I need help! 10 month old up for hours at a time!

[Bryony's mum]

Oh Sabrina!  What a horrible night!    Like Bryony says, though - I think you are making progress, in that Iris didn't need a feed, and she fussed for a while but in the end got herself off to sleep.   

I think you (and I) have to accept that it's one of those things where it will inevitably get worse before it gets better, or at least it will feel that way.  You are at the worst part now, where you are resisting taking the easy way out and so are putting up with Iris taking hours to get herself back to sleep, but in a few days time she will get quicker and you will begin to feel better.  Just don't give up now, otherwise the bad nights you have had will have been for nothing and you'll have to do it all over again another time (that's the way I'm motivating myself anyway.)

I can identify with you on the barely able to function part, although for no apparent reason i felt better today, in spite of having less sleep.    I decided to take a deep breath and start last night.  I've decided to keep the late evening feed for now, then get through to 5am with no nursing or cuddling to sleep. 

Last night Zach woke at 10.30 and dozed back off while I fed him, but then woke up shortly after I put him back down.  then followed the cycle of him crying, me laying him down, stroking his back and sshing until he was really calm, whispering goodnight, leaving and throwing myself into bed, sleeping for a few minutes...and then repeating...again and again and again.     Finally he got quite exhausted and upset so I ended up staying in and stroking his back for about half an hour before he was properly calm, then i left and i checked the clock and it was 2am.    It didn't feel that long though.  After that he slept until 5.30am, when I fed him and he fell back to sleep until 7am.

I'm seeing it as a positive start, although after 3 or 4 nights like this, I will be too tired to see the good side, so hopefully he'll start to settle more quickly.  He has always gone down really well at bedtime.  I even had to go back into his room tonight to get something for one of the others, and switched his light on etc, but he wasn't phased, and didn't complain at all when I went out again.  Why won't he do that in the middle of the night?    Naps are a different matter.  I'm cuddling him to sleep  because it's quick and always works.  I know I should fix it, but that means devoting time to it, which I really don't have during the day.

BTW, my experience with Bryony sounds like yours with Lilah - she got the hang of sleep training/night weaning straight off and within a week was sleeping 12 hours - and didn't have a single night waking from then until Ben was born.    The boys seem to be tougher nuts to crack (or maybe I'm softer!  ), so I'm working on baby steps too. 

Sorry this has been rather long.  Hope you have a better night tonight. 

[Lilah'sMommy]

Thanks Bryony and Alisa.   Alisa, it sounds like you've made a really good start.  Let's buddy up to support each other through this-- you're right, I can't quit now or it will all have been for nothing.  I'm wondering if I should just go whole hog right now and say no nursing until 6 am (which is a more reasonable wake-up time), as we might as well just do it while we're in sleep he!! anyway.   Anyway, it seems like she doesn't need middle of the night feedings if she couldn't be bothered to even drain one breast after 12 hours without a drop.

The thing is I had to go and do this when DH is working long hours at work, so when he's here, it's pretty much for dinner and the bedtime routine (if that), and then the night (during which he's being awesome, I should say), when I'm fighting with him about the night-weaning/sleep training.   By the end of the day, I just have nothing left to give to anyone... only to get no sleep and then have nothing to give in the morning, too.

Right now Iris is squealing in bed instead of sleeping... I hope we're not going to have problems at nap time now, too.

[Bryony]

Hugs Sabrina!

[Bryony's mum]

Hi Sabrina!  I thought I'd update on last night, which I think went better, although it has now taken on a dream-like haze.  I fed at 10.30 and Zach went striaght back to sleep, then I think he woke about midnight, and with a fair bit of me going in and out was finally asleep about 1.30am.  He didn't get as upset as the previous night and was doing some crying that was more like mantra crying at times, although I was too tired to tell.  Then he slept until 5.30, when I fed him back to sleep, and then he was woken by the kids at 8am because they thought he'd made a noise (which he hadn't!) 

So I think that's progress, although I'm too chicken not to tiptoe round after I've fed him and do my utmost not to wake him.  I can't face the idea of having to get him back to sleep at 5.30, escpecially since Ben's likely to get up then.  My plan is to hopefully get Zach to sleep through from 10.30 to 5.30 without any wakings.  then I'll have the opportunity to get a good stretch of sleep and then I suppose I can try to extend the 5.30 bit, or to work on going to sleep independently for naps.  Dh will be home for 10 days over Christmas, so perhaps I'll deal with naps then, when he's around to keep an eye on the other two.  In about 6 wks time, once Zach's 11 mths, i think i might have worked up the courage to get rid of the late night feed, and then we'll hopefully have 12 straight hours.  Please. 

