BabyWhispererForums.com
SLEEP => Night Wakings => Topic started by: dazmoriarty on April 18, 2012, 23:57:26 pm
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My good lady wife and I have a gorgeous 10 month old boy, but we recently moved from Ireland to Arizona (for my wife's job) and I now find myself as a house-husband (yeah yeah - I'm on "wife-support"!).
The move itself was fine once junior made the transition from GMT to GMT-8, but last week he started going to day care in the afternoons. Since then however, he has become much more clingy (understandable I suppose - he thinks every day he's being abandoned), but the real trouble is at night. He goes down for his sleep at a fairly regular 20:00-ish, but wakes by 01:00 or so for a feed (which we have not yet been able to get him out of the habit of), but then after that he starts waking at least once an hour and sometimes it takes both of us minding him to get him through the night.
We are both exhausted from this and are getting very worried that this will become the norm and none of the three of us can allow this to happen. The poor little guy it getting dark circles under his eyes and you can imagine ours. No amount of PU/PD seems to work and he makes throaty moaning sounds, so he's clearly not asleep.
My wife needs her sleep as she is in a very fast-moving job so that leaves me trying to manage as well as I can although she has been brilliant lately with him despite it causing her day productivity to drop (I assume).
I have the Kindle version of the "Sleep: Top Tips from the Baby Whisperer" but while I am a fast reader, I have barely made a dent in it due to minding him in the morning and minding him at night!
So...help...please! All/any advice gladly accepted - thanks!
DM
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I should probably add that we have not been so good at a proper routine for him since birth and I am well aware that it's harder to set up a routine when he's this old but I realise now that we have erred in a big way. I just need help getting us back on track!
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Hi Daz,
This sounds a little like separation anxiety could be rearing its head here. There are some great tips here: http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=212037.0
Do you know your son's temperament? http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=52283.0 Some types don't do so well with PUPD, particularly if they're not independent sleepers already.
A few extra things that would be helpful to know so we can help you out:
* Does LO have a general daily routine? If so, please write it out so we can get a better picture and make some suggestions.
* How does he act when he's waking every hour after 1am?
* Is LO BF/FF? If BF, is your wife engorged when she feeds at that 1am feeding? If BF, is there anything new in your wife's diet?
* Does your LO have reflux? Is he teething? Is he ill - got a bug from day care... quite common early on?
* Does LO go to sleep independently? If not, how to you get him to sleep?
* Is LO napping at day care in the afternoons? How long has he been going to day care? Do you provide food or do they? If so, is there something new in his diet that could be causing some discomfort?
Seems like a lot of questions but I'm just trying to cover as much as I can so we can help out asap for you.
Hang in there! We'll help you get this sorted :)
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Thanks for the reply Becj86!
Ok, here are the answers you posed me questions to, then some more about last night:
So, Ishaan's general routine is he gets up around 07:30, feeds shortly after, plays a while, then is asleep again by the latest 11am (although this is getting earlier - I think his afternoon day care routine is having this effect), up by midday or so then off to day care from about 13:00 to 17:00 or so. They feed him there around 16:00 and he sleeps for about 30 mins after that. Back at home he is usually asleep by 20:30...and awake again by 21:30....! A certain amount of shush/patting will get him to sleep and as of last night I started the PU/PD in earnest and it seemed effective enough. He still usually however wakes around 01:00 or 02:00 for a bottle feed - which we had eliminated previously (see below).
When he wakes for his hourly wake up, his eyes are closed, but he is crying out in fits and starts - not continuously. I should say here that at 5 months old we were amazed to have him sleeping in his own room and sleeping through the night (all in the space of a week!), but then by 6 months, he started teething and that night time peace came to an end again. He has 4 teeth now (2 upper/2 lower) and more are on the way as he drools a lot and has his fingers in his mouth often, but I don't think it's just that.
