Yes, it's another post about Baby E's sleeping and eating habits
It's amazing how much difference sleep, or the lack of it, makes. Last week we had a few nights in a row during which Baby E. woke only 2-3 times per night, going right back to sleep afterwards.
On Thursday I felt great. The sun was shining, I was relatively rested, recovering from being sick, and feeling pretty good otherwise. Life was good, everything was fabulous, and I was bubbling over. I had so much more patience and playfulness in my interactions with the kids, and we even got some much-overdue yardwork and housework done. Friday morning I started out strong, but ended up exhausted and in pain halfway through the day.
Maybe one of these years I'll learn not to overdo it the first day or two I feel halfway decent--especially when I'm also recovering from an illness.
Ever since Friday night, sleep has been almost nonesistent. Baby E won't sleep--day or night. Her daytime naps have generally dropped to 20 minutes if at all, and nightime sleep (what little there is of it) is mostly in 30-60 minute segments. I've tried everything from non-stop nursing to letting her cry it out. Nothing works.
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I don't know if there's something wrong, or if she's just teething, having a growth spurt, or both. She's constantly chewing--hard--on everything, including me. Sometimes she won't nurse when she seems hungry, because she's too busy playing and doesn't want to take the time. Other times she is ravenous and is nursing so much that it feels like breaking in to feeding a newborn all over again.
I'd make a pediatrician appointment for her, but we still haven't found a good pediatrician and she's so happy and energetic whenever I'm not trying to get her to sleep that it doesn't seem anything is really wrong with her.
It's after midnight, and as usual Baby E is still going strong. Last night she sort of went to sleep around midnight, but woke every 20 minutes or so until around 2 a.m., when she fell asleep after nursing yet again. She ate again at 3 a.m. and then fell asleep in my bed until I woke at 5 a.m. and tried to move her back into her own bed.
But she wanted to sleep in my bed, not hers. Even after eating, she would have none of it. She cried and cried until I turned on a low light to change her diaper and try giving her some gas drops and Tylenol. She played and cooed for a while, but screamed and screamed if I tried to turn off any lights or get her to actually, you know, sleep. She was awake from 5 a.m. until almost 7 a.m., and the older kids woke up shortly after I got back to sleep. Thankfully, DH let me sleep for an hour or two before he left for work, since he was sick and staying home for a half-day anyway. :)
This afternoon I tried for 3 hours to get her to take a nap. She nursed, nursed some more, ate a jar of yams and some rice cereal, and nursed again, all in a 90-minute period. She was obviously exhausted, having been up for hours. She was getting fussy, rubbing her eyes, the whole bit--as she'd been doing for hours. Still she fought sleep. I tried feeding her, rocking her, letting her cry, giving her gas drops and Tylenol, trying unsuccessfully to get her to take a pacifier, sitting next to her while she cried, leaving the room while she cried, and crying with her. Finally she fell asleep while nursing. The moment I laid her down she was awake and crying again.
Right now she's been nursing for about 45 minutes and is falling asleep, but if I try to stop feeding her she screams like she's being murdered. Her erratic eating is really messing up my milk supply. She'll refuse to nurse during the day until I'm engorged, and then she'll get upset because the milk is flowing so fast and will stop nursing after only a few minutes. Besides, playing and laughing is so much more fun. Then in the late afternoon or evening she'll want to nurse constantly for several hours and get upset that there's not more milk.
She's not nursing enough for the first half of the day to keep up the milk supply, then she nurses more in the afternoon and by evening I'm so exhausted I probably wouldn't be making much milk anyway. Then she wants to eat like crazy.
I don't know what to do, but surely this can't go on indefinitely.
DH and I spent our Valentine's Day evening clearing out space in the baby's room to be able to move the crib in there. We weren't able to move it tonight, but at least there's space in the baby's room so that I can go in there to lie down while she's wide awake playing or crying. We'll move the crib tomorrow.
When DH is over being sick (and thus snoring more than usual) we'll be able to try actually sleeping in the same room again. He's been sleeping in the playroom for weeks now, because Baby E and I sleep even less when he's in the room than we do when he's not, and every minute of sleep counts when you're counting the chunks of sleep in minutes instead of hours.
Tonight I don't plan to spend hours lying on the bed next to her covering my ears and singing "Hush little baby, don't say a word . . . Momma's gonna show you a mockingbird" over and over again while the baby screams. Several hours of that last night and this afternoon was plenty for a 24-hour time period.
On Thursday I felt great. The sun was shining, I was relatively rested, recovering from being sick, and feeling pretty good otherwise. Life was good, everything was fabulous, and I was bubbling over. I had so much more patience and playfulness in my interactions with the kids, and we even got some much-overdue yardwork and housework done. Friday morning I started out strong, but ended up exhausted and in pain halfway through the day.
