help me

[Snowdust]

Thank you both

I have to go away for a couple days my mother has been hospitalized and i must go see her.
I will be back on sunday so i will post any news

[claires mum]

Hope all is well...chat when you get back.

[Snowdust]

ok im back

 1st night at my moms went to bed like and angel
2nd screamed and screamed
tonight feel asleep at 7 slept while we came home 4 hour drive ate a bottle at 11 bed

everyone but me can get him to go for a nap mom grandma and daddy can not me
he is also doing 1  hour and a half nap and then a 10-20 min one and thats it we didnt use the swing and he was soooo cranky.

anyways ill tell you how our day goes tomorrow when we are back to the routine more or less

[claires mum]

Sometimes it's harder for Mums to put their LO's to bed because they can smell that milk....I know DH works long hours...but maybe he can do the night time routine for you?

[Snowdust]

Dh usually is the one doing the night time routine still no luck.

 today was bad

7am up feed

830 solids

930 finally looks tired. Rocked to sleep

10 05 awake wide awake

11 feed drowsy

1 babysitter put down for nap

120 awake

310 feed

530 solids

6 bath
630 asleep.
930 awake screaming
1000 8oz bottle bed


I couldnt keep him awake not even until 7

i dont know if i should do the DF argh

he wont selep for 2 ours not even 1 hour and he hates his swing now he wont even sleep in that i hate his crying it makes my heart hurt

[claires mum]

Yes I know about that pain....Ok so what I can see from yesterday is that your LO (must be close to 6 months now..is that right?) had a short first nap ....but then next A time was still 2 hours (building OT up) and then had a short nap (from being OT) and then his next A time was a whopping 5 hours (VERY OT by now). 

When he is having short naps...it's really important to keep the next A time short and get another nap in.  If you can't get the full quota of day naps in (regardless of when they happen) then it's an early bedtime.  Super early if needed.  You might end up with 5*45 minute naps and an early bedtime...what ever it takes to get as much sleep in during the day is critical to keep him from building up OT.  Does this make sense?

Eg:  If he misses an hour in the am...then you need to make up that hour in the remaining hours of the day.  If you can't..then to bed an hour early.  That's the rough rule...I know it's hard when they miss 4 hours...but the time needs to be gradually made up.  There may be a day where he's so exhausted that he'll have a really big sleep to help make it all up...you never know.

Just going over some previous posts...I'm also wondering if he's reacting to the formula.  Did he start to have problems when you introduced it by any chance???  How are the solids going...?  Does he have gas? 

Remember that this is a problem solving excercise and it's a process of elimination.  It takes time ... but you'll get there.  Sometimes you have to go back over the basics in case something obvious has been missed.

[Snowdust]

I took him off the formula after 2 weeks because he started vomiting (which he never did before EVER)
Solids he has had them for just under a month now and he hasnt been constipated or gassy so i dont know.


I thought that he had to nap at those times hes been so tired and i have been keeping him up so that he would sleep on his next nap. I tried rocking him back to sleep after his nap but hes so wide awake it doesnt work.

Tonight my husband put him down at 530 and he woke up at 630 now hes wide awake and doesnt want to go to bed. we tried another bath calming down time and still hes not interested in sleep its almost 8
he again only had an hour and 40 minture nap today.

[claires mum]

It can be confusing ... but the general rule of thumb with EASY is that if you miss a nap you don't want to keep the same A time and scheduled 'next nap' time as they become OT and difficult to put down...so you're experiencing this at the moment.  Don't worry.. we all learn this way! 

[Snowdust]

so if hes wide awake i should let him have A time then try nap again  later?
cause hes too awake to go back down but 2 tired to make it to his next nap

if he goes to bed later than usual should i do the dream feed?

if he wakes up at 4 or 5 should i feed him again he is usually hysterical n wont calm down??

and if i do feed him at 4 or 5 should i feed him at 7 like normal?

thank you again for all your help

[claires mum]

It's so hard doing this remotely!

This is what I do...not sure if a moderator would concur or not...

1)  I try and get Claire to sleep..I know her cues well.  If she's just wide awake and showing no signs of going to sleep then I take her outside and we have quiet A time until I see some sleepy cues.  That might be 10 mins or an hour later...it depends.  If I KNOW she's tired and capable of going to sleep...then I might keep at it for 45 minutes ... but I don't do that often and I never go over 45 minutes of trying to get her to sleep

2)  Not sure what to say about the DF as I never did it.  Common sense approach would be to keep doing it unless he only went to bed one sleep cycle before (ie. an hour)...not sure though

3)  If feeding at 4/5 gets him back to sleep ..Yes..I would feed.  Monitor how much he takes at this feed

4)  Yes I would also feed at 7....we want to get him used to this feed

I need to go back over your posts when I have a bit more time and see if I can find something that we are missing

[Snowdust]

Dr told me to let him cry it out
I HATE THIS im so stressed he is getting worse. he wont even nap in his swing anymore he spends his days screaming and then when so tired passes out at random then sleeps for 5-10 minutes then passes out hours later again.

he is soooooooooooooooo off routine today. im going to go insane his cry actually makes me mad.
i dont even know where to begin tomorrow
i guess at 7 feed him i dont even know anymore im so out of it.

