Support for Parents of "High Need" Babies

[adzuki]

Good luck Celine! I hope it works - keep me posted! Miss M was the same, but then I got her to nap in her bassinette in the daytime by sitting beside her in a chair. then we moved to sitting on the bed (where we inevitably fell asleep), and then we could move into the next room, making a bit of noise so she knew we were there. There was A LOT of crying, but eventually it all worked out. She still fusses to go down during the day now - I am just a lot more stubborn than she can be (her little eyes always flutter closed), and when it gets bad, I still stand beside her to help her off (like today)

Good luck!


A

 

[juliespencer9]

My high needs baby missed his morning nap yesterday (ok he only naps on me and attempted a cot put-donw..NOT good) and he was just so cranky the entire day. It was aweful, he wouldnt feed or sleep and his eyes were really sunk into his head

A topic about sleep and lack of, my lo naps in the day..in my arms or if we are out in the carrier and occasionally in the pram. At night he does sleep in his cot (in our room) but the last 2 weeks he has been waking every hour from midnight refusing to go back to sleep in the cot, anyone else like this?

We have decided to try controlled crying (wont let him cry more than 5 mins max) for the nighttines cos im hoping once he understands HOW to fall asleep on his own it could help us for daytime naps?

im the same as you, im going to start CC, mines wakes all night ever night every 1 or 2 hrs, its a joke!
she will only nap on me, and only naps for 30 mins max!

 

[Jkelmum]

My 2yr old as always been a needy baby/child he doesnt sleep he wakes 5~10times a night he follows me around like a shadow trys to get inbetween me and my baby is very jelous x

 

[Jkelmum]

My high needs baby missed his morning nap yesterday (ok he only naps on me and attempted a cot put-donw..NOT good) and he was just so cranky the entire day. It was aweful, he wouldnt feed or sleep and his eyes were really sunk into his head

A topic about sleep and lack of, my lo naps in the day..in my arms or if we are out in the carrier and occasionally in the pram. At night he does sleep in his cot (in our room) but the last 2 weeks he has been waking every hour from midnight refusing to go back to sleep in the cot, anyone else like this?

We have decided to try controlled crying (wont let him cry more than 5 mins max) for the nighttines cos im hoping once he understands HOW to fall asleep on his own it could help us for daytime naps?

im the same as you, im going to start CC, mines wakes all night ever night every 1 or 2 hrs, its a joke!
she will only nap on me, and only naps for 30 mins max!

CC Sooner rather then later imo ..ethan now will just scream and scream and scream for hours

 

[celine]

Thanks for the encouragement *hugs* as mummies with high need kiddies I knew you would understand. Its so hard
My new prob is that he sleeps at night til his night feed 9which he wakes up and initiates) then agaian up every 30mins/hour and i cant do the cc then as he sleeps in our room so i told hubby im gonna sleep on a blow up mattress in his unfinished room cos I cannot deal with it and it doesnt help him learning to self sooth!

 

[juliespencer9]

My 2yr old as always been a needy baby/child he doesnt sleep he wakes 5~10times a night he follows me around like a shadow trys to get inbetween me and my baby is very jelous x

blimey how do you cope with a 2 yr old waking up all night and a baby?

 

[Jkelmum]

My 2yr old as always been a needy baby/child he doesnt sleep he wakes 5~10times a night he follows me around like a shadow trys to get inbetween me and my baby is very jelous x

blimey how do you cope with a 2 yr old waking up all night and a baby?

I have a good baby thank god she sleeps 7-7

 

[premmiemum123]

Hi all, to all those with babies with reflux, how long can you LO tolerate being on their backs. My LO seems to only last a few minutes then she starts chewing which indicates the acid is starting to flow back up her oesophagus. It seems to happen everytime I put her on her back, on the changing mat under her playgym. I might have to raise both as it is awful seeing her chew and then in some cases vomit clear liquid which is the acid...anyone else experience this?

Thanks

 

[adzuki]

Oh yeah, this happens to us all the time - her bouncy chair is the best - BUT she is going to be late with crawling and can't roll over AT ALL as a result. I try to put her on her tummy on me, when I am leaning back on the couch, but that's about it She'll SCREAM after 5 minutes on her playmat

I wonder in what other ways it will affect her development???

Anyone else find that their LO spits up a lot in the bumbo???


A

 

[Pink_Witch]

apparently i hardly slept for the 1st year so my mother loves to remind me, which is probably why she hates me but my brother is golden boy as he was a good babay........im 37 now that was 36 years ago..."FRIGGIN GET OVER IT!!!!!!!"