Maybe one of these years I'll learn not to overdo it the first day or two I feel halfway decent--especially when I'm also recovering from an illness.
Ever since Friday night, sleep has been almost nonesistent. Baby E won't sleep--day or night. Her daytime naps have generally dropped to 20 minutes if at all, and nightime sleep (what little there is of it) is mostly in 30-60 minute segments. I've tried everything from non-stop nursing to letting her cry it out. Nothing works.
#######################################3
I don't know if there's something wrong, or if she's just teething, having a growth spurt, or both. She's constantly chewing--hard--on everything, including me. Sometimes she won't nurse when she seems hungry, because she's too busy playing and doesn't want to take the time. Other times she is ravenous and is nursing so much that it feels like breaking in to feeding a newborn all over again.
I'd make a pediatrician appointment for her, but we still haven't found a good pediatrician and she's so happy and energetic whenever I'm not trying to get her to sleep that it doesn't seem anything is really wrong with her.
It's after midnight, and as usual Baby E is still going strong. Last night she sort of went to sleep around midnight, but woke every 20 minutes or so until around 2 a.m., when she fell asleep after nursing yet again. She ate again at 3 a.m. and then fell asleep in my bed until I woke at 5 a.m. and tried to move her back into her own bed.
But she wanted to sleep in my bed, not hers. Even after eating, she would have none of it. She cried and cried until I turned on a low light to change her diaper and try giving her some gas drops and Tylenol. She played and cooed for a while, but screamed and screamed if I tried to turn off any lights or get her to actually, you know, sleep. She was awake from 5 a.m. until almost 7 a.m., and the older kids woke up shortly after I got back to sleep. Thankfully, DH let me sleep for an hour or two before he left for work, since he was sick and staying home for a half-day anyway. :)
This afternoon I tried for 3 hours to get her to take a nap. She nursed, nursed some more, ate a jar of yams and some rice cereal, and nursed again, all in a 90-minute period. She was obviously exhausted, having been up for hours. She was getting fussy, rubbing her eyes, the whole bit--as she'd been doing for hours. Still she fought sleep. I tried feeding her, rocking her, letting her cry, giving her gas drops and Tylenol, trying unsuccessfully to get her to take a pacifier, sitting next to her while she cried, leaving the room while she cried, and crying with her. Finally she fell asleep while nursing. The moment I laid her down she was awake and crying again.
Right now she's been nursing for about 45 minutes and is falling asleep, but if I try to stop feeding her she screams like she's being murdered. Her erratic eating is really messing up my milk supply. She'll refuse to nurse during the day until I'm engorged, and then she'll get upset because the milk is flowing so fast and will stop nursing after only a few minutes. Besides, playing and laughing is so much more fun. Then in the late afternoon or evening she'll want to nurse constantly for several hours and get upset that there's not more milk.
She's not nursing enough for the first half of the day to keep up the milk supply, then she nurses more in the afternoon and by evening I'm so exhausted I probably wouldn't be making much milk anyway. Then she wants to eat like crazy.
I don't know what to do, but surely this can't go on indefinitely.
DH and I spent our Valentine's Day evening clearing out space in the baby's room to be able to move the crib in there. We weren't able to move it tonight, but at least there's space in the baby's room so that I can go in there to lie down while she's wide awake playing or crying. We'll move the crib tomorrow.
When DH is over being sick (and thus snoring more than usual) we'll be able to try actually sleeping in the same room again. He's been sleeping in the playroom for weeks now, because Baby E and I sleep even less when he's in the room than we do when he's not, and every minute of sleep counts when you're counting the chunks of sleep in minutes instead of hours.
Tonight I don't plan to spend hours lying on the bed next to her covering my ears and singing "Hush little baby, don't say a word . . . Momma's gonna show you a mockingbird" over and over again while the baby screams. Several hours of that last night and this afternoon was plenty for a 24-hour time period.
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Posted by purple_kangaroo at 1:13 AM[Permanent link]
2 Comments:
We will keep you in our prayers. I hope you will find the reason for Baby E's cracy sleeping habits. It sounds exausting just to read about it. Our youngest one is not a good sleeper and wakes up at least once/hour every night to scream. She still wants to nurse 3-4 times/night and if I don't nurse her she screams for an hour or longer until she eventually falls back to sleep for a while. She is 10 months now and I am exhausted. I've been letting her scream now every night hoping that at some point she will do better. I hope Baby E will fall into a normal sleeping pattern soon.
Hi, B! I'm so sorry to hear that you're dealing with difficult sleep issues, too. I hope something works for you soon.
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