New SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK thread - are we still here?

[PavlovtheCatthatgottheCremeEgg]

Another thread. My didn't we get full quickly! night sleeping good. Naps...not even 5 mins so far today...

Tibsy, night weaning going well. Fed for the first time at 11 last night in ages. She's been going 7-7 without a feed I've offered water in the night and she's taken it when thirsty. It's not stopping her waking but I do think her waking is less.

Tam, I should stop worrying. She is pretty much content to just fall asleep wrapped around my arm in the night. I just worry I'll never be able to go out again.

Tibs, when does teething pain stop? anyones guess. I read they're in pain for 3 days either side of it cutting but i think thats nonsense. No idea I'm affraid.

anyway, whingy baby wants feeding

ds has napped in his cot two days runnng now! for 1hr 15mins each time

ginger, thats good!! hopefully dd will get fed up of water and waking altogether, fingers x'd
amber, just read thru your post. sorry, missed it before. i'm with ginger, dont worry. i start the evening off with getting dd to fall asleep on her own, then dd always comes in with us when she wakes and inevitably falls asleep in the crook of my arm, if not on the boob when she was same age as your lo, she was in with me most of the night.
ginger, i got home at 1.30am after a night out on fri and dd was wide awake downstairs in dps arms! she's so used to coming in to bed with me and he was up late watching tv/waiting for me to come home
cruise, god it makes a difference when they nap well doesnt it? well done to your ds! he's obviously decided that the cot is no longer a 'bad' place to be!

thanks tibs, just not sure how to not be sooooo tired that i could (and do often) cry!

ginger - just glanced quilcky at posts and am busy right now (or at least I should be)! re@ sharing your bed. The only way you are gonna get dd to sleep in her cot is to be harsh. maybe best just to leave her in your bed for now until you feel ready. It is traumatic listening to them cry and you need to be prepred. Gotta go, ds grizzling!

oh and btw - I think you ahve done great all you subscribers to GW. I would have preferred a softer approach like that but it wouldn't have been fair on my dd as it sounds like it could be fairly time consuming! Hats off to you and wishes for continued progress.
Ginger - i did do more cc. It was hard, as I had expected, but it is amazing to put ds in his cot AWAKE after his last feed and have him fall asleep! He does grizzle and grump for a couple of mins most nights but it is nothing short of miraculous! He does still wake either once at night or early am and that is hard as I do not feed/rock to sleep just keep comforting him and leaving until he goes back off. I do pu/pd in the night if I have to because I need tp be sure he is ok and obviously by picking him up I can tell. He is so much better and the fact that I have put him to bed in his cot for naps is testimony to his self settling skills! gotta go and help dd with her homework.

amber - it does get easier, honestly. although there are still hiccoughs along the way, (teething, growth spurts etc as we are all testimony to!)
i had to go up to dd every 30 mins in the evenings most nights for ages, and we've gradually got to the point where she is just waking for milk. thats my next step, night weaning, but dont know if i'm geared up for that yet?! just one thing at a time, and if you can have a rest during the day when lo sleeps, i'd grab that opportunity. i went back to bed with dd 3 times the other day cos i was tired felt so much better for it. i know its not always easy tho.
chin up honey, you're doing a fab job

oh and cruise, dd still grizzles and grumps a little when i put her down, even tho i'm in the room. think it must be some kind of protest about being put to bed wheneveryone else is still up!!!! cheeky imps and for a boy who would only sleep whilst on the move, your ds is doing well, you must be really proud

tibsy - thanks - I really am proud. Arent they doing great!
amber - we have been where you are. It reallly does not last forever. I was so down and despondent until recently I seriously thought I was verging on the brink of PND (and probably was). You lot helped me enormously though . Chin up. I am sure you are a lovely mummy!

long time no post - popping in to say hello! lo is doing much better at night now, still wakes once for a feed sometimes twice but nothing like it was - manageable - he's coming up for 8 months now. day naps still only ever happen if he is swaddled in his cot, if he even gets one arm out he can't go to sleep! if we are out and about he will conk out but wake after one sleep cycle (45 mins) and be all grumpy unless he gets a better sleep in his cot later. funny bunny. his older brother has got worse with his morning waking, he is guaranteed to be up 6.30 at the latest and usually earlier, sometimes 5, at which he is sent back to his room protesting - luckily lo seems to sleep through the tantrum or if not goes back to sleep quickly afterwards. we are experimenting with bed-times and black-out blinds in a bid to encourage ds1 to stay asleep a little longer - I am hoping starting school in september will knock him out for longer!

kiera - hi! So glad things are better for you. about early wakings though. They are the pits!

hi kiera. great news on your better nights DS1 stay in Bed x

thanks cruise and tibs. i just can't help this feeling that i need to be 'doing something proactive to help LO sleep better. i don't know, waiting seems so helpless in a way. and i'm sad for him, because he's in bad moods more than he needs to be if he could just sleep better. and as for my bad moods, well! and i've been reading another BLOODY book that my friend lent me. why is it every book manages to make me feel guilty and like i've been doing everything completely wrong and giving my LO a terrible start in life. blerrrghh. of course, i know its not true, but all these books are so self righteous. so this time i've been reading weissbluth. who has read this? i mean i think he has some valid points and he claims to just be pro-sleep however that comes about, but at the end of hte day his mantra seems to be let em cry, let em cry.
well anyway, i feel guilty because he goes on this tirade about how letting kids continually not sleep properly is leading to poor development, concentration, attention problems, sleep problems later in life. i can totally see how that can be, but i'm not really sure what i can comfortably do about it. also he goes on about how naps need to be really structured and consistent and i think i agree with that too, but if I follow that wholeheartedly I will be completely house bound and probably depressed from never having any adult conversation.
so what do you do? try to do the best for your LO, while maintaining some semblance of sanity yourself. It's such a tricky path to maintain!
xxxxx

Amber - we found that PU/pd stimulated our little one too much when we did it at 4 months to get her to nap and go to bed without feeding. But we did find sssh/pat worked and we picked her up only if it was really bad. Worked within a few days to get her to go to sleep and we are now doing same for middle of the night wakings. It's taking longer probably because she is older now (7m) but is definately starting to work. Good luck.

