'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!!

ami - my ds is the same - falls asleep during scgool run and stays asleep 4 abt 1.5 hrs in the car seat, trouble is we dont do sch run at weekends so napping is a problem then . ds gas napped well today.... 1.5 hrs this morning and 1.25 hrs at lunchtime. he just needs 30 mins or so more to tide him over till bedtime .

Am tempted to take dd out in the car for a nap but don't want to start getting into the habit of it (don't have other children to pick up or any good reason for it!). She's 4.5 months and has been sleeping better a nights but not much in the day. Today she has slept for 1hr in total and is now grumpy but shows no sign of going to sleep...

Had 30 mins this morning then 20 mins at lunchtime - I spent an hour trying to get her to go back down. Finally she did - for ten minutes. I give up...

both my boys are ill with colds today and lo was so miserable I fed him to sleep on our bed. he slept for two hours this morning and is down again now. hope I won't regret this tonight as he rarely sleeps this long in the day but he was so unhappy and surely needs more sleep if ill, ds1 always did...much more effective than pat/shhh in his cot where he wakes up after 30/45 mins...also the quiet undisturbed feeding (a miracle with a 3 year old in the house) meant he fed better than usual. will let you know if either has a negative effect on tonight!

funny - ds has napped beautifully today too! let's see what the night heralds.....

Mine has hardly slept today and really won't settle this evening. She just will not settle at all. Just when you think she's asleep the eyes open and she's wide awake again. Not sure what to do about it to be honest, it's becoming a real battle ground. All the advice about getting them down as soon as they show signs of tiredness doesn't seem to work either. This morning I took her to bed after she started to get a bit irritable, went through the usual routine and laid her in her cot. She laid there chatting away for about half and hour by which point she was over tired and it was a real fight to get her to have any sleep. I kept creeping in to poke the dummy in and eventually it worked but it was exhausting. Lunch time we were out and she had about 20 mins and obviously needed more but wouldn't settle then this afternoon I battled for about 30 minutes to get her to sleep for another half an hour. This evening she's already woken up absolutely wailing about 5 times in 1 hour. WTF? I just have no idea what to do any more.

To those that are weaning off the breast. Are you finding that your LO is sleping better as a result of introducing formula? I'm thinking of starting on baby rice in a couple of weeks because she's trying to grab my food and is making little chewing motions. Makes me think she might be ready to wean. I don't think hunger is the problem with the constant waking though because she often refuses boob in the evening when offered.

Doesn't help when friends tell you how wonderfully their LO slept at that age

Cruise, glad your lo is making progress
Kiera, glad you're seeing some improvement
Fleecy, I totally understand. It really sucks.
CC, ahh wine. I love wine. One of the reasons I'll be giving up breast feeding before too long I suspect.

ginger - ditto yor problem with settling. ds crying again in his room this evening having been at my boob for 45 mins and dozed off beautifully. then we stirs, roots for boob, and off we go again. Now he is crying because I am gonna get pissed off at this ritual while my dd spends ANOTHER night downstairs while I settle him while my dh is out AGAIN (he is working so cannot be too harsh). I am thoroughly pissed off tbh. You are right, the advice about putting them down sleepy is bollocks as far as my ds is concerned. He wants semi-coma before he goes in his cot! Now I cannot leave him to scream - he was beautifully peaceful now he is hysterical . fucked off totally.

makes a good case for cio - don';t see any other way but find this intolerably and painful to listen to. Every night gets worse with settling. So miffed. Sorry!

Cruise I agree, CC/cio is not my bag and I've agrued with DH til I'm blue in the face about not doing it but I'm beginging to wonder if I'll be resorting to it in a couple of months because all else has failed. I keep telling myself we'll get to 6 months, start with the weaning, see if that makes a difference and then make a judgement call. What bothers me about cio (especially at the moment) is that I can't rule out teething or hunger. I have to try and feed or do teething gel etc first which probably means I've broken the first rules of CC/CIO before I've even started. I can see it's use if you've got a genuine sleep problem but it's diagnosing a sleep problem over a different kind of problem that I difficulties with. Perhaps some wise soul will come along and advise. TBH if I thought it was just a case of her not sleeping out of habit then I'd be seriously tempted but feel like I can't run the risk just yet. Sorry that your DH is at work again. Can't be helped I guess but must be hard. Have you got someone else that could help for a night or two. I bet he'd settle beautifully for someone else. They do don't they?

ginger- I have just rocked/nursed ds to sleep AGAIN - and now he is awake AGAIN -I have been ther 1.5 hrs and my dd is really feeling it. I cannot bring ds downstairs as I did that last night which I really didn't want to do. End of tether approaching....

