Rant - Feeling so hopeless about sleep!

[lysh]

Hey ladies....
I am still trying to catch up with the posts...this working full time is exhausting and I have little 'down' time these days.

Shadowy Lady- It is so nice you can get a night off! My DH would love to take over for a night so I could get some rest, however, LO refuses bottles during the night and will scream bloody murder until she gets to nurse.

Katrina- Those early morning awakenings are hard. My LO wants to wake up between 4-4:30. Occasionally she will go back to sleep after a little bit of crying, but some mornings she just is done sleeping and we just have to get up with her. Right now, 5:00 would be progress!

bananaz- Oh my- I had no idea you were a single mom as well and having to deal with an ass of an ex! Hugs to you- I cannot imagine how stressful this is. I hope this gets handled quickly so you can just focus on LO!!! You are a strong woman!

Noelle- I could have written that myself (about the anxiety). I have managed for 3 years medication free (thanks to therapy) but I do find having a high needs baby that does not sleep well tests my confidence in my ability to handle the anxiety (and on the flip side depression). Now with working I am really struggling. I am so anxious every night. I am so freaking tired, yet I cannot relax when I lay down because I am waiting to hear the cry. If you need to go back on medication do not feel like you are failing- it might just be for a little while until things settle down (at least with the sleep). If I get to a point where I feel I can no longer be a proficient at my job at school and as a mom, I would consider it too.

As far as sleep- the last two nights have not been terrible. Putting her down has been rough, but Friday night she ended up having a 4 hour stretch from 1-5! It was amazing. Last night she had a 5 hour stretch from 7-12. Then she had a 3 hour stretch. Granted I would prefer the 5 hour stretch to be later, but it shows me she can do it. I am hoping that now it is a work night she can repeat some longer stretches!

MrsPear- Good luck with the routine!

 

[katrinalorien]

Goodness lysh - I always forget that it could be worse. She could be waking up and staying up, luckily I have always been able to get her back down *fingers crossed*

 

[Strike]

WTF!?

Yesterday was wonderful. Tonight is like a rehash of Friday, and DH is sleeping through it all of course.

LO will cry and fuss and is wide awake. No matter what I do I can't get her to settle. The , 30 minutes into it, she decides she wants to eat. Five minutes later she doesn't want to eat anymore. But no sleep of course.

 

[katrinalorien]

Sorry Strike!! Is yours still a newborn? She may yet grow out of it! I hope she does for your sake, and soon!

We had the best night in a long time. Went down at 7:20 ish, woke up at 12:30 then 4:30 then up for the day at 6:15. Really really not bad. In fact 2 wake ups is stellar for her.

 

[Noelle610]

I'm happy to hear about all of these good nights! Charlotte slept 6:30pm to 5:30am yesterday. I really, really, really can't believe it. Granted there was a dream feed in there around 9pm. It seems way to good to be true. Is it possible that spacing her night feeds out is really helping her reflux and encouraging her to sleep longer?

When we have had issues these past week, it's been between 3am and 5am. Why does that seem to be the crazy time for babies? I think Charlotte really struggles to self settle then and needs my help. She's doing so well and of course I'm not against soothing a 6 month old baby, but I think it's interesting that those hours seem to be tough for many moms that I talk to. Part of me wants to complain, because I have to get up for work at 5am, which means I'm often up from 3am. The other part of me wants to smack myself in the face... When Charlotte was waking hourly I would have killed any mom who complained about that schedule.

 

[Shadowy Lady]

Noelle - so glad things are still great, wow Charlotte did 11 hour stretch! Good for you mamma

Katrina - glad to hear you had a good night too Your LO is on the right path of longer stretches.

Lysh - Honestly I don't know how you US moms work and take care of babies. I love my job but love even more the one year mat leave the Canadian government grants us. Glad to hear you LO is sleeping longer though. Having my finger crossed for you...

Sofia did another good night and I managed to get decent sleep though DH was not there to help. She went down at 8:20 pm, woke up for boob at 2:45 am and then down again till 7:00 am this morning. She again went w/o soother. She was slightly fussy at 8:15 pm but still went down with no crying and no soother. She seems to be delaying her middle of the night wakeup call by 30 mins each night so I'm crossing my fingers that she'll sttn by herself and I wouldn't have to wean her off that middle of the night feed

I do find it harder to get her to nap w/o her soother though. She just woke up from an hour nap w/o her soother and in a stationary swing but it was definitely tough getting her to start napping :/ I really wanna not give her the soother for any kinda sleep (just in car seat and when needed for fussiness) so I'm gonna keep trying...

 

[Noelle610]

Wow Sofia is doing great! I knew she'd adjust quickly to not having the soother.

