let's commiserate about night time

[Enudely]

my dd is 6 weeks old and the past three nights in a row he has barely slept at all!
Last night he was basically up from 1-4 a.m, then he woke up at 5 for the day, happy as a clam. I'm wondering if it's because I had him in the Moby wrap pretty much all day and he slept most of the day. I think I'm going to try and keep him up a little today. It's so much easier to just wear him all day with a 3 year old and house chores to take care of though.

He also gets really gassy at night. Do I have to do an elimination diet or something?

Commiserate or give me advice! tia

[Mal85]

We've been going through this, as well. Owyn is just over 5 weeks old and many times just doesn't want to sleep at night. She's not crying or fussy most of the time, she just wants to stay awake. I have been trying to keep her awake a little more during the day and that seems to help. But there are some days she'll be awake most of the day with little cat naps, but is still up all night. I've stopped trying to figure out a pattern, it's different everyday. I'm just getting myself on a routine leading up to bedtime and hoping that if I keep it consistent, it will become her bedtime routine as well.

One thing I started doing was to give her a bath a night just before her bedtime nursing session. After she takes a bath, she usually nurses longer and sleeps almost immediately. The bath seems to wear her out. This doesn't work every night, but it does seem to be helping.

[Everrgreen]

Oh I so hear you. I don't remember the last time he slept for 3 hours in a row (it has happened just not in a while). I don't think I would care so much, but I've seen posts from other moms with babies sleeping thru the night, or sleeping for 4 or 5 hours in a row and I'm sooo jealous. I feel like maybe I'm missing something or doing something wrong. I need some sleep

[Enudely]

to top it all off, my THREE year old still wakes me up several times a night.

[monkaha]

oh yeah. it wouldn't be so bad if we could nurse laying down. but latch issues and gassiness/spitup make it better to be upright. YAWN!! any time i stand/sit still for more than a minute, i drift off. makes doing microbiology homework really hard!

[Nillarilla]

Delia has been sleeping really well but now she's got a cold ugh!!! She can't breath and keeps choking and gagging on snot. She's not eating well either. otherwise I have been getting some good stretches.
I read the baby whisperer when my son was about 6 months old and not sleeping and wanting to nurse all night. I went back to work at that point and needed something to change.
I still wanted to AP but I also wanted to be sane and safe at work (I'm a nurse and was working on a critical care step down unit).

Basically the book taught me how to 'read' my son and his signals. I didn't know that babies get more wound up and act less tired when they hit overtired. We had stopped swaddling and this book convinced me to start again to prevent ds from hitting himself in the face and waking himself up. It taught me about the cycles of sleep and how to watch for the cues. It also helped me start a routine, not a schedule but a routine. It helped me get longer naps out of him also and helped me to understand why he sometimes catnapped all day. It also helped me to judge approximately how long he could tolerate being awake and guess when he would need a nap.
The gist of it is based on an acronym EASY Eat Awake Sleep You time. Based on a loose 4hr timeline (3hrs before 3 months)
So the routine with dd goes something like this
745 Eat
8-930ish Awake
930-1200 nap
12 Eat
1215-130 Awake
130-4 nap
4 Eat
4-530 Awake
530-615 catnap
615 sometimes eat but usually bath
7 night diaper, swaddle
715 nurse and then rock to sleep
and then you are supposed to do a dream feed at about 11 when you go to bed but I don't stay up that late so I skip it and she wakes between 1 and 3 to nurse. The book suggests laying them down drowsy and shushing and patting to sleep. I found this works when they are bit older but it's easier to just rock dd until she's out and then lay her down and pat and shush her back down if she wakes.
One of the big tips she gives is don't let them sleep longer than 3 hrs during the day because you want that stretch of sleep at night. Also to tank them up on milk i.e. cluster feed in the evening.
She also gives quite a few tips on helping babies with reflux to sleep. Sometimes our days go like this other times she hits overtired and will only sleep in 45min increments and then I know I am in for a bad night. As good daytime sleeps beget good nighttime sleeping. It helped me get my son to sleep through the night without CIO. It was a calm pleasant experience for us.

[Enudely]

nillarilla thx for your post. I'll have to come back and read it again

[Everrgreen]

I think I'm going to have to try some of your tips, nillarilla!

I kept a log last night, just for fun:

7:00 - 7:45: nursed to sleep
7:45 - 8:00: woke up immediately after nursing for a poop
8:00-8:30: rocked to sleep
8:30-9:00: slept on his own
9:00-9:15: awake
9:15-9:30: nursed to sleep
9:30-12:30: 3 hours of sleep!! (not alone though)
12:30: awake, nursed back to sleep
2:30: awake, nursed back to sleep
4:20: awake, nursed back to sleep
5:45: awake, nursed back to sleep
6:45: nursed then awake with Daddy so I could rest a bit longer

It usually takes only 10-15 minutes to nurse him back to sleep (if that, I'm really half asleep for this). Before every 'awake' he usually is squirming and grunting for a good 15 minutes, which I try to ignore hoping he won't wake up, but then he does. And if you notice, DH and I spent an hour and a half to get him to sleep on his own for half an hour :. I guess we need to work on this sleep thing!

