Sleep Deprived Mamas Support Thread - Page 3

[ktmama]

alisoninparis, thanks for your success report. DH and I are doing some research and planning right now to hopefully help our darling ds get more sleep. Fortunately for us, he is a good daytime sleeper and will start the night out in his crib for a two or three hour stretch, but then insist on being in our bed (like won't sleep in his crib anymore) and has to be snuggled up to me with his head in my armpit! It's getting harder and harder for me to sleep through all the nursing, but I WOH and co-sleeping is the only way I can get even close to the sleep I need.

OTOH, a friend of mine was just diagnosed with major depression following three years of sleep deprivation with her high needs ds. So, please mamas, take care of yourselves. Prolonged sleep deprivation is unhealthy for parents and kids.

[alisoninparis]

Hi again mamas. I'm back for another report on our attempts to wean DS at night by keeping him on DH's side as much as possible. After some initial success we had a couple nights of regression, one bad enough to have me worried that this would never work (at 3 a.m., an hour after nursing, DS was screaming his head off and slapping/kicking DH for 30 minutes before we gave up and I nursed him back to sleep). But then he got better again. We're nowhere near our goal of getting him to sleep in his crib and waking max. once per night, but I feel we are slowly heading in the right direction. I never expected a quick solution anyway. Working as a team we should be able to make this happen in the next month or so, I hope. Last night he went to bed at 7 and didn't wake until about 3, when I nursed him. He woke up once or twice more and DH got him back to sleep both times by just cuddling with him. Then he woke up for the day at 7:15. Not bad!!

[crabbyowl]

Originally Posted by Jend1002

Is anyone else sick of people saying "you'll be trying to wake him up when he is a teenager" - ugh! Yes, this is just hilarious to someone who hasn't slept for more than 2 or 3 hours in a row for 16 months. I would love to wait 12 more years for sleep! I can't believe how many times I have heard this.

Yes, so frustrating! My rejoinder to that is that yes, this may be the case, but at that point I won't be structuring my day around her sleep schedule (or lack thereof).

Eleanor is wonderful during the day, but at night she can be an absolute nightmare. I'm just coming off of a week where she was up for 2.5-3 hours in the middle of the night, every night, plus getting up at least an hour before usual in the morning, plus only napping for 30-45 minutes. She slept 8 hour stretches for 3 wonderful nights when she was about 8 weeks old, but now at 16 months she's been sleeping like a newborn for well over a year. Plus, even on the rare occasions when she sleeps for 3 hours at a time during the night, toward morning (around 4:00 or so) she almost always gets up every hour until finally being up for the day at around 7:00, so I never feel even remotely rested in the morning.

My husband thinks I need to change her sleep schedule, but I don't think so. She always goes down pretty easily at naptime and bedtime, and I know she's tired at those times. Her sleep schedule isn't the problem; the problem is that she just isn't sleeping for any significant length of time!

What really had me seeing red was when my husband wasn't feeling well and got to sleep a whole 14 HOURS. Not only that, when he got up he said he was feeling tired from getting TOO MUCH sleep, and then said to me, in all seriousness, "You know the feeling?" Um, NO, actually I don't! He backpedaled pretty quickly from that one!