[claires mum]

You know that screaming all day is worrying me....I'm sure that he's very OT and unhappy....but it's starting to sound like he might be in pain perhaps (gas, teething, indigestion, reaction to some food).  If you are still BFing and there's no formula.  So can we just go over some basics perhaps?

1)   What solids are you giving him and at what times.  I have no idea what pablum is...you might need to spell that out for me

2)  I'm wondering whether you are eating anything that's disagreeing with him via your milk:  coffee, cabbage, chilli,  spices...

3)  Do you or your DH have any food allergies?

4)  Is there any sign of a skin rash

5)  Are there teeth coming?

6)  When he did sleep well, what were the conditions that made him sleep well?  Was it BF + swing or some other combination???

These are just random thoughts...have you given him any pain relief just before bedtime....does he sleep well as a result?

[Snowdust]

Pablum is rice cereal or wheat cereal or barley cereal usually one of the firsts here
I use rice cereal mixed with oat cereal whole grain

1)  Solids Morning around 8:30  (pablum sweet potatoe and chicken then depending what day either avacado squash or green beans)
              evening           5:30  (pablum sweet potatoes plain then one of the other three)
I always introduce new food in the am and have not introduced any new ones to make him scream

2) In the beginning when they told me it could be his diet. I went off Dairy most veggies except carrots and didnt eat anything spicey or gassy it did nothig to help so i went back to eating them it never changed either way he got no better or no worse. I was off it all for almost 3 weeks more tha nenough to get out of my system

3) Both me and DH arent allergic to anything

4) no skin rash whatsoever he has never had diaper rash only when he was on acid reflux medicine which i took him off of

5) He has two teeth already and let me tell you those days were unbelievable he sat and literally screeched for 12 hours but when they came through he went back to his normal screemy self.

6) we didnt do anything different when he did sleep well just after christmas he just stopped literally for no reason whatsoever and has never slept good again.

I tried giving him tylenol every four hours for two days and it did nothing so i dont think its pain related.
i feel like im whining and coming up with excuses im so sorry

[hlatreille]

Not sure if this may help, but maybe it's the pablum itself that isn't sitting well with your baby.  I have read other women that have said their babes started waking more and had very restless sleeps when they were eating the rice/pablum cereals.....they are harder to digest, maybe his little belly just can't handle it....maybe try eliminating the pablum for a few days and see if that helps???

[claires mum]

Ugg... just lost the post that I'd spent time typing!!  And hlatreille has posted while I was retyping...good to see that we're thinking along the same lines...might be onto something afterall

I'm thinking that your problems seemed to start when you introduced the solids.  At first I thought the meat was to blame...but now I'm thinking that too much cereal might be the problem

To cut a long story short...I'd start to vary the solids a little more now that he's 6 months.  A lot of sweet potato and cereal might be giving him some problems (and no meat until 9 months ).

Here's some suggestions:

BFast:   small bowl of pureed fruit (pear/apple/banana/paw pay, papaya)
            cereal mixed with water (you may want to eliminate the cereal for a while...maybe he can't handle it?)

Lunch:  full cream natural yoghurt mixed with mashed banana/or pear/or avocado
          
Dinner:  mashed veggies (sweet potato, potato, pumpkin/butternut squash, brocolli)

These are all good first foods and are low allergen.  Sweet potato can cause gas if its not peeled enough (you need to take all the skin + a bit of flesh off) and if it's not cooked enough.   All the veggies have good carbs to keep him going through the night.  Banana is also a good carb to keep him going during the day.

I'm not saying that this will necessarily help with the sleep...but it's a useful thing to do anyway...and who knows...it might help.  Other than CIO...did your Dr have anything else to say???

I did CC with Claire once - at 7 months I think.  I let her cry for 1 min and then did PD, said it's OK it's just sleepy time...then left...then let her cry for 2 mins...etc up to 15 mins.  She did sleep in the end and we did get one good night out of it...enough to give us a bit of energy to start EASY and independent sleep training.  It didn't solve any of the problems for me......that came with all the things I found out about on this website after doing a lot of research.  

Keep posting...tell me what happens tomorrow (your today??)...