I'm really nervous because DH and I are taking Charlotte to his holiday party on Thursday. It's an hour away and it starts around her bedtime. It means so, so much to him, so I've agreed to go. I'm just worried being off of her schedule will really mess with her. He feels like it will be fine - she'll probably sleep in her car seat most of the time (she is good at that). I guess worse case scenario we regress a little and get her back on schedule eventually. On one hand, I'm afraid to deviate from the norm, but on the other hand I do feel we have to live our lives a little bit.

 

[jessicatunnel]

Wow Sofia is doing great! I knew she'd adjust quickly to not having the soother.

I'm really nervous because DH and I are taking Charlotte to his holiday party on Thursday. It's an hour away and it starts around her bedtime. It means so, so much to him, so I've agreed to go. I'm just worried being off of her schedule will really mess with her. He feels like it will be fine - she'll probably sleep in her car seat most of the time (she is good at that). I guess worse case scenario we regress a little and get her back on schedule eventually. On one hand, I'm afraid to deviate from the norm, but on the other hand I do feel we have to live our lives a little bit.

We had a family meeting we had to go to last week that started right at Lilly's bedtime, and I was really worried she was going to be extra cranky (especially since she didn't have her last nap beforehand), tired, and her sleep would be even worse and everything would just be horrible. Well she did AWESOME, was awake and loved all the attention she was getting from everyone, even tried to snag some people's food when they weren't looking lol, we got home and she went straight to sleep and slept for seven hours! And the next night everything was back to normal, she went right back to her routine. I'm sure things will be fine for you, enjoy the party.

Lilly's sleep is still everywhere, but I definitely think we're getting somewhere. Every night she goes to bed at 6 or 7, and wakes at least three times before I go to bed. Then she will do a 3-4 stretch of sleep, wake up and then sleep for another two hours, wake up for a feed and sleep for another 1 or 2 hours before waking up for the day.

Our night last night went like this:
Bed at 6:30pm
Woke at 8pm
Woke at 11pm
Woke at 230am for a bottle
Woke at 430am
Woke for the day at 730am.

 

[Noelle610]

Wow Sofia is doing great! I knew she'd adjust quickly to not having the soother.

I'm really nervous because DH and I are taking Charlotte to his holiday party on Thursday. It's an hour away and it starts around her bedtime. It means so, so much to him, so I've agreed to go. I'm just worried being off of her schedule will really mess with her. He feels like it will be fine - she'll probably sleep in her car seat most of the time (she is good at that). I guess worse case scenario we regress a little and get her back on schedule eventually. On one hand, I'm afraid to deviate from the norm, but on the other hand I do feel we have to live our lives a little bit.

We had a family meeting we had to go to last week that started right at Lilly's bedtime, and I was really worried she was going to be extra cranky (especially since she didn't have her last nap beforehand), tired, and her sleep would be even worse and everything would just be horrible. Well she did AWESOME, was awake and loved all the attention she was getting from everyone, even tried to snag some people's food when they weren't looking lol, we got home and she went straight to sleep and slept for seven hours! And the next night everything was back to normal, she went right back to her routine. I'm sure things will be fine for you, enjoy the party.

Lilly's sleep is still everywhere, but I definitely think we're getting somewhere. Every night she goes to bed at 6 or 7, and wakes at least three times before I go to bed. Then she will do a 3-4 stretch of sleep, wake up and then sleep for another two hours, wake up for a feed and sleep for another 1 or 2 hours before waking up for the day.

Our night last night went like this:
Bed at 6:30pm
Woke at 8pm
Woke at 11pm
Woke at 230am for a bottle
Woke at 430am
Woke for the day at 730am.

That makes me feel SO much better! I know that overtired babies wake a lot, but I think it helps that Charlotte isn't chronically overtired. She naps really well during the day (now two 90 minutes to 2 hour naps) and is sleep well at night, so my hope is that she'll just crash afterward

Sounds like Lilly is making progress! It's nice that her most frequent wakings come when you're still awake and that she tends to do longer stretches when you want to sleep. It's often the opposite - longer stretches at the beginning of the night.

 

[katrinalorien]

Wow Sofia is doing great! I knew she'd adjust quickly to not having the soother.

I'm really nervous because DH and I are taking Charlotte to his holiday party on Thursday. It's an hour away and it starts around her bedtime. It means so, so much to him, so I've agreed to go. I'm just worried being off of her schedule will really mess with her. He feels like it will be fine - she'll probably sleep in her car seat most of the time (she is good at that). I guess worse case scenario we regress a little and get her back on schedule eventually. On one hand, I'm afraid to deviate from the norm, but on the other hand I do feel we have to live our lives a little bit.

