Author Topic: What am i doing wrong?  (Read 1774 times)

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Offline Eden's Mum

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What am i doing wrong?
« on: August 28, 2005, 13:36:51 pm »
I have noticed that sometimes as if by accident by ds2 is happy to lie on his play gym for a short time and kick about without screming the house down. This is certinaly what i want and i can only assume that it is because all his needs ahve been met. However i don't seem to be able to create this situation deliberately. I have been watching his cues and when i get him up in the morning he is headbutting my arms and latching on to anything he can. i assume this means he is hungry so i feed him. I notice a short time later that if (and i mean if) i have managed to keep him awake  to have a full feed he starts to blink slowly and yawn. I assumet his means he is tired. I put him to bed. If i am luck he goes to sleep.


what tends to happen though is that he will scream and scream. i avoid picking him up unless he is really crying properly. If he is just fussing i leave him to it. if i ahve to pick him up then i put him back before he goes to sleep.  his room is dim ish he has sleep cues set up etc. i do the same every time.

More importantly i seem to be getting all these cues wrong. I can't seem to get him content when he is awake. he screams and suggestst he is hungry again, this mightbe only half an hour after his last feed. if i give in and feed him again, he either starts to fall asleep or spits me back out again.

I have had to just put him down and leave him to scream for half an hour or so because i have ds1 and myslef to care for. I ended up today just carrying him around even to the loo which i swore i would never do.

The dinner needed fixing so i just put him downa nd left him to screm whilse i did it. ds1 has been really ill over the last week and it is not fair on him  whilst he is recovng from an operation to have this constant barrage of yelling. I thought following easy would mean his needs are met but they are not. what am i doing wrong?
Clare
Eden:

Noah:

Jude:

Offline milliesmaw

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What am i doing wrong?
« Reply #1 on: August 30, 2005, 19:02:56 pm »
Hi Clare
Just wanted to say I'm totally with you on this! Today I had a morning of sleepy cues followed by no sleep and screaming. But of course the moment I picked him up he would fall asleep. I've had to leave him screaming on a couple of occasions - I think maybe he is looking for something to soothe him but I'm not sure. Sorry not to be of more help but just to let you know that you  are not alone! Our DS's are about the same age so if you want to chat more let me know!

Jo
Jo

Mum to Millie
4th November 2003
and Benjamin
31 July 2005

Offline Noelle

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What am i doing wrong?
« Reply #2 on: September 05, 2005, 03:30:01 am »
He is most likely crying because he is still really young and doesn't know how to self sooth -he needs you to help him fall asleep.  If you could post what his "schedule" looks like right now, I'll try to help more.  :D
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Offline Katet

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What am i doing wrong?
« Reply #3 on: September 05, 2005, 03:51:36 am »
I found the 6-8 week frame with Liam to be dreadful, I thought what the ??? & Liam is a real Angel baby. I found I used to feed him & put him back for a nap, even though I felt the day had started & it should be activity time. Things improved, but I did have to spend lots of time trying to work out what was going on... not easy with a 2yo. The thing I did find was to basically put him over my shoulder if I though he was tired, sit down with the toddler & read a story & Liam would sometimes drift off or would just relax. I think it is so hit & miss in the early weeks & 5mins can truely be the difference between ready for sleep & over tired.
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Offline Eden's Mum

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What am i doing wrong?
« Reply #4 on: September 06, 2005, 18:23:14 pm »
John and Zoe's mum - I have got to say, we don't really have a schedule at the moment and it is not for want of trying. that is the thing that is winding me up so much !!!  I always attempt to make sure he goest ot bed at 7pm no matter what has happened during the day. So it goes at the moment:

6pm go up for bath
6.30pm final feed (finishing awake if i cn possibly help it!)
7pm bed
10pm dream feed
2am ish wakes for a feed
5am ish wakes for a feed

After this it is anybodys guess what will happen next. IF he goes back down after 5am then he may sleep for anything from 45minutes to 3 hours. there is no telling. It is futile trying to wake him as he will not rouse for anything at all if he doesn't want to.

he will generally stay awake for about an hour in the morning then and then want to go back to sleep. He will have been fed around 5am but he will not want feeding again until 2 and a half to 3 hours after this. fine but can be a problem if his sleep falls at this feed time. I am trying my hardest to do Eat, Activity sleep even if activity just means going upstairs to bed awake but it is not easy.

