is/was your LO a really bad sleeper? support and advise thread!

[lisa1980]

Flippityflop, just out of interest, when you did the CC how often did you go in to him? I'm just trying to get an idea of how it actually works really.

I really don't want to start any debate as it doesn't get anyone anywhere, so if you'd rather reply by PM that's fine

 

[Casey3]

Our LOs sleep isn't always as bad as what some of you are dealing with but I totally feel the same about how unpredictable he is and how to plan things all I want is to go out to a movie with OH, something we have done since I was pregnant but I never know if he's going to stay asleep of wake up 4x before finally sleeping a couple hrs and no one else can settle him except me. It drives me wonky not knowing. Most nights I just go to bed at 9 when he goes to bed as I'd rather get a few hours of sleep before the hourly wakings begin its not fair to OH but idk what else to do!

 

[sequeena]

Thomas finally gave in at 3:15am then woke at 4am and wouldn't settle back into his cot so came into bed with us. Yawn!

 

[bumpin2012]

Oh, I listed posted about this!

My little guy is a horrible sleeper! The longest stretch of sleep we get at night is 2 hours. He fights napping during the day. He's so grumpy all the time, I know he would be so much happier if he would just sleep. I know I would be!

 

[ellebelle]

I have twins that usually wake every 2 hours staggered, so I can be up every hour.
I now bring them into bed with me and nurse back to sleep or I would literally be up all night.
Their sleep has only gotten worse once I started doing that but now I am stuck and don't know what to do.

When they wake at the same time I am often up for 2+ hours settling them.

They also wake during naps and are often cranky.

Sick of it, tbh.

 

[chocolala]

What everyone else said about it being worse than having a newborn, I so did not expect that.

I can handle the frequent night waking, as long as its not more than every 90mins as we co-sleep. It's the sleep fighting that really gets me, it gets me so frustrated and angry sometimes as she just will not go to sleep despite being exhausted. She'll even go as far as waking herself up, sometimes I have to hold her hands down so she can't wake herself by rubbing her eyes - one of her little keep awake tactics. Sometimes I get so upset with her because she's been awake hours, she's manic and grumpy but will not sleep and I just need a bit of quiet time in the evening to veg in front of the telly (with her on my lap!)

No one in real life seems to get it, I told my sil we co-sleep because of the night wakings, her response was "you'll regret that". How will I regret getting sleep?!

 

[Noelle610]

I totally get what you ladies mean about the unpredictability of it all. I feel like I need to go to bed at 8pm every night, because I never know if it's going to be a "bad" night (which it often is). As a result, I feel I miss out on so much - dinners with friends, movie nights with DH, etc. It's a bummer. I know it's temporary, but I hate that no one can tell me exactly "when" the sleepless nights will end. It could be a month from now, it could be over a year. It's hard to get hopeful and think "this could be the night". I'm at the point where even good nights are hard, because I fear getting optimistic only to have the next night be terrible.

 

[sequeena]

I've gone past the point that I can go to bed when he does because he has 1 nap a day and is crawling everywhere I barely have time to do anything else so all my cleaning, eating my dinner etc is usually delayed until he goes to sleep I've managed to clean my kitchen and living room and put a wash on but I'm so knackered I can't even think about food.

 

[AngelUK]

I have twins that usually wake every 2 hours staggered, so I can be up every hour.
I now bring them into bed with me and nurse back to sleep or I would literally be up all night.
Their sleep has only gotten worse once I started doing that but now I am stuck and don't know what to do.

When they wake at the same time I am often up for 2+ hours settling them.

They also wake during naps and are often cranky.

Sick of it, tbh.

from a fellow twin mummy!

 

[kosh]

Flippityflop, just out of interest, when you did the CC how often did you go in to him? I'm just trying to get an idea of how it actually works really.

I really don't want to start any debate as it doesn't get anyone anywhere, so if you'd rather reply by PM that's fine

you know what I think about that but if you think you might try it, I've read something that might help. You said that your LO sometimes wakes in the middle of the night and stays awake for 1.5hr, right? I think I mentioned the 90min sleep program, it seems to me that your LO (as mine) follows the 90min rule, so you could try put him to bed just a few minutes before 90min (or multiples of 90, in our case is 180min), you'd have better chances of him self-settling sooner. (sorry, don't know if i explained it correctly)

 

[kosh]

some questions i still had to answer -

I have a question for the sleep deprived club - were YOU (or your OH) a bad sleeper as a baby? And were you BF/FF?

my mum says that i was a good sleeper.i was BF but not for very long.
DH on the other hand was (and still is) a very bad sleeper, so I blame him

1) did you have any stress/complications during your pregnancy/birth?
Pregnancy was straightforward. I ended up with an emergency c-section due to LO's heartbeat dropping and then stopping but it wasn't too bad overall.

2) are you FF or BF? I have the impression this problem is more common in BF babies
I'm BF, although I have tried formula on occasion. I tried a bottle before bed but it made no difference whatsoever unfortunately. I agree that whenever I see a post about bad sleepers (after the 4-month mark let's say...before then they're expected to be bad IMO ) I usually predict that it's a BF baby and I'm usually right. I realise that's not exactly rock-solid evidence of anything but it's just something I've noticed too.