Ern is like this,he is only happy if he is being held by either me or dh, he isnt very good with strangers(which has just ocurred to me is really odd-as i have a friend who is a medium and the first time ern met her he was all smiles at her and quite happily went to her for cuddles!!) sometimes it drives us nuts as someones always got to be holding him, but i keep telling myself he wont always be like this-he WILL gorw out of it-once he starts crawling or walking hell discover that being stuck on mummy or daddys lap is quite boring actually !!!

 

[tinyme77]

Just wondered what your experiences with osteopaths have been like. have they helped?

saw a mum this morning that says it helped a reflux suffering baby to calm down and sleep better

 

[premmiemum123]

Am going to see a cranial osteopath for my LOs reflux...it was recommended to me. They have just upped my LOs dosage and it is has made her poorly, I really want to remove her reliance on the drugs so am going to try this. Apparently it really works...

 

[MollyApple]

Adzuki thank you for starting this group! It was suggested to me this week to read the Dr Sears book as my little girl is ticking pretty much all the boxes for a high need baby and I am losing my wits with her at times!

Sorry for the very long post but I have to get this out of my system, its driving me crazy. I'm not with her father so I don't have his support and I live with a friend who is absolutely great but she works fulltime and I make myself feel bad thinking I need to keep the house tidy for her and feel awful because I don't get any housework done as I can't put my child down to do it. But to her it must look like all I do is sit in front of tv or on the internet all day cuddling my baby having a lovely time!

She is very clingy, has to be held all the time. If I put her down she screams, if I don't pick her up within a couple of minutes she becomes hysterical and when I do pick her up it takes about 20 minutes to calm her down. There are a few people who can hold her and she'll be okay with them, everyone else she just screams after a few minutes.

If she sees me eating she also gets upset. Dinner time has to be staggered so someone can hold her while I take the opportunity to eat, usually I haven't finished before she is wailing again. I'm a stone under my pre-pregnancy weight and I'm sure it's because I don't eat properly. It has to be something I can prepare one-handed, in less than 5 minutes and which can be left half an hour before eating if I have to resettle baby. Breakfast is so often biscuits dunked in tea!

She almost always naps on me, only my housemate can rock her to sleep and put her down for a bit. I can only get her to sleep by feeding her and if I try to put her down she immediately wakes up and starts crying. Its like she has a tilt motion sensor! She is 12 weeks old and in this time I have only once managed to put her in her travelcot without her waking up (last week) and once got her to sleep using only a dummy (most of the time she refuses it and spits it out) and once I managed to rock her to sleep in her bouncy chair (today).

She can't self settle and has never slept in her crib. I don't want to keep co-sleeping with her but its the only place she will sleep and she wakes several times a night for a feed, luckily she can latch herself on. But I get bad quality sleep, I end up smelling of stale milk (does nothing for my esteem) and I'm often cold because I don't have the duvet high enough incase it covers her. Also I am getting really bad hip pain because I have to lie on the same side all night so she can feed. I try to roll over when I think she's in deep sleep and within moments I hear her wake up and fussing. When I roll back to stop her crying I find she's shuffled across the bed to be next to me. If I don't turn back immediately she will start tapping my back too!

She's very sensitive to some noises and ignores others so those will wake her up. If someone coughs or laughs loudly she starts wailing even if she was awake when it happened! She has bad startle reflex which regularly wakes her up otherwise its trapped wind or teething pain. I have to let her sleep with dirty nappies because I daren't change them until she's awake. If I do, she wakes and cries the whole time I'm changing her. Bizarrely in the mornings she wakes up smiling and in a good mood, if she wakes from an evening nap she is grizzly and often cries.

She's a horror for fighting sleep, she keeps herself awake and forces her eyes to open when she's nodding off so I have a massive problem with her constantly crying from being overtired. She is an alert baby too, has been since the moment she was born.

She doesn't have reflux, although I had horrendously painful reflux during pregnancy. She was a really tummy thumper though which I believe is also an indication of a HN baby. Everyone comments on how much of a wriggler she is, ever since she was born. She does get colic though and the most painful trapped something - wind or poo I'm not sure, she is often straining though which I find strange as she is breastfed. That said, on rare occassions I have cheated and bought formula cartons because sometimes I just can't cope with the constant breastfeeding. I've also started giving her water with gripe water in it to break up the feeds because it is just so relentless otherwise. As I said soothers don't work, I hope she might yet take to it.

