I just stared for awhile at a blinking cursor on a blank screen trying to think of a witty title for this post, but my glazed over eyes and foggy brain couldn’t think of a damn thing. Shit you guys, I need help.
Stella has never been an amazing sleeper, but she was never a shitty one either. The average m.o. around here for the vast majority of her life has been 9pm bed, 1am feeding, 5am feeding, 7/8am up for the day. Not bad. She would take a quick 20/30 minute nap in the early evening around 6:30 usually (as well as 2-3 naps during the day), and Charlie and I liked having a little time to hang out with her after work/before bed. Also, I honestly had no problem with two night nursing sessions – they’re done in 10-15 minutes and we were both conked back out quickly. I was hoping that as she got older, she would start dropping the 1am feeding (which she has randomly done), but in the meantime, I wasn’t too concerned.
But. BUT. That time seems like a dream to me now. I was chalking it up to teething, but it is not getting better, and I feel like I am falling apart at the seams. I need help.
The last couple of weeks are looking more like this…
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8:15/8:30 – Start usual bedtime routine. Bath (2-3x/week), PJs, book, nurse, sing, bed. More often than not, I end up having to nurse again after singing to get her to the “drowsy but awake” state to successfully transfer her to her crib. How the hell do you put babies down without nursing them immediately prior? Stella gets MAD, arches her back, kicks her feet, and howls if I don’t. Definitely not drowsy but awake.
9:00 – She’s asleep…. though lately, it will sometimes takes up to an hour of rocking to get her to sleep. Other nights, she’s out at 9pm like clockwork.
11:00 – Wake up crying hysterically. (If it’s talking/crying, I leave her in her crib for awhile, but without fail, it escalates into hysterical crying, so I end up going to get her.) Sometimes I can rock her back to sleep, sometimes it requires the boob. Child does not like pacifiers, and I know she’s not needing to eat at this point, so it makes me feel like a human pacifier.
Every 45 minutes from 11pm-6am – REPEAT the section above. Seriously. She is sleeping WORSE than she slept as a newborn.
6:15 – Dad comes in to say goodbye, she usually is in our bed at this point because of the horrid preceding 7 hrs so she stirs and wakes up. I nurse her quickly in bed, then I get up and get ready for my day and she sleeps until 8am.
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A few quick background notes:
*She isn’t swaddled anymore. She can break out of them, plus she likes having her arms up by her head when she sleeps. The problem is that I think it’s harder for her to get BACK to sleep when she wakes up then.
*She isn’t sleeping in the swing anymore. I think that was also helping her to get BACK to sleep when she woke up before. She is just too big now without strapping her in, and I am not bothering to do that in the middle of the night.
*She cut 1 tooth last week and has another one working it’s way through.
*She has been fairly constipated lately (going 2/3 days without poops sometimes).
*The humidifier is running on med-high all night for white noise, which was definitely helping when we first switched from our room to the crib, but lately doesn’t seem to make a difference.
I have NO idea what to do to fix this. I know that I need to teach Stella how to fall asleep on her own (check out this awesome sleep resource), I just seem to suck at teaching that particular lesson. I just read this on her blog, and about cried because THIS IS MY LIFE.
But most importantly, if you haven’t gotten your baby to fall asleep on her own by 6-9 months you are likely to find that your baby who was waking up 2-3 times a night while a newborn has turned into a 6 month old who now wakes up every 45 minutes all night long and if this continues you will willingly shove bamboo shoots up your own fingernails because this would be preferable to another long night of waking up every 45 minutes.
So there it is. I need help. I need advice. I’m not (quite) ready for CIO, but in the meantime, I’d love to hear your experiences/wisdom on how in the world you got your kid to fall asleep on his/her own.
This extremely sleep deprived Momma thanks you.
My Mom took this of us two months ago, back when I thought I knew what tired was.
Um, yeah, so I’ve been actually READING, not skimming this section of that websiteI mentioned above. F*** why didn’t I work harder on this 3 months ago? *sigh* Still, any ideas from y’all would be much appreciated.
