Rant - Feeling so hopeless about sleep!

[stephie_corin]

NotNic, I find the whole one nap transition fascinating. I always assumed ALL babies took a long afternoon nap but that's clearly not the case! I really like your relaxed approach to naps. I'm trying to get better at watching Cully's cues and be more relaxed about the qhole thing... Unfortunately he won't sleep in his stroller and needs to be nursed to sleep - but since his naps went haywire he is nursing at non nap times. So maybe one to work on! One thing I noticed is that his sleep needs are more flexible than I thought, so we probably could try and work out a more mummy friendly routine! By the way, the no rocking is working great in the day but I can't seem to settle him at night without him becoming hysterical. So my plan is to wait until I'm certain he is not tired or teething and then try cold turkey on the rocking at night.

Amy, I like your nap plan! If Cully wakes crying from a nap I usually help him back to sleep too. You've done great already on the transfer for naps. Well done! I've been meaning to ask you how you deal with fluctuating nap patterns? Do you have any rules? Is bedtime always the same regardless of number of naps or do you change it? If you go by wake times, what is your last wake time? Sorry for all the questions!

Do all babies have the same overtired symptoms? I can't figure out if Cully is overtired or undertired at the moment.

 

[stephie_corin]

Um... Weirdest thing just happened! C has been fussing in my arms for about twenty minutes while I try to rock him to sleep. He kept pushing me away so I popped him on the bed for a breather and he promptly fell asleep. He's now lying the wrong way diagonally across the bed between my legs. Doh! I'm scared to move him!

 

[AmyS]

Stephie - Our daily schedule is never the same because of daycare!! This is yesterday:

Wake: 5:15am
Nap 1: 9:00 - 9:15am
Nap 2: 2:30 - 4:00pm
Bedtime: 7:00pm

If I have no control over the day - because she's been in daycare all day - all I can really do is look at her last nap. I add 3 hours to whenever she woke up, and that is roughly our bedtime, unless she is really having a meltdown. Some days, her naps total less than an hour for the day, so she might be ready for bed as early as 6pm (and that's pushing it!).

If I have the afternoon off, like yesterday, I make sure she gets one good nap in. I haven't been worrying about the length of the nap, so if it's 2 1/2 - 3 hours, I let her sleep. She's usually up from her nap by 4:30pm on those days, then we will have bedtime at 7:30pm.

On the weekends, it all depends on when she woke up. She gets tired about every 3 - 3.5 hours, so that's what I go by! If her first nap is short (30 minutes), then I know she'll probably end up with 3 naps for the day.

This is my definition of "go with the flow"!

 

[AmyS]

Um... Weirdest thing just happened! C has been fussing in my arms for about twenty minutes while I try to rock him to sleep. He kept pushing me away so I popped him on the bed for a breather and he promptly fell asleep. He's now lying the wrong way diagonally across the bed between my legs. Doh! I'm scared to move him!

Oh, he did it on his own! So cute, but now you're stuck!

 

[polaris]

Um... Weirdest thing just happened! C has been fussing in my arms for about twenty minutes while I try to rock him to sleep. He kept pushing me away so I popped him on the bed for a breather and he promptly fell asleep. He's now lying the wrong way diagonally across the bed between my legs. Doh! I'm scared to move him!

Wow that's brilliant! Maybe he's finally getting on the same page as you about stopping the rocking habit.

I find it impossible to tell if Clara is undertired or overtired. I veer between thinking I need to lengthen all her awake times and give her a later bedtime, to thinking the exact opposite. Today all her awake times have been short (but then she was up for a few hours last night practicing standing up so I guess she was maybe tired!).

 

[kitabird]

Kitabird, sounds like about the right time for a nap transition, I'm afraid I'm sorry your nights are so rough at the moment. I think you may be right about the crawling. Mine finally just started moving but he's been rocking and backward crawling and inching around for months, and we certainly had some sleep disruption when he first started doing all of that. I hope it gets better soon I would give it a few more days if you feel you can.
Regarding naps, as the mother of a chronic catnapper I will just say that it doesn't have to be the kiss of death that it seems. Switching to two naps, as Stephie said, will probably fix things -- it did for every baby I've ever heard of except my own. And mine still got through it all right. I think for the same reason he finds it hard to stay asleep sometimes -- distractibility -- he also can manage to push through long wake times when necessary. So I'm sure you will be fine either way, if this is the right time to make the transition (and it sounds like it is).

Last night wasn't as bad. He was awake from 4 til 5:30 then had another hour of sleep. I just hope this doesn't go on for too long I'm sure once he's figured out crawling some more teeth will be ready to come out and disrupt things again! At least second time around I'm used to the unpredictability of it all!
Catnapping is fine with me if he would sleep at night. I'm not going to pretend I'm not jealous of people whose babies take long naps though! I am going to try and steer him in the direction of two naps and hope he responds.
Glad the sleep training is going well for you. Fingers crossed it continues.

