Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

[Laurienna]

Please remind me why I have a third child. Actually remind me why I have children at all?
DD2 is not an easy child for several reasons but there is only one that actually bugs me to the point of being angry: she wakes up and stays up in the middle of the night for up to 3 hours. She has done this on and off since she was 5 months old ( she is going to be 11 months in 3 days), but it has been 2 weeks that she has been doing it most nights. She can wake up at 1,2,3,4 or 5 am, there isn't a set time that she does this. She wakes up whether we are in bed with her or not ( we co sleep), it doesn't matter when she took a nap and how long it lasted. Her level of activity during the day doesn't matter either (she is a very active child and always has been). Sometimes it seems like she finds a great rhythm for a few days, this one was the one that seems to be working the best for her: wakes up around 7am, nap at 11:30am and down for the night at 8:30. But she'll only do it for 3-4 days and then will start a horrible cycle like last night when she fell asleep at 8:45pm, woke up at 3:15am and stayed up until 5:45am, then up for the day at 9 am. Now everything is pushed back again and tonight will be horrible. This horrible pattern has been going on for 2 weeks now.
In addition she wakes up multiple times before and after staying up in the middle of the night (I consider normal for a baby to wake multiple times a night by the way and I can deal ok with it as long as she goes back to sleep after nursing).
We have reached the point of exhaustion. DH admitted yesterday that he was nodding at the wheel and I'm so sleep deprived that I feel ill.
And we don't know what else to do. We tire her out during the day, tried moving her bedtime to an earlier and a later hour, have a routine...She actually goes to sleep very easily for naps and bedtime but starting 30mns after she is down she'll start waking up (only at bedtime, for naps she can sleep sometimes for 3.5 hours without waking up). She'll wake up and nurse back to sleep several times and then at some point will decide to stay up.
I should add that she is very happy when she wakes up and wants to play.

Any thoughts? Other people have been in the same boat? The last 3 nights I have gotten angry with her and I really don't want to feel like this anymore. But I'm not superhuman either.

[lurve]

no advice except my DD went through a two month stretch of staying awake for about three hours in the middle of the night. she will almost be three and still does it on occassion though now she can do five hour stretches. yeah!!! lots of hugs!

[Shanny2032]

Wow, I could have written this post. I don't know if it makes you feel any better but I hear that misery really does love company. My only saving graces are that a)I only have 1, b)I am single and most of all c)she does not do it every night. I do notice that many times an illness follows these nights. I don't know if it is related since like you said she is just happy and wants to play when she wakes up! Please let me know if you find something that works!

[Curlyfry7]

Hugs mama. My DS did that as well down to the great nap but terrible night sleep)- same thing as you have found- no reason or pattern for it at all. I thought I was going to die. It went on for about a year (not every night but at LEAST 3 nights a week.) Looking back I can only guess it was developmental- his little brain was just going so fast. Even now at 3 he has a hard time falling asleep unless he's exhausted. We only had him at the time but for the 2nd half of it I was pregnant. We didn't co-sleep at the time, but he had a queen sized mattress on the floor for his bed and I (or sometimes DH if I was at the end of my rope) would go in and lay down with him. I would try to doze while DS just crawled all over me, until he finally would conk out. Sometimes he cried no matter what I did, but I was right there with him the whole time.

And for us the craziest thing is that we had a second child- who also isn't the greatest sleeper but hasn't started doing THIS exact thing yet-crossing fingers she won't.

[savyjoel]

We have babies because we love being a mom!!! That means loss of lots of things we need and want. My son does this too sometimes. When I get really tired I find myself getting a bit snappy with him. I hate it when I do that just as I'm sure you do too. The only advice I have is to maybe take advantage of those longs naps and try to rest then. I always have to tell myself that this will not last forever--they grow fast and before long they will be adults. Good luck to all of us with middle of the night wake-up calls.

[gbutterflykissesm]

My DS seems to change his sleeping patterns weekly. One week we're good, the next we're having similar issues to you. One week he does great in bed, nursing to sleep, the next week it makes him scream like crazy.

We just keep experimenting and changing things up. Sometimes I go into the guest room and lay with him there, sometimes I try putting him in his crib and patting his back, sometimes I bounce with him in the carrier, sometimes he sleeps in the arms reach cocoon, sometimes I rock him to sleep in the rocker, then put him down in the cocoon....It just keeps changing. It's always fine for the first half of the night, and the second is all about experimenting.

What keeps me sane is A). Going to bed early: 9:30 is my usual bedtime, but I've been known to go to sleep at 7:30 if I need to and B). Trading shifts with DP. If I'm utterly exhausted, he will bring me DS to nurse and then take him and deal with the next few hours. I make sure to give him a break after a few days of doing this.

At least now my body does great on 6 hours of sleep! If I try to get the 9 hours I got before having a baby, it is waaay too much.

[Laurienna]

Thank you all for answering. Last night was slightly better because she got woken up during her nap by the plumber coming to fix something. she only stayed up an hour + woke up to nurse 4 times. So I feel a little better today and I was not angry and snappy which is definitly a relief. I read on another thread to try to get them out for a walk in the morning rather than the afternoon so we did that today.
I have a question though for all of you who have the same issue: do you let them play when they wake up or do you try to get them back to sleep for a long time by nursing, rocking and walking? DH thinks that maybe we should just let her play but it seems to me that she gets more and more excited and stays up longer if we do. But sometimes even walking and rocking won't get her back to sleep any faster. What do you do?

[lovesea]

What do you actually do when she's awake? I ask because, in the past when dd has woken, fed, pulled off and is still awake, I've just lain in bed as if asleep and let her roam around the bed for a while. It's dark and still in the room and eventually she goes back to sleep on her own. You may well be going 'DUH! Don't you think I've tried that', but I know some people have a compulsion to put baby back to sleep any which way and I know getting dd out of bed and walking, rocking etc just make her mad and upset and we end up feeling the same way

[mommy amber]

my ds (who will be 1 in 2 weeks) does this at least 3-4 times/week. he's a terrible napper and doubly terrible at night. we average one good night for every 10 days...and it's been this way since birth.
on the "what do you do with them question"...it depends on his mood (he isn't always happy during the stretches). but I tend to be a "it's the middle of the night and you're going to sleep mama"...can you tell I'm a control-freak and dh tends to be more apt to let him play-it-out. like you, we've tried everything. he does have food issues and he's a hard teether so I find myself always looking for something to blame...but ultimately, I think some kids are just wired to be night-psychos. my dd was also like this though she rarely had the long stretches, she just woke frequently for years (I sometimes have the urge to strangle my friends who have angel, sttn at 6 weeks, babies).
sorry, I know there's not much advice here...just commiseration. it's hard. REALLY hard. I find myself thinking that I don't really like my son in the middle of the night sometimes b/c I am so so sleep-deprived and then I feel that awful mama-guilt at having thought the horrible (don't get me wrong, I love my ds!). it can feel like sleep deprivation is ruining everything!
good luck!

[Curlyfry7]

For what we would do when he woke...we would try to get him to sleep at first- feeding ( he wasn't bf'd for very long) rocking, walking, etc etc but by the time he got to your DD's age or just after that, none of it worked very often, so we would let him "play it out" LOL. WE did not play- laid on the mattress with eyes closed, no reaction if climbed on, etc, but the room was baby-proofed and he would just move around the room playing/making a mess until he got tired enough to fall asleep.

Aaahhhhh....nothing like being awake from 3:30-6:30am every morning!!