are very much needed, but that's when she's a walking talking (please God) little person who understands things and not a helpless baby that just wants her mum.

I agree JJ - leaving her to cry last night just upset her and me, and we got nowhere. She was obviously hungry, and even if she wasn't and just wanted some comfort thats what I'm there for. You can't reason with her that she can be comforted when its daytime but not night-time because I need some sleep!!!!

Feel a bit better than I did this morning about it all, and she has had a huge sleep in her pram this afternoon so that is huge progress. DH is going to give her the bedtime bottle, in the hope she'll take it better if she can't smell me

Well said JJ. Words that echo how I feel.

Cruise, hope you're feeling better and managed to enjoy your DD birthday. Can your DH/DP help at weekends? could you perhaps give him a couple of bottles and let him deal with trying to get your DS to sleep while you kip elsewhere, preperably with ear plugs.

I think we all feel like shit mothers at some point. I know I have but I know that none of us are doing anything wrong. I think those whose babies sleep through from such an early age are just lucky. CC I let DD cry for a while a couple of times after feeling pressured by my DH and SIL. I can't tell you the guilt I felt, or in fact still do and that was when she was about 10 weeks old. I'd rather not sleep for 18 years than feel that guilt again. She was sobbing poor little thing and she was so tiny. Needless to say I won't listen to another word DH says. I don't know how many times we've covered the 'let her cry, no I'm not going to' ground.

Talking of DH, anyone feel like they're more of a hindrance sometimes? I use weekends to try and do some housework while DH watches DD. I never feel like I can be off duty tho because I can hear her getting more and more wound up and tired and him bouncing around like effing Tiger. Drives me up the wall. I'm constantly saying, I think she's tired. This morning we had total meltdown over her morning nap because he'd left it too long to get her to sleep. I was livid. I just find weekends quite stressful because he doesn't understand her needs so is quite happy to trudge about for hours on end forgetting that she might need to nap, feed etc.

Makes me feel mean moaning about him because he's quite good and very caring. I'm just exausted with the constant battle that parenthood seems to have become. It's a drama trying to get her to sleep. It's a total frigging nightmare trying to get her to stay asleep. God knows what delights await with weaning!!

Cruise, hope you'll feel better knowing that my DD hardly slept last night. DH was made to do night duty and reckoned she awoke every half hour (yeah, it's always worse when he takes over)it was more like every couple of hours by my reckoning. Of course, I was made to stay and be woken too whereas during the week he gets the luxury of the spare room. When does this stage pass. I've aged a million years.

So sorry If I upset anyone re CC - honestly didn't mean to, was just explaining that it's not my bag
DH has been better this weekend but only beacuse I have gone on and on so many times about the best way to look after her.

Thats sounds awful to say but like ginger said we are with them all day and can read them like books, in the end I let DH do what he thought was best (biting my tounge which was so fecking hard!) and when DD went to meltdown city I would just give my "maybe next time you won't ignore what I say" look. I explained to him that DD will be fine if he keeps to roughly the same routine as she has in the week, i.e. don't try to keep her awke for 3 hrs

we are all learning as we go, sometimes we get it right and sometimes we get it wrong....but we should remind ourselves that we must be very loving mums to care so much and our LO's are lucky to be so loved

and we can always rant on here

JJ

f' me. DD has just gone to bed. Minimum fuss. lay in cot looking at lights with lullaby cd on while I sang . cross fingers. I'm sure I'll be back up there in 15 minutes tho!

I am not gonna do cc. I just want to teach my beautiful little boy to go to sleep by himself. A valuable lesson we are told. I just tried to leave him to cry/grizzle a bit as he just woke after an hour. I stroked face/rubbed tummy. What a load of shit. He got so worked up and I cannot, absolutely cannot leave him. I got him up. bf and he ws out like a light. I know what workds but I need my sleep. more later lo screaming again

kbaby - how old is your lo? when did you starte doing the to bed awake thing?

we started putting ds to bed awake from very young as he often fell asleep while i was bathing dd when he was tiny so we kept it up. he went down tonight easily (abctually he fell asleep in his cot with no nppy on while dd and i hung her paintings in her room ) woke and screamed for a few mins at 7.30 but fell asleep after some teething gel and is still down thank god.

oh my gawshhhhhhh , its taken sooo long to catch up on thsi thread. Ive not done anything else for the last hr!