Amy - what I find is that Felix will sleep about the same number of hours in every 24 hours. So if he sleeps 11 hours out of 24 (not sure if that's right, but it was a while ago!) and has 1 hour of naps then he'll sleep 10 hours during the night. If he has 1 and a half hours of naps he'll sleep 9 and a half during the night etc.

Sorry I haven't replied to more posts, but my brain is really struggling...

 

[seaweed eater]

Stephie, wow, great that he settled without rocking tonight! I hope you're comfortable, if you're stuck I do think if he's able to do it during nap time, he will be able to adjust to doing it at night too. Hope you guys have a good night love the new avatar pic btw!

I definitely don't think babies have the same overtired symptoms. When Munchkin's on his "second wind," he tends to become very focused and persistent, and he's actually very independent. My sense is that that's not similar to many other babies. He doesn't get particularly giggly, the way Polaris has mentioned Clara does.

Amy, how did your night go last night? Glad Chloe was ok yesterday! 1 1/2 hours isn't bad.
It sounds like what you're doing regarding bedtime is working ok for you? We do BTC bedtime of 7 now most nights because any earlier and he's up too early in the morning. That means the second wake time is grotesquely long sometimes but I've found that I just can't keep him on a daily schedule if he's in bed much before 7.

NotNic, I remember reading a blog post or something about a mother who informed her family that a law had been passed saying that mothers' work hours were required to end at 8 PM. If they wanted something after 8, they'd have to do it for themselves because she was legally prohibited from working. Sounds a bit like your approach! I love it, I think boundaries like that are great. Works well for you, and you are teaching F to have respect and consideration for others.

Kitabird, I'm sorry about your 4 AM MOTN, those are really killer. Hope you can catch up on some rest today. You're right, if it's not milestones, it's teeth, but you just have to do the best you can in your circumstances! Maybe teeth will be easier than this crawling stuff. You never know.

Amy, I just can't bring myself to say that the curse isn't real...
BUT...no 2 AM feed last night!! He just slept right through, or at least didn't cry enough to wake me. Exciting stuff!

 

[stephie_corin]

Amy, thanks for letting me know how you do things! I think that's great! It must be hard to do anything but go with the flow when she's at daycare. I've realised that the first nap is the most important too - less than 45 mins = 3 naps and more than 45 mins = 2 naps! Have you had any more luck with nap transfers?

Polaris - congratulations to Clara on the standing! She'll be a toddler before you know it! No wonder her sleep has been so disrupted lately. She's hit a major milestone and has been sick. I'm exactly the same as you - I go from wanting to push him as long as possible between naps to wanting 3 naps every 2.5-3 hours! Sadly I've realised I have no control over things anymore.

Kitabird, any more improvements? I'm pleased for you that things seem better. You're right - the whole first year seems like one long regression! Good luck on two naps! I found increasing the first waketime to 2.5 hours helped a lot.

SE, it's interesting what you say about Munchkin being overtired. I do think after reading everyone's reply that they are all very different! Cully gets really uninterested in interactive play and just wants to crawl around madly until he suddenly starts melting down! I think I prefer Munchkin's second wind! How were his nap(s) at daycare? Is he doing full days in the new room now?

So last night the pushing away continued! I barely rocked him at all. Today I'm not rocking him for any naps and just letting him go until he's at meltdown point - mainly because there is no other indication he's ready for a nap. Without my help in getting him drowsy, he's so far done awake time of 3 hours, 1 hour nap, awake time of 4 hours (second nap currently underway!) and I'm undecided about the last wake time. He's just nursing to sleep when he's tired and it's working well so far. I do think if I continue to GWTF and let him nap when he's very tired, that the days of three naps are behind us... But I've been forced to eat my words before, so who knows!

Without the constant rocking I definitely feel better rested, even if the number of wakeups are the same.

 

[kitabird]

Stephie it sounds like things are going really well for you. Hope it continues
Last night he was up from 3 til 5:10, so not great. He then slept til 8 which was bizarre! Shame I have a toddler who wakes at 6:30! He fell asleep nursing around 10:30 for a few minutes and has just had a lunch time nap of almost an hour. I'm not sure what's going on but I would guess he won't want another nap and there's 6 hours til bedtime

 

[polaris]

Stephie! Yay! That is so fantastic that he is going to sleep without rocking most of the time. He was obviously ready to do this! That will really make a big difference to your energy levels - it must have been absolutely exhausting rocking him every time he woke. Sometimes I barely have the energy to get the boob out for Clara so I honestly don't know how you have been doing it.

