I NEED this child to sleep! (5.5 m old) - Page 4

[Just1More]

I agree to try not eating gluten. It very much bothered ds, and his sleep would be awful. I was SO tired.

[hakeber]

Originally Posted by Friendlee

Well, I guess it doesn't make sense to me. It seems that mother nature wouldn't put a mother in a position where she needs lots of energy for vigilance and nutrition for nursing, but also saddle her with the least amount of sleep she'll ever get in her life. So many other things about pregnancy, birth and motherhood seem to be designed just right so that you can grow, birth and nurture your lo...but this, this doesn't make sense to me.

Well, for starters I think humans are designed to be social creatures, and live in large family units, so when the baby cries, incessantly there would be a mother, a sister, a grandmother, a wet-nurse to pass the baby over to for a period of time until the mother could heal properly, and furthermore until the child could sleep properly. This whole thing about leaving mom from day one or two to totally hack it on her own is relatively new on the evolutionary front. It's not really something that makes sense to me either.

For example, when I flew home to see my family from Argentina to the US it took about two days total and ds slept for almost NONE of it, so neither did I. By the time I arrived I was the walking dead, and also stressed because I had never heard my little boy cry himself hoarse before. So when I got home to my parents' house we went and laid down and when DS woke up my sister nursed him so I could sleep again. This was not that unusual 100 years ago. We have gotten squeamish and weird about these sorts of things, and then we wonder why it's so hard.

*I wait 4 hours because she doesn't start showing signs of hunger until 4 hours into it and I've been warned against creating a "snacker". Also, she can easily wait 4 hours during the day before she seems hungry, but I do nurse on demand and she will grab at my boobs every 2-3 hours and so we nurse quite frequently during the day..

One time, I swaddled her and when I went back in she was face down. It REALLY scared me. She was pretty young, maybe a month old. But she must have been really thrashing and trying to get out of the swaddle, I guess.

So I've avoided it because it seemed to make things worse.

I can only say that DS started off a bad sleeper. He woke up every hour or so, and cat napped etc, until...

A) we learned to swaddle PROPERLY. A good swaddle should not allow the freedom of flipping...there is no WAY they could flip over in the basinette if swaddled as tightly as it should be and for extra assurance, use a sleep positioning pillow to make sure. My DS was swaddled regularly through 7 months when we began to wean slowly.

B) we found a large round tipped pacifier that rarely popped out of his mouth (though he spat it out at 6.5 months and never wanted it again, so it might be late to start that)

C) we got a REALLY loud white noise maker...for DS it was a hairdryer on the cool setting on high. With DD we use the radio on static on full volume. so eliminates the need to shshsshshshsh because it's on full time all night and some naps. (DS needed this sleep aid the longest. he didn't stop needing it until he was over a year and he still sleeps better with some sort of white noise)

D) I started to block feed. During the day between naps (which also got longer) he ate every hour or two for 15 minutes on each side, and at night before bedtime he ate almost constantly for the last 2 hours, drifiting off for a few seconds and the minute I would try to detach he'd suckle again.

With all these things he went to waking up almost constantly to to sleeping 5 hour stretches then by 3 months he was STTN and by a year he was sleeping through the evening and the night

Originally Posted by alfabetsoup

And. When she wakes up, does she cry? Is she fully awake? Both my girls (even now at 3y10m and 20mo) cry out, laugh, talk etc in their sleep. I always count to 10 before I get up--never leave them to cry but if they're sleeping/not fully awake/going to put themselves back to sleep I'm not going to interfere.

This is important too. With dd I try to leave her for a few seconds because it usually is just her resettling noise and when I tried to to pick her up she would get startled and FREAK out! Now I leave her until I see her eyes are open and looking for me.


I would also say to hang with a bedtime until later on in your kid's life. So long as you both get 6-8 hours solid restfulness at one point in the day does it really matter when that is?

FWIW DD has been a great sleeper, too, and I do think in part it is because as SOON as I noticed signs of her waking up every hour or less, I added a sleep aid. First it was swaddling, then it was the white noise, now she gets a paci when she needs to resettle for a wee while, and she too eats every hour or so (though only one boob at a time) drifts off in my arms and then wakes for the other side 30 minutes later. If not forced awake to take DS to school she will wake up for the day around 9am, have one long nap midday (2-3 hours) in her stroller, so I can jiggle her with my foot if she stirs and not have to stop what I am doing (DS needed the same for naps, or to be worn in the sling while I did stuff, but by 5.5 months was too heavy to wear while doing stuff around the house so the stroller thing was the best), and drift off around 6:30 or 7pm in her stroller while I have dinner (the stove's exhaust fan puts her out everytime) and then she may wake up for an hour around 10 or 11, but usually I have to wake her up, potty her, change her nappy if it's wet, swaddle her like a little mummy, and then nurse her down and she doesn't usually wake up until 6am when I can nurse her back down for another two or three hours. FWIW, Once we learned what worked to help DS sleep, he always woke up smiling and in a good mood, and DD always wakes up happy as can be.

The swaddle we use now is two pillow cases split open on one side, the first is wrapped in the double swaddle style from You tube (thanks to whoever posted that it's AWESOME!) to pin the arms, then a regular swaddle on top of that, and then I have a wide scarf that I tie around her arms to secure the swaddle so her arms are absolutely immobile, I can squeeze one finger between her and the tied scarf. She was unsure at first, really made a horrible face at me the first time, but now she absolutely loves it now. I remember the first time I did it to DS, well actually I made DH do it, because I was sure DS would hate it and he would hate ME forever. But the tighter it was the more relaxed and happy he became.

As soon as I turn on that radio static at night and lay her in the middle of the first swaddle she has a good pre-swaddle stretch and smiles from ear to ear because she knows what's coming -- sweet slumber.

Now, I know I am lucky, I KNOW that there are moms who do all those things and it doesn't work and their kids just refuse to sleep, but I also think babies NEED certain elements to sleep soundly and they need to be combined and they need to be consistent. If those sleep aids don't work, I would definitely take your DD to an allergist to see if they can help you figure out what is wrong. Maybe there's something in the crib or your bed that irritates her nostrils, maybe she is allergic to dander, or dust, or there is mold spores in the house. I never knew for sure, but when ds was six months we had a terrible rain storm and the water got into the structure of the house. A few months later he and I both started sneezing a lot and he would wake up unable to breath well and really upset, and I realized there was something we were both allergic to in his room and the living room...everywhere else we were fine. so I got an electric heater and baked his room and the living room and opened the shutters all day for the sun to try and kill whatever was living in those rooms. It totally went away after that.

It's true that this will pass. And in retrospect years down the road these first years will feel like a blip, but at this moment you must feel desperate and dazed and sick. I hope you get more rest soon.

[Friendlee]

Oh my gosh, Rebekah, I started reading and thought of a response...and then kept reading and reading and reading. I had too many responses swirling around in my head and just lost track. A lot of good stuff in your post.

So, to be totally inarticulate and undetailed, I just want to at least respond by saying, thank you very much for responding so thoughtfully and thoroughly. I've taken ALL of the information and opinions from this thread and made changes and plans for the sleep situation. This is why I love MDC. I get to benefit from the experience and insight of ALL you cool chicks!

Thanks!

[hakeber]

Good luck! Let us know how it works out.