 It's probably morning where you are now - I hope the night wasn't too bad.    I'll try to check in later, although I've got a girls' meal out to go to - just what i don't feel like.  i don't think i can drink even one glass because I'll pass out immediately (and I need my head in some sort of order to deal with Zach as well). 

[kim&savannah]

Hugs, Sabrina.  I know what you are talking about having nothing left to give.  It has been so long since I've felt like I've got my "fill" and its building up worse and worse each day.  It's been over a month since we stopped night feeds and stopped bringing Abe to our bed during the night (not until his 5 a.m. feeding because that's the only way I can keep him asleep after that and the extra hour of laying in bed is SOOOOO needed).  And things have not gotten better and I have no idea what to do at this point.  The last 2 nights he's been up absolutely screaming right around when I try to go to bed (10ish), which isn't how his NWings usually are--there's usually just lots of fussing. 

Last night I finally gave up and just held him till he went back to sleep since the night before it had ended with DH coming in to rescue me because I was beyond furious after an hour of the screaming, and DH wasn't home to save me if things escalated.  I'm just at a complete loss.  And it doesn't help that when Abe is awake and fussing, for some reason, Savannah always half wakes up and then coughs for the next hour or more.  And last night, she woke up in the middle of what would have been my 5 hours of consecutive sleep (which is pretty much a miracle if I can get that).  Ony took a second to calm her down, but it did its damage on me.

So here we go again--another day of me feeling like crap, and I've already snapped at Savannah twice this am  

It just isn't fair to expect us to do a good job at the most difficult job that exists if we are getting less than 6 hours of sleep.

~Kim

[Lilah'sMommy]

Oh, Kim, huge {{{HUGS}}}.  That sounds really rough.  I wish we lived close so we could give each other a break now and then!  I have to say that Iris has totally humbled me as a parent; I always figured that when parents were complaining that their babies didn't sleep through by a year that it was somehow their own fault... I now know how completely wrong I was.  Some of these kiddos just really have a mind of their own on the subject, and I was just lucky enough to have a very cooperative first child!

Well, I have a confession to make... I threw in the towel.  Not forever, but for now.  DH is on a rotation for another three months in which he will be at work for pretty much all of the girls' waking hours during the week, and though he says he's game for helping withthe night-weaning, with the amount he's working, he's really suffering without that sleep.  And as he's supposed to be making decisions about patients' welfare in a hospital at work, I don't think it's too great for him to be doing that on the amount of sleep he's been getting lately.  Really, our five-day experiment didn't seem to do much more than take everyone else along for the ride of sleep deprivation (even Lilah, and she is IMPOSSIBLE when she's sleep deprived), and make mine even worse, which meant a REALLY tense household.  So I made an executive decision to halt the night-weaning for now.  I'll simply focus on keeping daytime sleep at 2.5-3 hours and ensuring that Iris gets back to sleep as quickly as possible during the night.  I will however, try another method of getting her back to sleep if she wakes before midnight rather than feeding, as I know she doesn't need it then, but she actually takes pretty good feeds at 3 or 4 or 5 am (better than first-thing-in-the-morning feeds, without fail), and I really don't mind getting up once to feed her.  So until DH is done with this rotation, I'll just keep feeding her once a night.

So last night, she slept through till 4, I fed her, put her back down, and though she didn't go right back to sleep, she didn't complain either, and eventually settled back to sleep without fussing.  She did wake too early (about 6:20), but I got more sleep last night than I have in the two nights before combined.

[kim&savannah]

Good for you!  You just have to do what works best for you at the time.  And yeah, its hard when DH is so busy and tired anyway.  People always suggest that I get him to help--well, since he's usually up studying until sometime around 12 or 1 a.m., I feel a little bad making him take over all the NWings during the 5 or 6 hours he actually gets to be in bed.  But that's why I'm looking forward to Christmas--2.5 weeks of no school for him so we can take turns and maybe actually get some real sleep.

Hope that you manage to keep getting some decent stretches--maybe she'll surprise you and just naturally start waking later and later for that feeding. 

~Kim

[Lilah'sMommy]

You know, I also worry that we'll stop night nursing and the Nwings will just continue to get worse (like they were), and then I'll be out that trick in the bag, KWIM?  I figure by the time DH is done with this rotation, she'll be almost 14 months and I'll know she definitely doesn't need to be fed in the night.  I've also found that with her I just really can't push sleep skills on her.  I tried at 8 months to get some independent sleep going, and it didn't work.  I tried at two weeks later at 8.5 months, and suddenly she could do it.  So I'm taking the 5 nights of he!! as a cue that she's just not ready yet, and we'll try again later.