He is capable of putting himself to sleep on his own as tonight proves. He had a feed ( threw it all back up as he had trapped wind all day taht we couldn't shift for anything) went up to bed awake had a cuddle went into his cot awake nd then we didn't hear a peep.  it is however possible that we won't see him agian until 10pm or in 45 minutes time all hell could break loose again.

In general on a good day, he likes to do a shortish nap in the morning, a long one of a couple of hours in the afternoon, and depending on timings another shorter one later, but this doesn't happen on a regular basis. today he did 4 naps of an hour or less, yesterday his long nap was in the late afternoon and i had to wake him to make sure he could go to bed at the right time :roll:

I am trying with all my might not to get worked up about it.


it is very difficult not to!
Clare
Eden:

Noah:

Jude:

Offline Noelle

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What am i doing wrong?
« Reply #5 on: September 07, 2005, 02:04:24 am »
I know with John I found myself getting worked up too if it didn't go according to "schedule".  So the first thing I'll say is relax and go with the flow.  That's the best thing I've learned from my ds when it comes to EASY.  The main goal of EASY is to establish a routine and to not feed to sleep or overfeed.  Tracy's books are guidelines for what the perfect angel baby would do, if all went according to plan  :D  :wink:   From what you have described...he sounds like a typical baby for his age.  Sometimes 2 naps, sometimes 4. The main thing at his age is to try to keep his feedings somewhat consistent.  He probably goes 2-3 hours...if a nap is going into a feed time, but his previous naps were horrible, it's OK to let him go 3.5 or 4(I wouldn't let him go past 4). Then you just tweak a little bit throughout the day, so that you are still at a consistent bedtime.  When they are this young it is  lot of hit and miss.   Especially with the sleeping, as they usually can't self soothe consistently at this age.  Sleep training is difficult at this age and takes a lot of time and consistency.  If you find you don't have that with another little one running around, I would do what you have to to get him to sleep and wait until he's 4 months when you can start pu/pd and he's old enough to learn how to self soothe, control his limbs etc.

You might want to check out the nap/sleep forums too - there is a lot of great info there as well  :D

Hope this helps  - you are on the right track......it takes a couple of months to get a good consistent schedule as they are growing so much right now  :D
**Noelle**  Formerly JohnandZoesMom



Offline Deb_in_oz

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What am i doing wrong?
« Reply #6 on: September 07, 2005, 03:08:58 am »
Quote from: Eden's Mum


In general on a good day, he likes to do a shortish nap in the morning, a long one of a couple of hours in the afternoon, and depending on timings another shorter one later, but this doesn't happen on a regular basis. today he did 4 naps of an hour or less, yesterday his long nap was in the late afternoon and i had to wake him to make sure he could go to bed at the right time :roll:

I am trying with all my might not to get worked up about it.


it is very difficult not to!

olivia was like this until 3 mo old - all i knew was she usually did 1 2 hr nap at somme point in the day but never in the same slot 2 for too long - i think you have to let go of the aim of a "schedule" and just focus on making sure he is learning to settle to sleep from awake and learning more of his cues as they develop.

it sounds like you have made some progress on keepig him awake for feeds right?  and that is a good thing.

you are trying to figure him out and it is still really early and hard to do at this age for some. when he is starting to scream a half hour after his feed i woudl take that as a tired cry and see what happens when you try to settle him to go to sleep.  especially if it is afetr a mornign feed.  even when olivia started staying up 45min - 1 hr we had many morning s where a half hour after waking she wanted to go back to bed so we put her down and she went straight to sleep.  remember that they are motivated mostly by 2 things need for food and need for sleep.  so if he wakes because he is hungry in the morning it does not necessarily mean he has had enough sleep, it just means he cannot wait any longer and needs to refuel.  and then he realizes - hey i was not quite finished with that sleeping...

does that make sense?  we only started to get close to a reasonable consistent routine after 4 mo. and it is EASY because we do E / A / S but she does a 45 min nap in the morning and 1hr 30 midday and a 45min - 1hr 30 "catnap slot" I have had to accept that she is not going to conform to the Textbook yet... (although that schedule is close to what some other books suggest so it depends whose textbook you read  :wink: )
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