I totally agree. Dr. W's book kinda talks about that too - he says you should have exceptional days, and those days its ok if your LO misses a nap or has a later bedtime, but you should try to let your LO sleep in their bed as many other days as possible. I'm planning on having one of those "exceptional" days next week on Thursday. My mom and I are going out of town for the day, but she hasn't been here in 3 months, and we are going! She'll just have to nap in the carseat.

 

[katrinalorien]

jessica - glad you are having better nights, I hope they become consistent. That's one of the things I hated because it meant I never knew when I was going to have to wake up and whatnot.

 

[katrinalorien]

Ahhh bananaz I want an update!! Been thinking of you today!!

 

[MrsPear]

Banananaz (oops too many haha) I am thinking of you too. Think Aliss was right when she said you can be confident it will be okay but nonetheless I am sure you have been very worried.

Noelle- You can't have the same routine every night of the year. Go and have fun and Charlotte will get back into the routine the next night.

Jessica- Glad things are going in the right direction Hope it continues.

Joni got another tooth today! For the past three weeks I have spent at least two hours a night with her in my arms if not more. It is normally early morning about 5am, she is very tired and does sleep quite easily so it's not like she wants to get up (Thank goodness!), but the minute I try to put her down she screams. Do you think that is teething related?

I am booking a holiday today So nothing else really matters right now!

 

[MrsPear]

WTF!?

Yesterday was wonderful. Tonight is like a rehash of Friday, and DH is sleeping through it all of course.

LO will cry and fuss and is wide awake. No matter what I do I can't get her to settle. The , 30 minutes into it, she decides she wants to eat. Five minutes later she doesn't want to eat anymore. But no sleep of course.

Poor you! In the first couple of months it is SO hard to work out any sort of feeding patterns. I thought I was going mad back then. I really do feel for you.

eta- I just recalculated and your LO is 2.5 months. So I really hope the 'want food/don't want food' nightmare will end soon for you. For me it was just past 3 months that my LO really started to get a proper feeding routine x

 

[bananaz]

Ahhh bananaz I want an update!! Been thinking of you today!!

Thanks for all the positive thoughts. The custody hearing went about as well as I could've hoped for because my ex-OH didn't show up, lol. So I was granted everything I asked for in my petition, namely sole physical and legal custody I got a strangely apologetic text message from my ex afterward saying that he got caught in traffic, but somehow I'm having a hard time feeling sympathetic. Anyway, I'm so relieved and I'm trying not to think about the inevitable fallout when my ex figures out what happened.

And back on topic, last night was pretty great. She went down kind of late (7:30pm) and got up kind of early (5:45am) but she only had two wakings, the first at 12:30am when she resettled herself after fussing for about 15 minutes, and the second at 3:40am when I fed her. It feels like we're finally making real progress!

 

[Noelle610]

Ahhh bananaz I want an update!! Been thinking of you today!!

Thanks for all the positive thoughts. The custody hearing went about as well as I could've hoped for because my ex-OH didn't show up, lol. So I was granted everything I asked for in my petition, namely sole physical and legal custody I got a strangely apologetic text message from my ex afterward saying that he got caught in traffic, but somehow I'm having a hard time feeling sympathetic. Anyway, I'm so relieved and I'm trying not to think about the inevitable fallout when my ex figures out what happened.

And back on topic, last night was pretty great. She went down kind of late (7:30pm) and got up kind of early (5:45am) but she only had two wakings, the first at 12:30am when she resettled herself after fussing for about 15 minutes, and the second at 3:40am when I fed her. It feels like we're finally making real progress!

Excuse me?! ... WTF? He didn't show? WOW. Glad it all went well for you!

So glad to hear you had a good night on top of it. I wouldn't even count the 12:30am waking since she resettled herself! All babies (and adults for that matter) wake through the course of the nigt, some just put themselves back to sleep more, ahem, "loudly" than others

 

[katrinalorien]

Sounds like everything is going well bananaz - so glad!

 

[MrsPear]

Wow Bananaz he didn't even show, that is shocking. But good for you.

And you had a good night too! I hope that without the court hanging over you, you will find that you are better able to sleep at night when your LO is.
x

 

[Strike]

MrsPear - Her adjusted age is barely 4 weeks.

DH and I are thinking it might be an issue with what I'm eating. we have a sneaking suspicion that she has an intolerance to cow's milk protein so, starting today, I'm on a dairy-free diet. We're off to the doc's on Thursday to see what he has to say. Thankfully she's still gaining weight at a good rate, but the blood in her stool is getting worse which may also explain her fussiness. I'm hoping we caught it early enough that there won't be any lasting issues.

She's ben pretty lethargic all day but, given how her night was, it's understandable.

 

[katrinalorien]

Good luck Strike!!! I hope the new diet works for you! Those first few weeks are REALLY tough