What a nightmare for you cruise - I'm such a wimp - I will feed and feed and feed my lo until he is asleep in the evenings as I can't bear to hear him cry. He is getting better at being sssshhhed if we get to him quick enough though - my dh had the wonderful idea of using the 'walkie talkie' part of our baby monitor to ssshhh him and that usually works a treat. DH are good for somethings! He is now in charge of the ssssshhhing in the evenings, although i will always feed him if all else fails.

ginger - it really annoys me when people go on about their 'good' babies who sleep / slept well - makes it seem like our more 'high need' darlings are choosing to not sleep. I often say if my lo has that kind of brain power now he will definately be a genius!

My lo has never been a good 'napper' He is a very 'distractable baby' though so now I feed him to sleep for all his naps when I am at home and find that this is the only way to get him to have a feed and the least painful for everyone - I was trying to 'teach' him how to go to sleep by himself but when he was sobbing in his sleep I just could not do it again - what a wimp.

I've given up on the 'falling asleep by themselves' idea - hope this won't come back to haunt me though

sorry - was half way through last message when dh called as ds is making weird noises in his sleep so I have cross-posted!

I'm with you on the cc/cio. WHen i am sitting there at 3 am and have been up every hour my views do change but in the cold light of day I think - I just can't do it. There is a school of thought that says it should not be done until 6 months anyway and others say that some babies are genuinely hungry right up until a year. My lo is definately hungry as he takes a proper feed every 3 hours and he is 7 months. Main problem is his distractability in the day but no matter how hard I try I can't feed him up in the day. He is on solids and eats really well but I am afraid it has not helped him - some people do say it has helped their lo though.

I definately go with the idea of getting someone to help out one evening. My mum and sister came over one evening so me and dh could go out. Even though ds did not sleep much it was good to let someone with a little less sleep deprivation cope with the constant wakings.

I am going upstairs intermittently (spelling?) to comfort him but I cannot spend the rest of my evening up there as I am on my own with dd. He is fine and stops as soon as I pick him up but he is screaming inbetweenti,es and it is awful

ds finally settled and slept in my arms (I am such a softie) at around 9:40pm. I guess he loves his mummy so much that he just needs to be near me . Unfortunately, his unerring devotion is highly inconvenient at times! I lovehim so dearly, but I just want to get him to settle at night. I need to be with dd too as she is at school all day and needs some time in the evenings. She is so good but it is unfair of me to expect her to fend for herself. Bless her. I have just come downstairs and seen ds's new shoes - little navy blue deck shoes, so sweet and tiny - aaahhh.
N'nite ladies. Sorry I got so stressed . I wish you the time asleep to have pleasant dreams.....

ginger - just a footnote before I collapse into bed for a blissful 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep .... ds is being weaned right now from breast (not very successful as he loves boob and often gives up on the bottle and roots for breast) and also onto solids - very successful he loves his food and has no problem with the spoon or any textures/flavours - bliss! But..........it has made SFA difference to his sleep pattersn thus far. hv told me to keep a record which I am doing and chart his progress (or rather lack thereof . I am hoping for a miracle.... n'nite

morning - well after a fraught, extremely stressful beginning to lo's night he woke at 12;30 and 4:30am then again at 7 for the day. I suppose this is getting better but the early part of the evenings are horrendous. I just don't know what to do about it. dh is going to put lo to bed this evening but I don't know if I will be able to resist the urge to soothe my gorgeous boy if he gets frantic. he is 5 months old, is this the right age to do calming from outside the cot without pu/pd No one will be leaving him alone to scream.

I had a (fairly) successful night. Went out as planned & DH managed to give her bottle, and put her to bed. She woke at 2, so I went in after too many wines and managed to sshh her back to sleep with dummy. I didn't take her out of cot incase I dropped her. But she went to sleep till 3.30, when dh gave her bottle. She had 5oz and slept till 7.30!

GN - not sure if it is the formula that has improved her sleep or the weaning. She has some solids about 4.30/5, and then bedtime bottle between 6.30/7. So she does have a lot of food before bed which dare I say, has helped her settle in the early part of the evening. Dh reckons she never made a sound from when I went out .

Problem has been she didn't want any milk this morning, so am only gonna give 3oz in night, and just the once!! Well thats the plan for now....