[Mal85]

We just seem to have a hard time getting to sleep for the first time... Here is last night's events:
9:00 got a bath
9:30 nursed to sleep, immediately woke up when finished
10:30, finally rocked her to sleep
10:45 awake
11:00 rocked back to sleep
11:30 woke to nurse again
2:45 awake to eat, nursed back to sleep
5:00 awake to eat, nursed back to sleep
7:30 awake for the day

See, once we finally get down for the night, she sleeps pretty well most of the time. She hardly wakes to eat, basically nurses in her sleep and we lay back down. I just wish she would go down easier to begin with. I start my night pretty tired. Last night, she woke a little more often, we've been going at least 3 hours usually.

[Enudely]

ds sleeps best in the Moby Wrap, and since I'm taking care of big sis all day, I tend to just wear him a lot. I'll have to make sure I put him down for more "awake" time during the day.
I don't even think I could have enough wits about me to keep a log, but he definitely wakes up at least 3-4 times a night, and his big sister wakes me up at least once.
He's not a huge "nurse to sleep" kid. When dd was this age, I could just stick my boob in her mouth every time she woke up and she'd go back to sleep. lol
ds often does not want to nurse, he prefers to squeal and grunt and fuss. I probable need to change his diaper more, but I switched to sposies at night because I didn't want to change so much. Well, hopefully these babies will figure it out.
One thing I am doing is rolling into the side carred crib to take care of him at night, instead of taking him into bed with me (well, except when I do...) I wand him sleeping in his own space, right next to my bed. dd STILL wakes up and wants to snuggle with me, and as sweet as it is, I neeeeed sleeeeep!!

[PaigeC]

I feel like I've been pretty lucky with the sleep since she gets a 4 hour stretch in each night (and sometimes 6 hrs!). What helps me is she absolutely has to be swaddled! Also, getting good at side lying nursing has been a godsend. Even though she wakes to nurse a few times a night I don't feel like it is interrupting my sleep. It is worth the practice to get nursing lying down right.

My big concern is she is on my current sleep schedule - we don't go to bed until 11pm. When I go back to work in June this will not be possible. I'm struggling between enjoying my leave and getting us both ready for my return to work. I guess I'm going to be lazy until May and then start trying to move our routine back? She'll be 3 mo. then. What do you guys think?

[Everrgreen]

Originally Posted by PaigeC

I feel like I've been pretty lucky with the sleep since she gets a 4 hour stretch in each night (and sometimes 6 hrs!). What helps me is she absolutely has to be swaddled! Also, getting good at side lying nursing has been a godsend. Even though she wakes to nurse a few times a night I don't feel like it is interrupting my sleep. It is worth the practice to get nursing lying down right.

My big concern is she is on my current sleep schedule - we don't go to bed until 11pm. When I go back to work in June this will not be possible. I'm struggling between enjoying my leave and getting us both ready for my return to work. I guess I'm going to be lazy until May and then start trying to move our routine back? She'll be 3 mo. then. What do you guys think?

We are only just starting to try putting Royce to sleep at an appropriate bedtime and he's just about 3 months. And sometimes I keep him with me until I'm ready to go to bed (as you can see from my post above, he only made it half an hour on his own). Most evenings he's asleep earlier, just cuddled with me on the couch and not actually in bed. But with this being my first I'm not sure if this is good advice or not, maybe I'm messing him up

[Nillarilla]

Paige you can always move bedtime back a half an hour every couple of days a little while before you go back. The reason we have an early bedtime is I find that any later and she is overtired and a bear to put to sleep. She will fight sleep and then wake up immediately after being put down because we missed the sleep window. Plus I find I need that me time to get some stuff done that I can't get done with my 3 yr old awake. I think 3 months is a good time to start routine. After 6 months I found ds a lot harder to change his habits.
My suggestion is read the baby whisperer and take the good stuff and practical tips out of it and ignore the rest of it. For example there's some stuff in it about how many ounces a baby needs to eat in a day etc. I just ignored this stuff but I do 'tank up' the baby in the evenings so she will sleep longer as this makes sense. She doesn't really advocate cosleeping but she does not believe in CIO. In one story the baby was scared to sleep alone in his crib and the parents wanted him to sleep there after they had been cosleeping for 9 months. She suggested sidecarring the crib and then putting the rail up and then moving the crib and bed apart and then moving the crib out of the room. I like that she has practical suggestions that are nontraumatizing and uses small steps.

[monkaha]

Anthony actually latched on laying down! In the dark! The tides are turning! Please let this not be a fluke.....