3) tiredness aside - do you feel overwhelmed, worried, anxious, etc? do you feel you have enough support or you're doing most of the looking after LO on your own?
It seems to go in cycles. Sometimes I feel ok about it and confident that he will sleep at some point. The co-sleeping has helped with this I think as i'm not quite as soul-crushingly tired as I was before, even though he wakes just as much. Other times (esp when I think about going back to work) I feel totally overwhelmed and depressed about it. I crashed my car not long ago and had a mini-meltdown so now my family and OH are being really supportive (don't think they realised how bad it was before), so I'm grateful for that, but I do the vast majority of his care alone as OH works A LOT of crazy hours and my family are a drive away. I usually feel better when I have some sort of 'plan' to try with LO. I realise that they often don't work and I will probably just have to wait it out, but that thought makes me feel so much worse so I keep trying. I also am so grateful that he's usually such a lovely baby who's a joy in every aspect other than sleep, so I try to keep that in mind when it gets bad.

How about you Kosh?

1) did you have any stress/complications during your pregnancy/birth? pregnancy was very easy, he was breech but had a successful ecv at 37weeks. birth was not what i wanted (water birth etc etc) - had to be induced at 42 weeks, went from 0 to 1 contraction per minute in a matter of minutes, LO was back to back and I could not cope so had an epidural. his heart rate kept dropping so had to take blood samples from his head the machine didn't work so they had to repeat this 3 times! dilated quite quickly but ended up having a forceps delivery still makes me sad/anxious to think about it

2) are you FF or BF?
BF. but LO was TT and it was very difficult for him to latch and fed - again very stressful beginning

3) tiredness aside - do you feel overwhelmed, worried, anxious, etc? do you feel you have enough support or you're doing most of the looking after LO on your own?
feel slightly better now, but in general feel overwhelmed. we have no family around so i feel lonely, and although DH tries to help i feel most of the responsibility is mine.

what i was saying before re. having a newborn still...
i spent most of my days trying to get him to sleep, i hardly go out, because i don't want him to miss a nap and get too grumpy. i feel i have to plan everything around his naps/sleep and even then it might not work. he's a funny eater now, and when at home can eat for 3 minutes, gets busy with something else and then want more 30min later. again, we can spend hours just doing this. but then, when we're out,he can be without food for ages!
was trying to explain to a friend of mine why i don't feel comfortable going out for many hours with LO as i know he won't sleep/eat and then it'll be chaos, and her answer was 'all babies are like this, they get interested in other things and they don't want to nap. he'll sleep when he's tired'. well, no!

does anyone else feel there are not enough hours in the day?
we've started BLW but i really do not have time to give him more than one meal - the day just flies with all the 'getting him to sleep' process

 

[AngelUK]

We had a little improvement last night. Dominic only woke once between his midnight dream-feed and his 4am feed I got 2h 15mins and 1h 45mins and then another ca 50 between 5 to 6. I cannot say that I feel refreshed exactly but at least I am not cursing the daylight that means no more sleep til tonight lol

 

[Noelle610]

We had a little improvement last night. Dominic only woke once between his midnight dream-feed and his 4am feed I got 2h 15mins and 1h 45mins and then another ca 50 between 5 to 6. I cannot say that I feel refreshed exactly but at least I am not cursing the daylight that means no more sleep til tonight lol

A vast improvement!

 

[AngelUK]

Yep I hope this continues

 

[kosh]

We had a little improvement last night. Dominic only woke once between his midnight dream-feed and his 4am feed I got 2h 15mins and 1h 45mins and then another ca 50 between 5 to 6. I cannot say that I feel refreshed exactly but at least I am not cursing the daylight that means no more sleep til tonight lol

glad you had a better night!

we had one of the worst ones, if not the worst everything was going ok until about 3am when Gael woke up and didn't go back to sleep until about 5am. It wasn't so much what he did, but how I felt. I must have been in really deep sleep when he woke because I had no idea who/where I/he was. I fed him and put him down, he cried, I picked him up again and fed him again, I was so confused that I was convinced there were two babies - I was probably dreaming that I was you Angel! It took me ages to come around and when I did Gael was fully awake, and there was nothing I could do to settle him. He was really fighting it and wanting to move around. I spent almost 2hr, absolutely exhausted, trying to nurse him and rock him to sleep and got very frustrated and anxious, annoyed with my DH for not being able to settle him either, and the worst, annoyed with Gael for being so difficult I thought things will get worse as he gets older/stronger and felt really hopeless and resentful. My husband finally took him away for a while, and I laid there crying and crying feeling very guilty.
I went to them after a while and he hugged me and finally went to sleep in my arms. We stayed like this and slept together.

I just need to say this - I am really sorry son that I was so angry with you last night, I love you with all my heart.

 

[AngelUK]

Oh kosh! I know that feeling of anger! And like you I feel sh*t for it but sometimes cannot help it. But when I kiss his smooth little cheek or he grabs my hand with his podgy lil one I feel terrible and guilty and so full of love.

 

[kosh]

Oh kosh! I know that feeling of anger! And like you I feel sh*t for it but sometimes cannot help it. But when I kiss his smooth little cheek or he grabs my hand with his podgy lil one I feel terrible and guilty and so full of love.

i know, i look at him smiling now, he's my world
i can't stop crying, i feel so overwhelmed atm

 

[flippityflop]

I had that anger too. I got so upset with myself. How could I be so angry at someone who didn't know any better?

Have you noticed that almost all these bad sleepers are boys?

 

[kosh]

I had that anger too. I got so upset with myself. How could I be so angry at someone who didn't know any better?

Have you noticed that almost all these bad sleepers are boys?

is that true? I hadn't noticed

 

[veganmama]

oh wow. i thought i had it bad but i guess my LO is an angel in regards to sleeping compared to some here lol.

big hugs to all

^^ i know that feeling of anger/frustration when you try so hard to put them down and they just wont co-operate. it sucks so bad =[