He is a mixture of FF (assume this is 'formula fed'?) and solids mainly during the day. My wife gave up breast feeding at 3 months. So, we feed him a mixture of jars of Gerber's chicken & vegetable/turkey and mixed vegetables etc (american brands), our own homemade butternut squash and mixed vegetables and with each meal also a bowl of baby rice with pureed apple or pear. He seems to have gone off our own homemade mush lately though and is not mad on the Gerber's stuff any more either. So his milk consumption is going up again - grr! We know now that we need to introduce more foods etc. We tried small pieces of fruit (apple, pear, banana etc.) but he just screwed up his face and spat it out...
He used to have relatively bad reflux up to about 4 months, but this seems to have gone away now thankfully. He is teething as I mentioned above. He did indeed also have a bug last Sunday which caused him to vomit everything up - food, milk, water etc. My wife had it first however, then him and lastly me last Monday - yuch. We are all better now though, but Ishaan was exhibiting these sleeping changes before he got ill, so I think it is a reaction to day care and/or some separation anxiety. I think he is slowly relaxing into the day care routine (just yesterday for the first time, he didn't cray when he was dropped off there).
He never goes to sleep independantly unfortunately - possibly our worst mistake yet with him. My wife can get him to sleep, but when i do it it is much quicker - usually 10-15 minutes. She could take up to a half hour, so I do it mostly. Annnnd, he's getting heavier all the time... He's up to 9.5kg now.
He does nap in the day care place, but usually only 25-40 minutes. They all sleep at different times I think so there is probably noise around him. He's one of the ones not yet walking (or crawling for that matter) so maybe he feels a little left out? The rest can either crawl or bum around or pull themselves up into a standing position and can then walk around the walls etc. Once put in a standing position, he can walk slowly around the edge of a coffee table but very slowly. This is his second week in day care and we send the food with him - a pre-made bottle of formula (Arizona law) and a container of baby rice and a jar of Gerbers baby food or our own butternut blend.
I have struggled with a lot of guilt over this lately as my wife is a hard worker and needs he sleep so I try to take the brunt of the nights minding him, but while I have always considered myself a very relaxed and calm person, I have been appalled to discover that when sleep deprived, I'm horrible! I mean I don't shout or shake him or anything but I am a little more rough when picking him up than I want to be.
Anyway, so last night I was determined to be calm and methodical with him and shush/pat where needed and PUPD when needed. He pretty much woke up every 40 minutes and for the most part, PUPD worked fine (sometimes had to be repeated a few times), but that way he seemed to have minimal disruption to his sleep. I however am now knackered, but I will do it tonight again also and until it starts showing results!
So I think perhaps his nocturnal waking is because of separation anxiety - I think. I'd welcome any analysis of the above so we can hopefully get him back on track and us to sleep all night again!
Thanks for your time!
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Thanks for your comprehensive info :)
I think its overtiredness and unfortunately, PUPD doesn't help a lot with OT, so I'd suggest sticking with shush/pat.
He will be getting used to sleeping at day care and that can take some time (I should know, its been 3 months and DS still won't sleep more than 1hr at a time at day care). I keep getting told it'll get better for him but I'm not so sure. Our day care place plays awful music to drown out the noise of the kids playing - does yours do something similar? I think its likely he's overstimulated when he's going down for a nap at day care - this will settle down a bit as he gets used to it. I think he's also overtired when he goes down for that nap and should probably be going to bed around 1530 or 1600. Do they try to resettle him when he wakes after 30mins?
I'd try moving bedtime earlier to 1900 or 1930 if possible, especially since he's only getting a short nap at day care. I suspect that's pretty much home, bath, feed, bed but that's sometimes the way it has to be so everyone gets sleep.
Totally normal to feel that guilt being the housewife/husband. I felt like I'd done something wrong in the day and caused the wakings...
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Well thank you for replying so quickly! So I don't know how I will be able to do shush/pat without picking him up - he seems to sleep on his back most of the night.
There is no music playing in his creche, but the one thing that surprised me (again another Arizona law) is that the room temperature is kept quite low - maybe 14/15 celsius - to prevent the movement of aerial bacteria I'm told. Other than that it's quite nice. Not sure if they resettle him but the numbers have gone up in there this week - about 12-14 now when I was last there with him there were only 6 or 7. So that means less time per child.