I think our posts crossed there amber! I felt exactly the same about reading the books - made me feel like I'd really screwed her up. They did help my resolve though and found the baby whisperer helpful. I tried to stay in for 2 weeks but couldnt do it. Managed most of a week but felt very down at the time. I feel that if she gets her morning nap I am free to go out!

tibs, you know things are actually so much better now. but i just feel so rough all the time. LO sleeps in his cot most of the night - a big achievement from a baby who only slept in arms - and he's sleeping a few 2-3 hour stretches now, again a big achievement. i actually only feed him 2-3 times a night and the rest of the time i try to get DH to settle him because he's not that interested in eating unless he's had a decent space from the last feed and is definitely hungry. so honestly, it is getting better, but i don't FEEL much better. its all just wearing me down.
i went to bed when LO went for nap this morning (was a horrid struggle actually today) and lie there for 45 minutes and didn't fall asleep. i think part of the problem at the moment is that all of LO's poor sleep habits have rubbed off on me and i find it really hard to get to sleep, especially if i've had to be up for a while at night. the other night i was lying in bed for 1.5 hours trying to go to sleep. i'm sure that is a big part of why i'm feeling so bad on top of the wakings. i was considering taking valerian but read it might not be so good when you're breastfeeding. and chamomile tea just isn't doing the trick!

chocolatte, thanks, thats kind of what i've been doing, focussing on the first nap of the day and then having him sleep in the sling. but it seems now, he sleeps better in his cot (once he's asleep) than in the sling (reverse of how it used to be), so i do feel sometimes i'm ripping him off some valuable rest. the pram is still a no go zone, but i'm thinking of working on it. would be good if he could sleep in a stationary pram while out...

ps. chocolatte, i tried to settle him the other night by not taking him out of his cot, but just patting and shhhing and he yelled and screamed until i couldn't bare it and i lifted him up and he vomited all over himself, me and the carpet.
i'm a bit traumatised by that and scared to let him cry too much!!! just seeing the vomit all over his face and in his eyes, i couldn't handle it.

I found the same. My little one now sleeps well in her cot during the day but not when we're out. But I would go insane if I stayed in all the time.

My little one has also trained me to sleep in manner of baby too! ie cant seem to get to sleep if overtired (all the time!)or overstimulated and wake up lots in the night! No doubt that the tiredness is a cumulative thing too. Sometimes you feel worse just as things seem to have got better. Then you feel guilty again! Fun this isnt it! Just as well that they are so gorgeous adorable little darlings :O

OMG, that must have been awful! Very traumatic for both of you.

(I prescribe vino tinto and reinforcements)

yes, they are all worth it aren't they
my LO is making strange darth vader noises at the moment, its his new sound that he is practicing ad infinitum, its quite hilarious, it does make me laugh.

yeah, things seem to be a bit better, and i seem to feel worse. and i feel guilty as DH is doing some of the hard yards in the early morning at the moment as I can't seem to drag myself out of bed half the time. on the weekend i tried to have a shower, and i ended up in the bath because i just couldn't be bothered to stand up...
eh, well. i'm sure i'll look back with fond memories on this time one day
a nice vino is my salvation just after LO goes to bed and just before I go to bed.
It's so good you ladies are out there. All the people I know in real life think they have a hard time because their babies wake up once a night.

kiera lovely to hear from you and so pleased that the nights aare getting better. Ds1 tho, what are you playing at????!!
amber - hold on honey, it will all fall into place, and step away from the books i know what you mean about poor sleep habits rubbing off, my nights are crap even if dd sleeps as i'm used to broken sleep patterns. what i wouldnt give for a decent length of sleep, unbroken by bubbas, alarms or anything else [wistful emoticon]
we had a crap night last night and i did get a bit ratty unusual fro me and so i feel a bit guilty this am, but god, i'm only human.
its taken dd 40 mins to go off for her nap today and she was doing some serious protesting, despite being super tired.
big sigh from tibsy, i can hear her now, gotta go

Amber, chuck the books. Mine are gathering dust after making me feel exactly the same. The fact is every baby is different. I have no idea how these so called experts can claim to get a baby into such an exact pattern and imply that if you don't do exactly the same you are abusing your child in some way. At the end of the day, if your baby was dog tired, you've provided the right environment for it to sleep they would sleep. In other words, you're not preventing your baby from sleeping which is a different thing imo.

These books sell because there are lots of very tired emotional parents looking for 'cures' and it pees me off that they make you feel so crap. I honestly think they nearly tipped me over the edge. I also think being oblivious to 'perfection', 'ideal' and what everyone else's children are doing would cheer us all up immediately.

Ohh what a rant!

My lo is poorly at the mo. Sleeping in the sling. very unheard of. We had to take her to the Dr last night as she had a high temperature she's still poorly today so I can forgive her being whiny and unsettled. Makes you realise how vulnerable they are and how much you love them when they're poorly.

for your poorly LO ginger.
the books are going ...OK! the only book that ever made me feel any good was naomi stadlen's, what mothers do (especially when it looks like nothing). it is a wonderful book.