[Lilah'sMommy]

BTW, Aren't you totally getting a kick out of the other threads on this board with subject lines like "3 month old still not sleeping through" and "14-week old still not sleeping through"?  Maybe I've cracked from the months of sleep deprivation, but I'm finding these completely and totally hilarious.

[kim&savannah]

Just goes to show you're a better person than me because my reaction is more of anger--"who do they think they are to complain!"   LOL--yeah, every now and then, I jump on one of those and do a little "just so you can feel better about your situation" post.  Since I'm on kid #2 who didn't sleep through the night before a year (S was 18 month, we'll see where A. ends up), I figure I should enlighten everyone to how bad it really can be.

And I totally understand about not having your bag of tricks--that's why I haven't taken Abe's paci yet.  I know people say that may be the culprit, and maybe that would solve everything.  But all I know is that NOTHING that was supposed to work did with Savannah and we took her paci at 6 months and then didn't have that easy back-to-sleep trick anymore (not to mention a way to keep her semi-quiet during church and car trips),  along with no more night feeds, no snuggles in our bed, going to sleep in her own bed--it really did seem to all make it worse until finally she just started "getting it".  I just hope Abe gets it soon!

~Kim

[Bryony's mum]

Good for you making a decision, Sabrina.    And Kim, I'm sorry you're having a tough time of it too.  I can't ask dh to help either really - he's so run down and has had a cold since forver, that he needs the sleep far more than I do.

Off out now, will write properly tomorrow.

[Lilah'sMommy]

Well, last night Iris stirred and made a bit of noise at 1:00 am, but got back to sleep on her own.  Then Lilah woke crying for her water cup at 2:00.  Then the cat started bothering me.  By then I was just awake, waiting for Iris to wake up, it seemed.  She did, at 3:45, I fed her, and finally got back to sleep.  Then she woke again at 5:45, so I fed her again.   I knew there was no way I'd get any more sleep if I didn't, so I did it, on the theory that I've got to bank all the sleep I can tight now, so when we decide to try this again, I have a little more in reserve.  Anyway, she settled right back down and slept till 7:40.   Best night's sleep she's had in weeks.  I on the other hand now seem programmed to be up for 2-3 hours in the middle of the night, whether or not there's a child up with me.   All in all, though, this is progress.  I can handle my own sleep deprivation reasonably (especially when it's my own insomnia and not my kids keeping me up), but when the whole family is running on empty like we were at the beginning of the week, it's just too much.

It sort of seems like Iris has decided to start sleeping until 3:45-4ish.  Maybe we did accomplish something?    We'll see how the next couple of nights go, and then maybe we'll decide to hop back on the night-weaning plan, but with a revised target of no nursng before 3 am.  What do you think?

[kim&savannah]

You probably did "re-program" her so she isn't used to eating so early in the night and just isn't hungry for it.  Great job!

We didn't have the hour of screaming at 10 pm last night, and so no Savannah coughing for an hour either, which was nice (although still not enough sleep for me since DH came home at 11:30 and it totally woke me up.)  The only thing I can think of is that those 2 nights, Abe had tuna casserole for dinner--first time for fish, I think, so maybe it upset his tummy?  Who knows.  Guess to really test the theory, I'd give it to him again tonight, but I think I'd rather sleep.

~Kim

[Bryony's mum]

Kim- I would go for the sleep too!   

Sabrina - That's great that Iris is sleeping until 3.45.  now someone just needs to sleep train you, so that you can get back to sleep.    At least if she's sleeping until 3am consistently, you'll be able to get a few good hours sleep, escpecially if you're an early-to-bed sort of person (which I'm not )

Last night here was pretty reasonable.  Zach woke at 10 and 11, but dh managed to resettle him and I got to have the whole of my meal out.    I fed him at 11.30 when he really did want milk, and he was awake when i put him down, but for the first time in ages he put himself to sleep.    (At least I think he did, although it's always possible I went in to see him and can't remember!)  Then he woke at 4.15 but I resettled him within 10 minutes, and then at 6 i brought him into our bed for a feed, expecting him to be awake soon after.  I had to ease him off my arm and out him back into his cot at 7.40am otherwise I'd never have got ready for the school run in time! 

[Lilah'sMommy]

Sounds like a decent night, Alisa!

Kim, I'm with Alisa-- I'd go for the sleep, myself.   No sense in testing the fish theory if it means you'll be up all night.