Hello Everyone,
I'm new to BWing, and have been searching for advice for my 14mo DD, Vienna. I have quite the story, and I don't know where to begin, so please forgive me if I forget to mention important information- I'm quite sleep deprived:) My issues are both with feeding and sleep, but I thought I'd start here....
My daughter, Vienna, has slept through the night only a handful of times in her short life. I'm 27 weeks pregnant, and don't sleep well anyway, so my DH and I have decided to forgo sleeping together and share a two-day on, two-day off, schedule so we both can get some much needed rest.
Now I'll start from the beginning:
From the time before she was born, I wanted to exclusively breastfeed. However once she was here, I had troubles, and it took us nearly seven weeks to figure out she was not getting enough to grow. My midwives were not concerned because she was an EXTREMELY alert baby. They figured that even though she was always at the breast, she was using those calories taking in the world. She never slept for more than two hours at a time. Then I gave her a bottle at 6.5 weeks, of pumped milk, and she, for the very first time, had a contented "Milk Drunk" look and sighed. Oh My Goodness, I thought. She's been hungry this whole time.
We started to supplement with formula.
Both my husband and I also wanted to co-sleep with our children. We have good friends who did this, and I loved the philosophy of Attachment Parenting, so we tried. And tried. And tried. But everytime we rolled over, we woke her up. Then I had to nurse her back to sleep. As soon as my breast left her mouth, she'd wake up. And on went the cycle.
She was nearly 5 mo old when my chiropractor and good friend asked me, "what is more important, getting sleep or co-sleeping?" The answer, of course, was a resounding, SLEEP!
I turned to Weisbluth's, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. Not bad as far as the information about children and sleep, but definitely from the Cry It Out camp.
My heart broke as we "taught" her to fall asleep by herself. She was exhausted, and in all honesty, our presence in her room was just keeping her up. Mommy and Daddy were there to play. Not comfort. But either food, or play. She slept- in four hour chunks- but more than she was getting by being in our room. I still nursed/bottled her before sleep. Not TO sleep, but before going into the crib.
As the months went by, it would get better, it would get worse (as it always does). By her first birthday however, she was in a fairly consistant routine of only waking once, in which we'd bring her a bottle, she's down 2-3 ounces, and go right back to sleep. She has never been one to want to play in the middle of the night, just see us (she reacts the same to DH or me), get a sip of watered down formula, go right back to bed. All-in-all, awake for 15 minutes, tops. Not even my pediatrician was all that concerned at her 1 year check up. And best of all, once a week, sometimes more, she was sleeping 12 hours straight through! We thought we were on our way to consistant sleep!
Then the molars started moving.
For two months now, she has a new schedule that has DH and I frustrated and sleep deprived: She's up every four to two hours, awakens with a very steady, loud, incessant, "come get me NOW!" type of cry. From 0 to 80 in the blink of an eye. Motrin doesn't work. Homeopathics don't work. What does? Bottle (now even diluted more to 1/4 strength), momma or dada, and back to sleep. It's just more frequent.
And to top it all off, she isn't happy when she wakes up for the day. Nor have any of the molars actually popped through yet. ACK!
So, What can we do? DH and I made a plan to really taper off the bottle: 1/4 strength for four days, then limit # of ounces to two oz for four days, then decrease it to 1 oz for four days, then water. But my thought is that what if she's scared to starve again as she was when she was a newborn? She grazes through the day, too.
HELP!
Here's her (usual)daytime schedule:
630 Wakeup, gets full-strength bottle (1-3oz)
730 Breakfast
playtime
9/930 Snacktime
10/11 Nap, 1-3 oz full-strength bottle (usually about two hours long)
12/1 Wakeup, full-strength bottle (1-2oz)
1 Lunch
playtime, run errands
3/4 Snacktime
5/6 Dinner
Bathtime, Quiet play, Read book, bottle (1-3oz)
630/7 Bedtime
Lately, her overnight schedule looks like this:
11pm awake
3am awake
5am awake
630 awake for day.
From what I've read of the BW books, she is a Textbook baby, but Spirited in terms of anything sleep related.
Please help me out! We all need some much needed sleep!
Thanks soooo much in advance- and sorry this is sooo long:)
Shauna