SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK PART 6 - now with added caffeine*

[ImBarryScott]

• I wish.

Morning all,

Hope you find this!

for your rough night Amber.

After a few good ones, we had a crap one too. Up at 1.30, 3, 4.30, 5.30, 6.15........
I think she was a bit overtired last night. Hope we can get her napping better today .

So how were all your nights?

hope to hear of some good nights. to top ours off, LO vomited up his dinner! i don't know what is going on. his highchair is so disgusting, i am tempted to leave it for dh to clean, no, i'm kidding! i've taken all the straps off and put in the washing machine, i might put the rest in the bath and put the shower on it.
so sunday night LO went until 4 without milk, last night until 5. so tonight we are hoping for 6, right!?

for the first time ever i don't care that i'm the first one up - ds slept til 7! (well, 6.50 and he did wake at 5 but didn't cry!!) woo hoo! Won't be going and getting my hopes up just yet, but woo hoo anyways!!

we had a few wakings last night but dh and i decided that we rush in too quickly and to just leave him for a minute to settle himself...and it worked (ok, so he let out some blood-curdling screams, but not even for a minute!)Hope this is the beginning of a new sleeping ds

don't worry, not all happy faces around here - i've seriously f**ked (there are no other words!) my already bad back, spent yest lying on the floor!

fizz - i know exactly what you mean ds used to be the perfect little sleeper - ahh...i remember the days! (or the mornings!)

amber for the vomiting. I wish ds would vomit in his chair, but he always manages to do it on the cream carpet or in his bed (and always after red food too!!) Hope he is ok though and, hope he went til 6!

Still bloody raining here - no plans today, though must get a few basic groceries. ANyone got anything fun planned today?

Sorru. long post

morning all

amber hope dh came home and gave you a much deserved foot rub!
I had debate with dh last night over how much he does vs how much i do! pathetic isn't it. we were watching jamie oliver and he made a comment about me getting a partridge for sun lunch! he was taking the p**s but it still wound me up!
i ended up giving him a list of what i do
all cleaning
all laundry
all food shopping
all cooking
every bedtime with ds
all bill paying/finances
all social arrangements (babysitting/presents/going out etc)
not to mention ds himself!

anyway rant over...........
good night for us
ds asleep by 7.15
woke at 3.15 for water
woke at 7 for day

he goes to

especially for wolf mama
yes, you do need rather a lot of patience and there is sctually some crying involved, despite what they say, otherwise, you'd never move thru the stages. dd responded well to it, mainly because i was still in the room and she can cope with that!!

i havent read thru all the posts as i used my dd free time to order the tesco shop and shes now clambering over me! will look later

our night - woke at 1.30am for milk, then nothing til 6.30

sorry don't know wat my last sentence 'he goes to' was meant to be but i obviously forgot half way through

skirmish - am really chuffed for you love, although for your back. Raining here too but off to M & Ts later so will have to get out

Tam its not pathetic at all. the thing i try to impress upon dp, is that, although i know he works really hard, i do too, but not even that, my 'job' is 24hrs and i never get to switch off, even when i'm away from dd. dont think he can grasp that really, although he pretends to! on a more positive note for your night my lovely. back to it....and still just water, great stuff

amber - hope you managed to get a bit of TLC from dh. you deserve it my love x

ibs - if you're lurking, hope your first day back at work went well (think it was yesterday )

fizz, hope you had a better night last night

and you meggy, ginger and EP and all my other lovely fellow siftw ers

despite having only one waking, i forgot to add that it was a 90 minutes one .....i just dont get why she's done that, the last 3 nights

hello ladies, I need a kindness...

the last 2 nights have been hard. Monday night she was up every hour again, and at 3 am looking wide awake and grinning at me, as though it were playtime . Last night started horribly too - we decided to try shushing her in her cot before resorting to picking her up - this resulted in hysteria. It took more than an hour to get her re-settled. What followed was a bit better, up every 3 hours.