Very little works atm but the things that do help:

* TV - I swore I wouldn't want her watching tv but it gives me a chance to get a cup of tea and something to eat now. I've only been able to do this the last couple of weeks but I put her in her bouncy chair in front of the TV. I've noticed she reacts better to some programmes than others - Scrubs is always a winner!

* Gripe Water - she loves the taste of it, just wafting the smell under her nose makes her quiet.

* Medicine Dummy - I put her gripe water in this and she sucks it through very quickly but sometimes she keeps on sucking for a while. Once she spits it out though she won't have it back unless there's medicine in there. I use it with the colic drops too but thats a little too thick and she seems to struggle to suck it through the teet.

* Deep Sleep - I try to only move her when she's in the deep sleep part of the cycle, sometimes I can get her to lie next to me that way but it only lasts a few minutes.

Sling didn't work but I want to get a different type and retry it. I'm also thinking I could try controlled crying to get her to sleep in her cot but I'm not emotionally strong enough yet to withstand her crying for a long time. Swaddling is a definite no-no, can't even keep a blanket on her, she hates anything preventing her from moving her limbs.

I am glad to find others in the same situation as it's really been getting to me, yesterday three times I had to put her down while she cried, leave the room for a few minutes and take deep breaths. So many times I just want to hand her to someone else and leave the house. I have always been known for my calmness and patience, right now I feel angry, resentful and very short fused and unable to vent steam or relax.

Other people definitely don't help. I had a friend criticising me this week saying it is entirely my fault I have a clingy baby because I introduced her to too many people when she was first born! In her opinion I should have spent the first couple of weeks at home, receiving no visitors and not going out, just bonding with my baby. Instead because she was introduced to [a few] family members and close friends apparently I have caused her to have seperation anxiety from being passed around!! I was so angry and upset at this, I know its nothing to do with that! In fact I think its the only reason other people can hold her at all now.

I do get told off all the time for not eating properly. People don't see why I don't just let her cry but I'm still not able to eat if I do that because she takes so long to settle again. My housemate is great and cooks an evening meal for me then takes baby so I can eat it! I had one friend turn round to me and ask why I didn't cook for her since I was at home all day!

As difficult as having a HN baby is I am glad to be able to say now, it's not my fault, I am not doing anything wrong! I have typed all of this with her lying across my arms sleeping and she's snacked several times during this time, so I am proud of small victories like this and like the time I got her to sleep in travel cot. I make her sound so awful but she's not really. I describe as being like the girl in the nursery rhyme: "when she is good, she is very, very good and when she is bad, she is horrid!" Thank you for reading my rant!

 

[juliespencer9]

hi mollyapple,

your baby sounds the same as mine was, mines getting better now, shes 5.5 months, but everything you say about your baby is the same as mine was down to a T.


Up untill one months ago i would have to rock her to sleep for bedtime, naps and leave her laying on me for naps as not to risk her waking up and being moody and tired!

I did Controlled crying with her one month ago and shes like a different baby, now at bedtime i feed her put her in cot and (touch wood) so far she doesnt cry anymore just rolls over and is asleep more or less instantly.

Naps i but her in cot wide awake when i see her getting tired and she will cry for aprox 15 mins and then go to sleep, not for long tho, 30 mins usually, thats all she has ever napped for!

while i remember a good sling/baby carrier called a mei tei, have a look on google.


Also up until 5 nights ago(touch wood again) shes only been fed at bedtime then 9.30pm and about 1am, as before this for she was waking all night wanting feeding every 2 hrs ish......all night starting at bedtime!
although shes still awake all at night playing in the cot with anything she can grab...she doesnt cry just fidgets, which still wakes me..until i get used to it.

last night fed her 9pm, 1am and she was playing in cot at 11.30pm, 4am, 5am, but not as she can self settle she takes herslf back off to sleep.

also mine had colic so bad i took her back to hospital twice, she would scream for 4 hrs every eve until she got to 8 weeks, nightmare!

like you i really didnt think i would live with no sleep and her wanting so much attention.

we also had to eat our meals in turns as she would be screaming!

hope that helps to know your not alone. xx

 

[MollyApple]

Hi Julie,

Thanks so very much for your reply, its is comforting to hear from someone going through the same problems and reassuring to hear that a little further down the line things are starting to improve for you. I keep telling myself it will get better but you kind of lose that focus on a hard day hey!

I'm trying to gear up to doing the controlled crying, I'm worried it won't work but I've heard of it working for so many people and knowing that it's working for you hopefully means it could succeed. If you don't mind me asking, how did you go about it? Did you do it with a bedtime routine (bath, feed, bed)? And how long did she cry for at first and how many days did it take before she would settle?