I will certainly try to bring his bedtime forward now - was thinking along those lines too.
Thanks for the sympathetic ear and advice!
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DS slept on his back and I did shush/pat a bit differently. I left him on his back and had my hand diagonally across his chest, patting with just my fingers on his shoulder - does that make sense? Sometimes I would sing softly instead of shushing too.
Are they giving him some kind of blanket/extra clothing for sleeping? That's really cold! IMO - I do live in the tropics :P
I'd ask if they can try to put him down a bit earlier (often they can't pick when kids are tired til they're really OT because they don't know the individual kids' subtle cues) and try to resettle if they can. I find our day care people are pretty young, have no kids themselves and think if LO sleeps badly at day care it'll be good for the parents because they'll sleep better at night which is not the case at all. It might be worth just pointing out that he really needs to get a decent (define it) nap so he can sleep at night and describe the chaos you currently have so they get it.
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Ok I can try that too - cheers. We provided a warm blanket for them to use. I will indeed ask them to settle him sooner to sleep to see if that helps and he's going to bed at 7pm tonight whether he likes it or not!
Great advice - thanks!
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Good luck :)
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No - another brutal night. We tried putting him down at 19:30, but my wife kept him up so she could Skype her mother with him. I could see he wanted to sleep, but she insisted. Then followed 1.5 fruitless hours trying to get him to sleep. At last at 21:15 he slept, but started waking again every hour or so. He always feeds once during the night still, but he got fed twice this time and woke at 06:45, his nappy (diaper) having overflowed with 1s and 2s.
Where's the nearest cliff?!
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(((Hugs))), Daz, that sounds really tough, but stick with us and we'll help you get it sorted. Bec has given you great advice so far! I thought I'd come alongside and also try to offer some encouragement. Please try not to feel guilty (I know it's hard, I've been there); but, I'm assuming you're a first time parent, and unfortunately these sweet babies don't come with instruction manuals. You're doing the best that you can and that's all anyone can ask of you!
I think the key for you is going to be getting him on a bit more of a structured routine, helping him to fall asleep independently, and that all important early bedtime. He sounds really overtired (OT), and unfortunately that makes it so much harder for them to sleep (backwards, right?).
As this is likely a combination of factors - i.e. OT, separation anxiety (SA), and he's not an independent sleeper, do you think he might sleep better if you were in the room with him on a mattress on the floor? This way, you can quickly get up to do some shh/pat and help him back to sleep in the night and hopefully maximize your sleep as well. Eventually, he'd start to settle by just the shh of your voice or presence in the room and then you can start to work your way out. If you think he's actively teething, have you tried giving him pain meds to help with the NWs?
Also, I'd work on trying to be pretty consistent with the routine the next few weeks. Do you think something like this might be possible (granted it would need to work at daycare)?
Wake 7:30 ish am
Nap 11:00-12:00 pm (or even 12:30, if he'd go that long)
Nap 3:30-4:30 pm (or you can just have them keep the cat-nap, if he'll do 1.5 hr in the morning; so 4-4:45 pm)
Bed 7:30 pm
Finally, don't worry about him upping his milk intake for the time being. It takes lots of LOs time to get established fully on solids, and milk should still be the primary source of nutrition until one year. If you know he's getting enough milk, he shouldn't need those night feeds anymore.
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That does sound like a brutal night :(
Something I've kept in mind is that DS is a baby. He needs his sleep and he's much more pleasant to be around when he's well rested and for me, that takes priority over adult wants - we understand delayed gratification, we *can* wait. I totally understand your wife wanting to spend time with him when she gets home and that your LO probably wants to play with her too. DH is away a lot (often for a few nights at a time) and there have been times that I've called him the day I know he's coming home and told him he can make the choice: Logan needs to go to bed at 6pm (early) as he's not napped well during the day, so he can come home early to play with him or he'll be in bed when DH gets home. Frankly, once DH experienced the difference it made in sleep, he was fine with it and he'd get up a little early in the morning so he could be ready and have some extra hugs before he left for work.
Katie has a good point about sleeping in LO's room with him.