Experienced advice for a sleepy mama, please!

[carmen358]

I am finally going to try some sort of plan thingy to get DD to sleep better. I have been way too tired to try anything "formal" but for some reason the sleep deprivation is really starting to get to me and for the first time I'm having trouble staying awake during the day. So, I'm going to fiddle around with a few "techniques" and try and get our family some extra sleep :)

I have a few questions and I'm hoping to draw on all your experiences!

1. I've read lots of advice about having your DP/DH soothe during the night, rather than nursing back to sleep. This has NEVER worked for us since DD was about 4 months old. We co-sleep btw. Is this something that you have had to work towards or does it sometimes just not work?
2. I've been trying to nurse her to drowsy and then gently unlatch her (a la Pantley of NCSS) but after about 10 times I just give up. Does it take longer? I don't even try to put her down (I nurse her on my lap sitting in bed)...just unlatch. Does this take a long time to learn?
3. DD gets SO crazy if I refuse to nurse her and try to cuddle her, etc. I have been trying to offer cuddles before nursing every time and sometimes it does actually work.  However, when it doesn't (about 90% of the time), she just turns into a complete maniac and I feel so bad for her that I just end up nursing her asleep again. Any suggestions on different techniques to soothe her instead of nursing...I'd like to keep trying. She has never rocked/bounced/sang/etc. to sleep...always nursed. If I try and pick her up she pushes me away.

[thedenverduo]

Ds definitely went through a phase where Daddy was just not cutting it and he needed Mommy.  More recently he has done great with Dad putting him down for a nap or back to sleep in the middle of the night, but it was a long time coming (DS is 18 months).

It took ds at least a couple months to stop panicking when I would unlatch him.  I think once he learned that if he was really still needing comfort/food I would nurse him some more he was more okay with it.  I can't sleep and nurse at the same time and he would have preferred to be latched on all night.

Ds also just went berserk if I tried to put him to sleep without nursing.  Once we started going for longer periods without nursing he calmed down quite a bit.  He'll still whine a little sometimes, but not enough to really wake up.

It sounds like she really wants to nurse, and that nursing to sleep isn't really the issue, the issue is that she wants to nurse to sleep 15 times a night.  Have you tried moving her to a separate sleep surface in your room?  Like a crib or cosleeper?  Is it possible that she is just a really light sleeper?  Do you have some kind of white noise?  I have been in the depths of sleep deprivation for 18 months and feel like I am just now surfacing so I totally feel your pain.  Just go with your gut and remember that this too shall pass!

[carmen358]

Thanks for the suggestions. We do have a crib in our room...I haven't put her in it for months though. She usually just wakes up after 30 minutes and then won't go down in it again that night. I get lazy being so tired so I don't have the energy to keep trying. I should though...

Do you think white noise would help her? I thought that was more of a younger baby thing..?

Any other suggestions?

I'm absolutely horrified that I forgot to buckle up DD's carseat belt today when leaving in the morning, I am totally not a forgetful person...at all....completely out of character for me. I burst into tears when I noticed (several blocks away) and I'm just so sick about how tired I am and the effects it's having on my day to day life :(

[tryingfortwo]

I don't have any suggestions, but I did want to say that I think your LO is just over a year, is that correct?  For us, the absolute worst time with sleep was when those 1-year molars cut through - it last from about 13-16 months for us, and it consisted of several night wakings and difficulty getting him back to sleep.  However, once they cut through, we got back to a nice routine of just one waking a night.  So I'm not sure if that has any relevance to your situation, but I did want to say that if your LO is waking more often now than she was before, or is waking up more upset, it could be teething related, and hopefully it will get better on it's own soon.  I know it doesn't help you get more sleep now, but for me, once I could attribute it to teething, it seemed a little easier to deal with, as I knew there wasn't something else I could be doing, you know? 

To be honest, I think a good portion of DS's night wakings were related to teething. It wasn't until his 2-year molars cut through when he was about 2.5 years old that he consistently started STTN.  I was still nursing him to sleep, co-sleeping, all of that, so no other changes except his last teeth were through.  Of course, at that point he was only waking once a night most of the time, so it wasn't nearly as hard to deal with as the multiple wakings (just to give you some hope!)  I ended up nursing him until he was 3.5, and we still co-sleep, so we really didn't have to do anything formal in order to achieve a full-night's sleep - just wait for those darn teeth to finish coming through!

Good luck, mama!

[carmen358]

She does have a really hard time with teething. And yes, the poor sleep did start around the same time as the 2nd set came in (she got her first at 6 months exactly). She slept really well before that. 5-6 hours stretches! She is almost 14 months and already has the first 4 molars. Her top canines are in too and it looks like the bottom canines are breaking through any day now. I often felt/feel like it's teething but.....teething for 7 months? Really? I'm curious to see what happens after these canines break through....I'm also really thinking her 2nd set of molars won't be far behind as she has had her finger in her mouth near the back sides a lot lately. We've tried advil at night though and it doesn't seem to really help the wake ups....it has helped the waking up screaming once but we are reluctant to keep giving it to her (we've only given it to her maybe 4 times when she had a fever and for teething as I mentioned).

I hope it gets better after her teeth come in. Thanks for the support :)