Hi All, I have a spirited baby, my third, who I am struggling with immensely during the day. Since I have two other children to care for, I simply cannot keep sitting in a dark room with her picking her up, putting her down, shushing her and patting her for hours. However, if I don't get her back down for her nap (I would say I have a 20% success rate), she (and all of us) become more and more miserable as the day wears on, and bedtime is a nightmare. I feel I'm at a point both mentally and physically where I just have nothing left to give.
I've been a Baby Whisperer fan since my first was born and have used her techniques with great success. Being a Type A mom, I'm pretty good at following a plan and getting everyone on track. My two boys (7 and 4) are great sleepers and have been since about 16 weeks old.
Laine has been on an EASY routine from day 1. I do a snug swaddle, a song and a pitch black room with white noise. In the first two days of our PU/PD training, I was able to get rid of the pacifier which had become a prop and also get her to fall asleep on her own. Otherwise, we are looking like this:
7 am wake and feed, play, take kids to school
8:30/45 (she has a really hard time staying awake for longer than an hour without being extremely fussy or outright screaming)
9 am wakes up, crying, I do PU/PD, shush pat while she periodically wails/screams and settles only to repeat this cycle for an hour or as long as I can take
10/10:30 am wake or just get up and eat
11:30/45/12 nap
12 (or exactly thirty mins later) wake, I spend up to an hour getting her back down
Somewhere between 1-2: eat
Somewhere between 1/1.5 hours later (you can see we are falling apart here) nap
Around 4 eat
Catnap usually in the sling while I prepare dinner, but even in the sling she's screaming
6 pm eat
6:30 pm bath, jammies, swaddle, nurse with a goal of 7 pm bedtime
8/8:30 pm I'm PU/PD Shush/Patting DYING to get her to bed
2 am-4 am night feeding
(Sometimes she'll sleep through)
PLEASE HELP! Is this developmental? What am I doing wrong?? On the verge of CIO.
Jen