Thank you so much for your post earlier pointing out the reasons why Clara's sleep is disrupted at the moment. I really needed to hear that today! I've been feeling really disheartened, like her sleep is just getting worse and worse again. She's not even doing full sleep cycles at the moment and it is killing me! She also refused her morning nap today which is a first so we are having a one nap day (must be something in the air, kitabird, Clara fell asleep for a couple of minutes nursing too and then was wide awake and wouldn't go back to sleep until her usual p.m. nap time!)

I have moved the clock beck into the bedroom for tonight so I can actually see how often she is waking up, maybe it feels like more often than it really is. But you are right, she has so much going on at the moment, between illness and developmental stuff, that it's probably no wonder that things are even worse than usual. I am just losing faith that things will get better without me taking some sort of action whereas a few weeks ago I was feeling so relaxed about her sleep.

SE - I'm so pleased to read about your progress with Munchkin! At least one of us now have a baby who sleeps well!! It sounds like your timing was spot-on for restarting sleep training with him, you are clearly very tuned in to him and his needs.

 

[AmyS]

SE - Have daycare naps still been going well? Chloe had to be held for her afternoon nap yesterday - otherwise, she'd probably have been running on fumes by the time I picked her up.

Stephie - Don't you feel relieved about the rocking? It does seem like he was ready for this transition. (Your cute new pic prompted me to change my own, since I realized she's almost 3 months older now!)

kitabird - That was quite a long MOTN party! Too bad your toddler didn't want to magically sleep in also!

polaris - How exciting that Clara is standing!!!! I am always amazed at how they learn so much, so quickly.
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I definitely can't complain about my nights anymore, but I sure wish she would nap at daycare! She screams when they try to put her down. I told them I would try putting her down all weekend, so hopefully she learns quickly. haha. I am not optimistic, since I've been holding her for all naps (with me) since birth.

Last night though, she woke up at 3:15am, so I fed her, and I could tell that she was ready to party, because she kept kicking her feet on the arm of the chair. When she was done with her bottle, she decided to sing and talk to her ducky for an hour. Very cute, but thankfully she did go back to sleep.

 

[stephie_corin]

Amy, I meant to comment on your photo! I noticed it last night. I love it! She's so cute! She seems to have so much hair! And yes, I am so relieved about the rocking! I'm sure it's not over yet but as long as he doesn't need me to rock him, I am happy to oblige!

I'm sorry daycare are not having any luck with naps. I hope you do well on the weekend with it.

And you are such a patient mummy!! I don't cope well with MOTN parties and you always handle them with such good grace!

 

[stephie_corin]

Kitabird, that sounds so rough! You poor thing! I hope he takes another nap for you. He may surprise you - 6 hours is a long time! I honestly don't know how you, Polaris and Bababas cope with sleepless night when you have two to look after. Big hugs to you.

Polaris - my heart goes out to you. Poor Clara and poor you. At least it is the weekend tomorrow. Can DH watch Thomas while you take a nap? And ouch!!! One nap when you are that sleep deprived I know you like keeping her morning waketime short so you guys can head out but maybe it's time to give her another 15/30 minutes awake so she is more tired? Hopefully it was just a glitch because she wanted to practice standing again and she takes a nice long nap tomorrow morning for you. I'm so sorry thing are so bad right now. I will be keeping every finger crossed that her relatively good sleep returns.

 

[polaris]

Thanks - I'm hopeful that she might start sleeping a little bit better once she is fully recovered, she's still not really very well so I'm sure that is having an impact on her sleep. OH is on night shifts all weekend so he will need to sleep during the day, it could be a bit of a long weekend for me. More positively though, she self-settled again from wide awake at bedtime! I had given her a paracetamol suppository because she is really stifled with a cold and I'm sure it helped her to feel a little bit better, let's hope she sleeps a little bit longer too!

Amy - good luck with putting Chloe down for naps over the weekend - I hope it goes well for you and her naps at daycare improve. At least her nighttime sleep is good now, I'm sure naps will follow.

Bababas - that sounds like a good plan for when Aron drops his nap and Ivar starts daycare. It's so hard to get a workable bedtime routine with two, isn't it? I spend so much time plotting and planning how I can get them both to bed on time! I find it's definitely easier when I can get Thomas down first and then have time to settle Clara.

Hope everyone else is well. I'm going to try and get an early night!

 

[seaweed eater]

Stephie, how interesting about the rocking suddenly stopping, but it's great that you are feeling better rested! (I can only imagine, rocking such a big boy as often as yours wakes up!) I hope that continues! I think what you are doing in terms of GWTF is reasonable. That's usually the approach I take when Munchkin refuses a nap or bedtime. I find it very frustrating to try to put him down more than twice, and sometimes I think it actually lengthens his WT more than if I just waited, so I try to ensure he's ready the second time, even if that means he's a bit beyond ready.