I met up with my antenatal group yesterday, and sort of lost it a bit - their babies are all sleeping through from 7-7, and have done since as early as 8 weeks in one case! I asked how they taught their babies to self-settle, and no one could tell me! Apparently they just figured it out themselves.

I feel so rubbish - I feel like there MUST be something I can do to help her sleep better. I feel like a crappy mum because I haven't figured out what this is yet. The alternative, that she is going to be a rubbish sleeper no matter what, is too dispiriting to contemplate. I go to bed at 7 with her now while my husband stays up to catch any awakenings. Likewise, he sleeps post midnight, when my 'shift' starts.

This had me so down yesterday that I was in floods of tears. Bizarrely, perhaps because she'd never seen my cry, this made my little one laugh . To be fair, she is shaping up to have a weird sense of humour. Her first laugh was at a plate of meatballs in IKEA.

chibi ((((((hugs)))))) poor you, my darling. sounds like you're having what Tam's named a SDD (self doubt day) believe me, we all have those, when we wonder whether there's something we should or shouldnt be doing.
i dont know if you know, but i have a son too and i can promise you that i havent done anything differently with dd, it just happens that ds was a sleeper and slept thru from 3 months and dd is, well.... not a sleeper!
it does get easier, as i'm sure tam will 2nd. she's been having a consistent run of good nights. in the meantime, you have all of us for support and the knowledge that you are definitely not doing something wrong and that you are definitely not alone x

just wanted to say to amber, that i hope lo is feeling better and your night was ok x

Chibi - you are not a rubbish mum, as you say it's not like your friends have done anything magic to make their babies sleep! Plus I think a lot of people either bend the truth or have a different definition of 'sleeping through' (for example if their babies wake and cry but they ignore them!).

I know sometimes it feels like you're the only one with a crap sleeper but there are loads of us out there... it must get better, though, or this thread would be full of people with non-sleeping 3-year-olds too!

Hi Tibsy, Tam, Skirmish, glad you had good nights apart from 90-min waking of course!

Ours much the same as usual, 4 wakings but nothing too stressful, aside from being woken at midnight by drunken DH stumbling in from the pub and deciding he wanted to chat for half an hour

meg - but too.... dp does that, 'I reallllly love you, you know that dont you?...i mean realllllllllllly'
yeah right, i get the picture, now p**ss off'
glad your night not a shocker, but i think every minute of sleep is precious so drunken talkative other halfs are not very amusing

chibi love, you're doing a fab job in trying circumstances. i don't know what planet these mums in the antenatal group are from, but either they just have easy babies, they are claire verity fans, or they are not telling the whole story. it WILL get better.
i watched that blardy bringing up baby again (there was nothing else on ), and i thought if that's what i have to do to have a 7 to 7 sleeping baby, i'd rather have broken nights forever.
poor little ds ended up in bed with us and feeding on and off all night. he had a fever of 39C and could hardly sleep, sobbing on and off and clutching onto me allnight. bless him, he's been a little trooper this morning. i took him to the doctor and he was so good. dr said nothing serious, but just monitor him and plenty of calpol. he's just not his usual self, really quiet and still. he's normally so active and crazy. this must be what it's like to have a placid baby

thanks amber meg + tibsy - your words of support really help.

I looked at your Gradual Retreat link tibsy, it looks think we will give it a whirl. [hopeful emoticon]

Need help, need sleep!! I hope this is the right place to post.

ds2 (16 wks) has been a pretty good sleeper from around 4 wks old. He quickly developped a longer stretch at night which progressively lengthened to going from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. ish - fantastic! A couple of times, he even slept through till 6 a.m. when I had to wake him before my boobs exploded.

Except that it's not working any more... For the last week, he has been waking every 3 hours or less. It's not hunger, because with a bit of persistence I can get him back to sleep (dummy). I have checked the temperature of the room and his coverings, everything seems ok. The paediatrician sees no sign of teeth for the time being.

Last night I tried dream feeding at 11 p.m. He took a good feed, but still woke up at 2 a.m. eventually went back to sleep until 4 when I fed him again, he then slept till 8 with no problem.