Thank you again xx

 

[juliespencer9]

Hi Julie,

Thanks so very much for your reply, its is comforting to hear from someone going through the same problems and reassuring to hear that a little further down the line things are starting to improve for you. I keep telling myself it will get better but you kind of lose that focus on a hard day hey!

I'm trying to gear up to doing the controlled crying, I'm worried it won't work but I've heard of it working for so many people and knowing that it's working for you hopefully means it could succeed. If you don't mind me asking, how did you go about it? Did you do it with a bedtime routine (bath, feed, bed)? And how long did she cry for at first and how many days did it take before she would settle?

Thank you again xx

I do a bath, feed then put her in the cot, the last 2 weeks shes been asleep when i but her in the cot, she falls asleep on the bottle, but when I first started it id do bath, feed then put her in bed and i would sit outside the door so i could hear her, i think the first time she cried 20 mins and then over about 4 days it got less and less.
I did the same with naps aswell, she gets tired generally after shes been up for 2 hrs, but if i miss the tiredness and she gets overtired then theres no hope coz she will scream so hard when i put her in the cot i have to get her out and rock her!

theres still good and bad days when i put her in cot for a nap in the day! some days she goes and some i end up rocking her.

they say you shouldnt do CC until the baby is 6 months but i stared it at 5 months.
but i dont think it matters.

 

[MollyApple]

Thank you again. I still don't like the idea of CC, its so hard to do so putting it off til 6 months is prob a good thing while I hope she might improve naturally. Now I'm reading up on the HN stuff I'm learning a lot more and it's stressing me out less since I understand her better.

I've also been looking at Baby Whisperer, has anyone had any success with shh/pat or Pick Up, Put Down?

 

[juliespencer9]

Thank you again. I still don't like the idea of CC, its so hard to do so putting it off til 6 months is prob a good thing while I hope she might improve naturally. Now I'm reading up on the HN stuff I'm learning a lot more and it's stressing me out less since I understand her better.

I've also been looking at Baby Whisperer, has anyone had any success with shh/pat or Pick Up, Put Down?

I have that book and tried it when my LO was 14 wks, I found the pu/pd didnt work beacuse she just got more annoyed when i put her down, also she didnt like the shhh pat thing....just cried harder as she could see me and probley didnt understand why i wasnt making it all better!

it may work for you though, wortha try!

 

[adzuki]

MollyApple - huge to you!!! I don't even know what to say! That sounds similar to my LO, but I had a lot more support (my mom and sister both had HN babies). Do you find that she likes something one moment, hates it the next, then loves it again a few weeks later? My most recent thing is bottles - my LO is super sensitive to bottles - she likes all of her bottles, then will stop liking one kind and will only like another kind - until she hates that kind then likes another kind. As a result, w have 27 bottles and 10 different kinds - we never know which one she'll take. SIGH.

It does get better though - she is now able to self soothe a bit (she's 4 months now) by sucking her thumb, and she's starting to be intrigued by toys that occupy her for a little longer - she'll play on her own now for about 5 minutes!

I am super lucky that she's a decent night sleeper - I too lost a lot of weight right away from the sheer amount of activity needed to look after an HN baby! We eat dinner after she goes to bed - otherwise we just can't enjoy it!

Any tips for taking HN babies on airplanes - 2 weeks until we travel home for the holidays... YIPES!


A

 

[juliespencer9]

MollyApple - huge to you!!! I don't even know what to say! That sounds similar to my LO, but I had a lot more support (my mom and sister both had HN babies). Do you find that she likes something one moment, hates it the next, then loves it again a few weeks later? My most recent thing is bottles - my LO is super sensitive to bottles - she likes all of her bottles, then will stop liking one kind and will only like another kind - until she hates that kind then likes another kind. As a result, w have 27 bottles and 10 different kinds - we never know which one she'll take. SIGH.

It does get better though - she is now able to self soothe a bit (she's 4 months now) by sucking her thumb, and she's starting to be intrigued by toys that occupy her for a little longer - she'll play on her own now for about 5 minutes!

I am super lucky that she's a decent night sleeper - I too lost a lot of weight right away from the sheer amount of activity needed to look after an HN baby! We eat dinner after she goes to bed - otherwise we just can't enjoy it!

Any tips for taking HN babies on airplanes - 2 weeks until we travel home for the holidays... YIPES!


A

im not planning a holiday until shes one yrs old, have you got a night flight or day? maybe a night flight would be better!