Author Topic: I cant take anymore  (Read 1349 times)

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Offline sherilee

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I cant take anymore
« on: September 10, 2005, 14:38:17 pm »
My son goes down after a fight at 8.30pm and sleeps till 12.30. Then we are up around 4-6 times between then and 7am. I cant take anymore of this sleep disruption its making me depressed and tearfull. He is 8 weeks on Monday.

He wakes up, takes abpout 5 mins feed and I cant wake him to take anymore than that no matter what I try. He then goes back to sleep and an hour later is up again. He also poos every hour so we are constantly changing him.

Please help.

Offline Caroline-Charlies Mummy

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I cant take anymore
« Reply #1 on: September 10, 2005, 14:59:36 pm »
Oh sweetie, don't worry, for 8 weeks old, you sound like you're doing a great job.

Do us a favour, will you post your schedule for the day, so we can see if we can help (he's only tiny, so don't worry if it's not a hard and fast schedule - just what he generally does most days). We will definitely try and help. Also, is he bottle or breast fed? Any info you can give us will help.

BTW, do you feel that you are depressed, or is it just the tiredness? My dp was worried I had Post Natal Depression at one point, but when I was getting more sleep (when ds got older), it seemed to go away, so it's easy to confuse. If you are concerned, check out the PND forum here, and you should really talk to someone, be it a family member, your health visitor, or your doctor.

Hang in there,
Caroline xx
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Offline sherilee

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I cant take anymore
« Reply #2 on: September 10, 2005, 15:16:25 pm »
Hi

Thanks for replying. A typical day goes something like this

8am feed for 10 mins (that is all he takes in one go and is breast fed)

9/9.30 am 30min nap

and then feed every 2-2.5 hours with the naps every 2 hours in between(he wont sleep for longer than 30 mins at a time no matter what I do).

He has a bath at around 6.30 and then no matter when he feeds he wont sleep till 8.30 but has a good 3.5 - 4 hours and then it all goes wrong!

wakes at 12.30, asleep by 1am
wakes at 3am asleep by 3.30
and then roughly wakes every hour for about 10-20mins until I put him in bed with me at 6ish and then sleeps till 8 - 8.30

Hope thats detailed enough. also he only sleeps after being fed or sucking a dummy. Even when really tired he still has to have the dummy to drop off and cries if it comes out beofre he is properly asleep.

As for the pnd, I think it may just be the sleep or lack of it but I will speak to the doc if gets worse.

Offline Caroline-Charlies Mummy

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« Reply #3 on: September 11, 2005, 10:47:09 am »
Hello thanks for the extra info. I think I can suggest a few things, and hope that there are some other ladies out there who can chip in too.

First off, I just want to say that you are doing fine. You sound like you are at exactly the same point I was when my lo was 8 weeks, so, don't despair, it does get better.

Do you have Tracy's 1st book, or access to a copy? If not, it may be an idea to have a good browse around these forums as there's some great advice here.

I'm no great expert, but I'm going to tell you what I did when I was at the point you were, and it seemed to work for us, so I hope it helps. The first thing I did was to keep a log of Charlie's day. I thought we were living in choas, and the idea of a routine was just something other people did! I kept a log for about 2 weeks of when he slept, when he ate, what activities he did, even his BMs. Slowly, a pattern did emerge that I hadn't noticed before, and this gave me a foundation to work on. I then put him on the EASY (Eat Activity Sleep You - in that order) routine, which I think would really help you.

It took a while to teach him to go to sleep on his own, without feeding to sleep, but the benefits were well worth it. To get him to sleep, I established a naptime routine (nappy change, swaddle, a song, cuddle, then into crib awake), then used sssh/pat to sleep.

By gradually increasing his awake times (age appropriate), it is possible to increase his naptimes. Once you have established that he can go to sleep on his own (without using boob), and you know that he's had enough to eat, you can extend naptimes by going in and using sssh/pat to get him back to sleep again when he wakes. I'm still having a dummy problem, btw, so if you can get rid of it now, it may help in the future, but don't panic if you can't.

I hope this helps, and please post again if you have any questions.
BTW, having it written down makes it sound easy, believe me it's not, and I've wanted to give up several times (usually when he will not sleep, and I'm tired, and I know that giving him the boob would be much easier :roll: ). We still haven't ironed out all our problems, but it's much easier now, so I think it's worth persuing.

Caroline
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"Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at de sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground." -- Zora Neale Hurston

Offline Katet

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I cant take anymore
« Reply #4 on: September 12, 2005, 02:47:13 am »
Sherilee,
Babies under 3mo are hard work & you are doing well, tiredness is killer & I remember being there with my first ds.

I think part of the problem is you are feeding your lo too often.
How big is he?
because unless he was a premi baby by 8weeks old he should be feeding every 3 hours if you want to get a good feed into him & that should also help with the 30min naps. What has happened is he is snacking & so wakes up hungry & wants to feed, then gets tired & the cycle goes from there & he is stocked up just enough to get a 4 hour cycle at night but not much more.
 You need to try to extend the time between feeds to 3 hours, even if to start with you need to do something like EASASE to get him through to the next feed.
HTH
dc1 July 03, dc2 May 05