I don't really like this idea of stuffing the dummy back in every time he wakes up, but on the other hand, it is now over a week since I have had more than 2.5 hours sleep at a stretch as ds1 wakes up at 5.45. I bully him into staying in his room, but by the time I have screamed at him enough to convince him, I am pretty much awake anyway

I now have a nasty virus, am at home alone with the 2 of them, and I NEED SLEEP.

Help...

Fatslag (sorry but it sounds like an insult when I call you that ) 16 weeks is a classic 4 month growth spurt where sleep goes very very bad. Try and grin and bare it, it will get better. If your LO was a good sleeper and now isn't I suspect he will settle down again in a few weeks. you're feeling so bad though

I'll get back to you others when I've read the many posts. At work so I have to do it in shifts tho

FS - Sorry, cant bring myself to type your full name!) unfortunately, 16 wks/ 4 mths seemed to be the turning point for many of us on here my dd had actually slept thru a handful of nights up until that time. dont know exactly what to say, other than to offer you muchos sympathy. between us, we have tried various methods of attempting to get lo's to sleep. i'm a big fan of cosleeping myself, as are quite a few of us. i know meg was using a dummy with her lo, but think shes weaning him off it atm.
how old is ds1? 5.45am is an early start in itself

Amber for your little man. Hope he's feeling better soon. Bless him.

Chibi, you sound like a lovely mama. Those people are lying. Fair and square. My friend who has 2 children said to me the other day. Well mine sleep through but I was up to DD three times the other day. what? that' not sleeping through is it? She gets maybe one night out of 5 maybe fewer where her kids go 7 to 7 so I don't class that as anything better than we've got. I can't rememeber but do you have your lo in your room / bed? Can't even rememeber how old she is. My brain is very fuzzy at the moment

FS - i agree with ginger thatyour lo will probably settle back down. my ds was a fab sleeper and apart from the times when he woke with teething or illness, he settled straight back into his good sleeping habits. chin up!

oh and hi to ginger!! how are your nights now lovely?

Thanks for your support. Sleep deprivation is a funny thing. 1 day, 2, 3 even 4 is OK and then suddenly you find yourself crying in the supermarket and hearing voices.

ds1 is 4 and has phases of waking up very very early. Unfortunately he is in one now. When things are normal, he sleeps until about 7 which is fine because any later and it's hard to get him to school on time.

Of course, right now, ds2 is out for the count.

FS, I feel your pain -- it was around this time that my DS' sleep went wonky, too. Unfortunately for us it has never got back to how it was (he too was sleeping through) but has settled down into a pattern that is manageable most nights.

We did try a dummy at night but it stopped making any difference so he never has one at night now. When he wakes he will usually only settle with boob . Don't use dummy to settle for naps either, unless he is having a serious meltdown, but do sometimes use it to extend naps as he often wakes after 30 mins but will go back to sleep if you get the dummy in quick enough!

Amber, poor DS, hope he feels better soon. Seem to be a lot of bugs going round at the moment.

Hi Ginger hope work is going OK.

Hi Tibsy and Meg [whispers as should be working] we're ok. So so sleep, one waking, in with us, wriggled a bit and 5.30 for the day. Same old same old really.

FS ( at name change) You poor love. Sounds very tough with two. I know it's easy to say it will get better but when you're going through it you think you're going to go mad. Luckily we're on a pretty normal one waking per night with a very early day but I figure that's the way it is for the time being. Thankfully the hourly wakings are no longer. All we can do is offer a virtual shoulder when times are bad.

FS- have you tried co-sleeping? Perhaps if you didnt hve to physically get up so much? Also when the 4yr old gets up would he doze if in bed with you?

hi ginger - glad your nights have settled into a good pattern!!! you blooming well deserve it love .......and also pleased that work's not keeping you too busy

Hello all! Ginger suggested I come 'round and as for suggestions regarding a bed rail? We're moving from a co-sleeper/double-bed arrangement to a king bed and losing the co-sleeper cot, so we need a guard rail (and we need it by Saturday night!).

Any suggestions? Many thanks in advance.