Im sorry if I dont mention nay names indivudually , just enough that I could get that everyones feeling quite ruff.

I nearly nearly didnt need to be in here as friday night she slept through from 7-6:30 , well with a dream feed by dh at 11. but it was shorlived as I was up last night with a VERY HUGE and full nappy at 3am , fed her (I think my last bf ) and then she slept till dd1 started her morning jabber at 6:30.

she wasnt happy at 7 bedtime tonight as dh fed her a ff, Im just trying to be away whilst finishing the bf , but I think she may have cottened on to this now.It feels very weird not to BF , but I think I need to stop for the sake of my physical health now. Ive gradually stopped a feed every week, but the night feeds and morning ones have been BF and now I seem to have stopped it all.

I dont really know what to do tonight if she wakes , havent got a bottle ready for it, so I may still bf tonight or give a dummy , I just go with what I feel she needs.

anywhoooo , Im waffling on about not much as Im giddy with tiredness.

Hope to have a more constructive post another day!!!

I had an extremely bad night last night - it went something like this. Went to bed at 9pm after feed, awake at 9.50pm, 11.30pm, 00.45,01.00, 02.00, 03.00, 03.45, 05.00, 05.45....get the picture.

I'm really not sure why 6 mth old ds can sometimes go for 3-4 hrs and sometimes like last night wakes hrly. There was no real reason apart from 5am when his nappy was dirty and dh chged it. All he wanted the other times was to be held/fed back to sleep.

I feel like a walking zombie and I have to go to work later this morning. Have any of you guys thoughtabout the crying techniques? ( sorry if it's alredy been covered in this very long thread!)

well he woke once more for his dummy and once for a feed and nappy change and came into bed with me about 1.30 so not too bad a night..... sort of!

F me, I feel almost normal. Bed at 6ish, minimum fuss slept woke briefly at 8.30 but re-plugged with dummy. Woke and fed at 11. Woke and replugged at 1.30. Woke, fed and nappy change at 3.00-3.45. Slept 'til 6.30. Now for the uninitiated that will seem like little quality sleep. But believe me, that feels like the most sleep I've had in 2 months. I feel very positive this morning. So much so in fact that I've agreed to go and stay with my mum for a couple of days next week.

Cruise, how was your night?

Aimijee, sorry your night was so crap. There is no explanation is there? Mine will probably be back to normal today after this post. Interestingly I ate my own body weight in Green and Blacks Maya gold chocolate last night. Maybe that's the key.

Personally, I'm not for crying. Shatters my nerves and I'd never be able to sleep letting DD fall asleep crying. I guess it depends on the reason for waking. If your LO has a sleep problem then it may work if you can hack it. If they're waking because of hunger, teeth or something else you're not going to solve the problem. That's why I have such a problem with that method. Given that they can't speak I can't assume that there isn't anything wrong and let them cry themselves to sleep. (another thing, why is it called controlled crying? seems like uncontrollable crying to me ) It's a very personal choice tho.

Not a bad night for me either. DD went down at 7, woke at 11.30 & 4 for feed but went straight to sleep again. Awake for day at 7. Also put blackout blind up this morning, so hopefully we can extend daytime naps. Am secretly hoping that it will improve her quality of sleep at night.

Just wondered though if anyone else has experienced lo's crying only to go to them to find they are still fast asleep??? The crying can go on for a few minutes. So I find myself hanging over her cot to make sure she isn't a awake either. I wonder what she is dreaming about?? She did it twice last night, so I was still awake even if she wasn't.....