Yes, Munchkin is actually pretty fun when overtired...until he hits meltdown mode. And yes, he's usually spending about 7-7.5 hours a day at daycare now. He's clearly doing sooooo much better in his new room. Such a relief. It took a full month for him to start feeling comfortable.

Polaris, so sorry you are having such a rough time. Stephie is right, there are reasons this is happening now, and it will pass!! As C recovers from the illness I bet she will at least start making it through cycles, and she'll get over her excitement about milestones, too. Can you wait just a week before deciding that some intervention might be needed? I'd be surprised if things aren't much better by then.

Please be kind to yourself, it's truly a challenge to even function with such interrupted sleep, and your children are lucky to have such a patient mother. Hope you get some rest tonight.

Thank you also for saying what you did about the timing of our sleep training. It means a lot, since I still don't understand what happened with awful night 1, and since then I've felt uneasy about whether it was the right decision. But I do feel better about it with every good day.

Kitabird, so sorry about the latest MOTN. Honestly, I know it sucks, but I would wake him up at something closer to his usual time so that you can keep him on schedule. For us a weird morning or night has sometimes thrown things off for up to a few days, so I've become a believer in trying to somehow stay on a 24-hour cycle even if things shift a lot within each day. I hope the rest of your day went well. 6 hours is a long time to be awake!

Amy, I'm glad your nights are still going well but sorry about the crummy daycare naps! IIRC che was napping better there before? What do you think changed? She just started crawling a week or two ago, right -- maybe that has something to do with it? Adorable avatar pic btw!

AFM, things are still going really well, just a 4 AM feed last night. I was pretty nervous at bedtime since he wasn't as drowsy as usual but he still SS after rolling around for about 5 minutes, whew! Yesterday's daycare nap was nearly an hour so I assume he got to the second cycle but then was woken by noise or something. Definite progress.

 

[stephie_corin]

Polaris, I hope last night was better for you. I'm sorry OH won't be able to help this weekend. Solo baby/toddler duty must be so so hard. I've only done solo baby duty and there is no way I could have coped with a toddler too! You are amazing and you are doing a wonderful job.

SE, what a positive update! In so pleased for you! Great news about his day care nap too. I can't believe we are already talking in the singular for naps. Munchkin sounds like he's doing very well at daycare too! You must be really happy. And you're obviously a very sensitive mummy; you seem to pick the exact right moment to start your gentle sleep training.

Amy, how are things with you and Chloe?

We had a really good night. I don't know if it's coincidence with the rocking stopping or some other strange combination of factors that I can't fathom. He woke hourly until midnight and then slept until 2, and then 4.30, 530 and finally 7!!! It's the latest he's ever slept. I'm hoping things continue.

I've been thinking about the rocking and I wonder if we were both finally ready. He may have been ready earlier and I just wasn't reading the signs properly? I still rocked him at 530 but the other wakings involved no rocking. I should say that I definitely don't think our days of rocking are over completely - if he becomes hysterical like the other night I will definitely rock him.

It is having a negative impact on naps. I've been trying to nurse him down 3 times this morning and I know if I rocked him he would have fallen asleep so I'm kind of torn... He's now been up for 3.5 hours since he first woke and is very tired. The slightest thing is upsetting him and he becomes a lot more clumsy when he is tired. It looks like he is finally falling asleep now. Ok... Spoke too soon... Off to 'play it out'...

 

[stephie_corin]

I think I've entered nap hell! Ha! I never understood people being unable to get baby to nap until I removed my (not so) secret weapon. 4.5 hours after waking up he is finally asleep.

I hope we can squeeze a cat nap in this afternoon - bedtime is so much better when he takes a late nap and isn't over tired.

 

[kitabird]

Just wanted to say thanks for the support girls. You've been welcoming and helpful which I really need right now! Sorry I don't have any pearls of wisdom to offer back
Last night went really well, LO did stay awake 6 hours til bedtime and then settled much quicker during the night than he has been recently. Phew!
Good luck with today's naps everyone

 

[AmyS]

I hope everyone is having a lovely weekend!

Chloe slept in her crib for the one nap we were home for today! Yippee! I hope tomorrow goes just as well.

 

[lysh]

Hi ladies...I have no idea if anyone remembers me...it has been a LONG time since I have posted or been active on the boards. I started working full time, lack of sleep, still battling and holding my girl for naps on the weekends while maintaining the home just made me exhausted. Needless to say I barely had time to post/read anything! My daughter still fights naps, but evenings are MUCH better. She will typically sleep through now from 8 or 8:30 to about 5:30. She has been waking up lately, but cries for 2 minutes and goes back to sleep. Like I said, naps are still an issue. Now that I am home for the summer I thought I could work on them, but we have been so busy that it is hard to be consistent or find a big chunk of time where I can be consistent. I need to try before going back to work though...naps were a disaster during the school year. So for anyone who does remember me, that is what is new in our sleeping world!!!!