Help with a 2mo and frustrated mommy

[gpmom]

Hello all,
I am writing this for a friend.  She is a bw'er of 2 boys and her thrid son E is 2 months old.  He is the one I am writing about.  She is having a really hard time with it.  Here is a post she sent to me on a personal site....
Hi girls,

It's me again ... here to vent and ask for any help.

I'm extremely worn out and having a very difficult time tending to my kids. Here's an idea of how my day goes...
When I try to put Elliott to sleep I spend sometime just getting him to sleep only to have to go in there 3-5 more times with him crying out and needing my help. Then when I finally get him to sleep he wakes up 1/2 hour later wide eyed to be awake for another hour only to have to do it all over again. Well this is my day all day long. Imagine having to do that cycle about 5 times during the day. If you can try to imagine how frustrating and hard this is...and then pin onto that watching my two other kids and tending to their needs besides being tired myself from having gotten up 2-3 times during the night. I simply can't do it and I everytime I have to go in by Elliott I begin to cry today. I am so ... you name it (all of the above)!!!! I hate to feel like this because then I feel like I don't love Elliott or my other kids. I have no tolerance, patience...everything is done with frustration rather than love and happiness. I NEED some sort of a break and it literally is impossible (trapped).

I have been trying to do shh/pat with Elliott for naps, but I must be missing something because either he lays there wide-eyes marveling the world for what seems like forever and I give up or he screams bloody murder that I laid him down. I better get reading further in that chapter that I started in BW.

AND ANOTHER POST

So I know one of my biggest mistakes is not seeing him through to a deep sleep. And that is usually because my other two kids need me for some reasons. Am I suppose to turn the tv on for them for 1/2 hour each time I need to nap Elliott? I hate giving tv time the way it is. But that is the only way I know I can keep the boys situated if I need to be away from them for a certain length of time. Robbie how did you handle this when you would nap Avery?

Obviously another problem is APing with props - rocking to sleep or paci.

AND THE FINAL ONE
Oh girls, the more I read the more I feel and see I'm doing everything wrong. I haven't cried this much in a long time. Even a 6 year old girl that is here today looked at me and said 'you look tired.' That was after I came out of the room with Elliott after trying to get him to sleep for the last hour and crying at least 3 times during that effort.

He is really off today and I can't figure out what to do. I have been trying to hold him until he's drifting and then lay him down and pat/shh but when i lay him down he lays there wide awake and eventually starts to get mad and then cry hard. A couple of times after that I held him to sleep laid him down and then sat there with my hand on him. He'd jolt his body after like 2 min and then another 2 min and then again a few minutes after that and then his eyes would open and be wide eyed and we start the cycle all over of picking him up to get him back to sleep because he was crying again.

I wish BW talked about how to teach a child to sleep when there are other children involved.

thank you so much for reading this far.  Any advice would be great.  As you can see she is in a really tough place.

[sherry lynn]

Hi gpmom-
It is going to be really hard to give advice on the EASY board regarding this because so much of what we try to do on the EASY board is looking at the routine to see what needs to be tweaked.

Usually with LO this age we tend to put them down too late. That was the  big big mistake I made when I first started EASY with Lyle when he was the same exact age.
An hour might actually be too long.

Did she use BW with her other two boys? I'm guessing probably not, since she is just reading the book?

If I had to go of gut instinct I would say that she possibly has a spirited or touchy baby. That makes EASY all that much harder. A five minute difference in EASY can make a huge huge difference.

Here are things that helped with my spirited LO.
Watch him for a few days to log when he is yawning. When you've figured that out, have him IN BED before that A time. Often with touchy or spirited LO by the time they yawn the sleep window has closed.
Dark, dark room
White noise
Very little wind down time
Take down mobile
Make last few minutes of A time with NO stimulation. As they get older and A time increases this time also needs to increase. Most most say last 30 min, no electronic toys etc.
When he was this young we really didn't do anything stimulating, just being awake was so stimulating for him.
He was in his bassinet at this point and we even covered the top part so he couldn't see out. We made a little tent.

I hope that helps

[gpmom]

Thanks Sherry Lynn.  Yes she did do bw with her first 2, that is where we met.  She is just 'reading up' again because it is amazing how quickly you forget.  I will forward your help onto her.  Also I asked for her routine to see where it is right now.
Thanks again,

[sherry lynn]

If she did BW with her first two and did not have these issues then I would but my money on a touchy or spirited LO. Tell her to take a breath, it's not her fault, they are just a lot harder.