Morning ( or is it afternoon now! )

I had an ok night with ds except I had a terrible migraine so still couldn't sleep!!

ds only took 2oz formula last night before bed and still slept better so i'm beginning tho think it's sheer exhaustion that makes him sleep better.

He's a very brief daytime napper so if he does 4 half hr naps the last one may be at 5.30 - 6 which is too close to his 8.30 - 9 bedtime. Yesterday he woke at 4.15p from his last nap and went down at 9.15p so was proper knackered! Gonna try and work on this theory a bit!

I'm feeling a bit low today as dh had to go abroad for 10 days under very sad circumstances - it's difficult to deal with other stuff when you're sleep deprived.

Amijee - send you big virtual hug. It's hard enough to deal with things alone asit is without being sleep deprived.

Hope the migraine has gone too

thanks cc.

Migraine gone..ds asleep..I just feel so crap. I think i've been holding it together for dh for a few weeks now and sittin here alone and not working for the 1st time I'm feeling the effects of what we are all going thru right now.

Think i will call someone - but thanks v much for ur support x

Aimijee, I second the virtual hugs. Hope you're feeling a bit stronger. You can be very proud of yourself coping on your own. Only other mums will appreciate that, especially with a lo that doesn't sleep. I hope your difficulties are resolved soon.

CC, I admire the fact that you actually got up in the night after being out and drinking. I'm such a light weight that half a glass of wine has me feeling light headed these days.

Cruise, sorry your evening was so fraught and that you had to cope with it on your own. Don't beat yourself up over taking him downstairs so you can spend time with your DD. If that's what works for you right now then just go with it and deal with any consequences at a later date. (You might not have any anyway). Try and resist the urge to help your DH because a) he needs to understand what you are dealing with and b) DS has to get used to getting to sleep without nursing. Put some headphones on or nip to the supermarket so you can't hear it. He won't come to any harm. I rarely pick DD up from the cot to soothe, I generally shush, roll her on her side, pat, sit with her. Whatever it takes. I don't often need to pick her up but then she takes a dummy which does seem to make the settling a bit easier. I think the important thing is to try and be consistent so as not to confuse them. I couldn't do the PU/PD, seemed to wind her up and frankly it felt meaner than not picking her up at all.

Lori, glad I'm not alone. I also think you're doing the right thing by doing what works for you and not following the 'rules' as it were. If it comes back to haunt you then all you've done is delayed dealing with the problem rather than created one so I don't think it matters. Hopefully it won't but if it does maybe it'll be easier to deal with because your LO will be that bit older and you'll feel more confident with what your doing.

My night was weird. I gave DH a bottle of ebm to feed DD and went to sleep in the spare room. I woke at 4.20am and then slept on and off until DH came into me at 6.30am asking me to go and feed DD. Weird thing was that DD hadn't fed in the night. She'd slept from 11.30 - 4.00 DH tried to give her the bottle, she wouldn't take it (hasn't had a bottle for months so didn't know what to do with it) and fell asleep in his arms. He put her down and she woke at 5.30, dummy went in then he got me up at 6.30. So, weird that a) I didn't friggin' sleep anyway b) I woke at pretty much the same time as they did and c) she obviously wasn't hungry in the night and d) why the f@ck didn't she wake every hour for him like she does me??. Some lessons to be learned me thinks

thanks for post ginger - ds fell asleep at the boob and was so beautifully peaceful, Inevitable he woke and now dh is up there cuddling him. He is still crying his head off and I find it sooooo distressing. It is hard not to go in but then dh would wonder what was going on, we would end up rowing about it and none of us would be any nearer solving our prob. I hate this

jeez - ds is still crying his heart out. dh is holding him, cuddling him. He has nodded off three times and each time dh tries to put him in cot he wakes again. I feel like my heart is breaking but he is being well cared for and hugged. What can I do? Just went up and dh said it would be pointless if I take him and offer boob now. I guess he is right but it is sooooooo distresssing for me . How long can he go on crying for. Surely this is not right?

oh perlease help me!

Hope he settled in the end Cruise. Just stay strong. He is being well cared for so it's not like you're leaving him on his own. He's just confussed because he's used to falling asleep with you. It'll take a bit of time but he'll work it out. Good luck

ginger - thankyou. he did settle after 1hr 15mins. It was horrendous. he fell asleep in dh's arms which kindof defeats object a bit. He was beside himself. When dh came downstiars I was fraught. I asked for a hug as it had been awful for me and he was totally unsympathetic. I got no hug. I felt very sad