don't they? sweet? cute? lots of fun? surely incapable of launching a villainous plot to drive me slowly mad through sleep deprivation? those who have been reading here for a couple of years know that mae has never been a good sleeper. we had a blissful four months at about 19 months of age when she slept straight through the night but for some reason, that all stopped about 6 weeks after sophie was born. so between the two of them, i can probably count the number of nights i have had a solid eight hours of sleep in the last year on my two hands. soph is actually pretty good, she sleeps through 6 nights out of 7 on average but she's had six teeth coming though for about a month and had her 12 month immunisations two weeks ago which have meant - along with mae's regular hijinks - many, many chilly crawls out of bed for me, on top of many, many stupidly early mornings resulting in many, many days of grouchy mommy and overtired, bouncing-off-the-walls, harassing-the-crap-out of-her-little-sister nearly three year old. i kind of hate to bitch about this stuff here, when i don't spend nearly enough time talking about the insane cuteness of mae at three, her cleverness, great vocabulary, politeness, sweetness, general goodness but for christ's sake, she is almost THREE and i really need to think there will be an end to these broken sleeps beyond looking forward to her teen age years.
and as i type this, sophie is grizzling away in her cot, fighting her nap.
SERENITY NOW.
Oh dear lady.
ReplyDeleteBreathe, calm your mind, you can get through it.
What a hard slog. I understand the feeling of sleep deprivation. Sleep is medicine for your body & mind & when you don't get it it makes life f*^#$n hard.
Sending you lots of love & serenity.
I feel your pain. As a mum of twins + another daughter I've had my fair share of sleepless nights. I used to dream of checking into a hotel on my own, having a good nights sleep, ordering room service breakfast to eat alone in peace and then return home. Sound inviting?
ReplyDeleteMy heart goes out to you. Ada was always a good sleeper, all she needed was her blanket and a dummy, easy! But then I had Freddy, happy, sweet funny little kid who goes down to sleep like a dream. That is until I go to sleep. Almost psychic in his ability to wake screaming the moment my head hits the pillow. Waking every 45 mins to resettle your kid soon becomes ludicrous, but you don't want the whole house to wake up and the hubby has to go to work, so you go in, pat them back to sleep and wake up again an hour later to do it all again. Torture is about the only way to describe it. I gave up trying to keep track of the nights where I actually got sleep, it just depressed me.
ReplyDeleteHere's the good news, we FINALLY did it. It took 3 weeks of letting him scream it out in his room, not going in and putting in earplugs, but we did it and now he is sleeping through. I'm on week two of more than 7 hours of unbroken sleep, It was fecking hard, broke my heart and had me in tears more than once, but it was worth it for us and for Fred. I'm hoping it stays like this.
Good luck, sorry for preaching on your blog, I hope I don't sound smug.
I'll just quickly post a few things that make my son wake up early. For ages he was waking at about 4-4.30am running around the house and playing with his toys. Finally I threw an extra quilt on him and now he will mostly sleep until 6am. So the answer was he was cold. The other thing that wakes him up is thirst, or I should say too much salt. Sometimes I make pizza using the recipe from "artisan bread in five mins a day", I use half the salt it recommends but still E will wake several times a night begging for water. Much less salt next time! Also he loves olives... And vegemite. Same deal.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was badly sleep deprived (my twins are 14 months and still waking up at night - just not as much) all I though about, and practically all I talked about (and read about...) was sleep. Don't feel bad about bloging about it. There are plenty of blogs about how blissful motherhood is (which don't get me wrong, it is magical, and I would't trade it for anything) but man sometimes you have to wonder if a a good night's sleep, (or two minutes to pee once in a while) are too much to ask for.
ReplyDeleteno sleep is shit. all I did was crack it at EVERYTHING and try my hardest not to fall asleep when I was about to go pick some kid up from somewhere every time the baby had just fallen asleep. shit I tell you!
ReplyDeletethere was a three year old at sleep school last month, so its never too late!! Ive taken the estelle route and have decided to let harriet scream it out. It took a few nights but mainly im getting up once (if at all) a night for a re-dummy and thats it. weve had a few weeks of it now and it has worked. she aint three though so possibly a hell of a lot easier to train....
oh l, you poor thing! sending sweet slumber your way. xxx
ReplyDeleteyeah, i would be all for telling her that we're not getting up and just letting her cry it out but she shares a room with sophie and i think it would end in both of them being wide awake and in tears. too much to deal with at 12:45am (or 3am). i'll try putting an extra blanket on her when we go to bed. i'm also going to try putting a small digital alarm clock in the room and showing her what SEVEN looks like so she will know when it is acceptable to get up. we've been telling her she can't get up until it's getting light out but that is going to bite us in the ass in a couple of months (not that it's working anyway).
ReplyDeleteoh, leslie, it's like you're reading my mind! seriously. as i write this, i am sitting in our hallway, in the dark, listening to my poor little sam cry. i have my laptop on just to provide even the slightest bit of distraction. at first, sleep was non-existent because of his colic. then it was teething. and then continual ear infections. sam seems to FEEL everything so much more than ella did as a baby. he's always been in so much pain or discomfort with those issues that there really was no option but to provide as much comfort as he needed, knowing that as soon as he felt better he would sleep perfectly. this past week though, it's like he's all of a sudden very aware of being alone in his crib and while he'll fall asleep in my arms, the second his head hits the crib mattress his eyes are open and he's screaming with all his might. i went through this process six times tonight, but i'm so exhausted that the last time, i decided to let him cry for a bit before going back in. because i just don't know what else to do. i don't know if picking him up with every cry reinforces the crying or not. i'd like for him to have healthy sleep habits and be able to soothe himself while still knowing that if he needs me, i'll be there. letting him cry makes me so uneasy but getting no sleep makes me someone i don't want to be. unhappy and grumpy. i feel like i don't know which way is up! and ella, well, she did the same thing as mae - just before sam was born she started making it through the night like a pro, then about two months after he was born she started waking up once or twice a night, crying inconsolably for half an hour or so. strange, since she is such a happy, sweet, content little girl during the day. she still does this maybe every 2 or 3 days but now she's old enough to realize it's because she had a bad dream or was cold or scared of the dark. so much easier when they are old enough to recognize and tell you why they're upset! i'm so feeling your pain right now, you are not alone! and with that sam is finally asleep...that only took until...11:00 pm :( and now it's time for me to collapse into bed, just in time for it all to start over in about 4 or 5 hours...i keep telling myself that eventually it does get easier :) sending you a big hug!
ReplyDeleteWhat a bummer Leslie...hang in there! Managing 2 kids' sleep is really hard. Bird's 3 now and still gets up once or twice a night fairly often. Stinks when I'm already up with Griffin (& hubs is traveling). Wishing you some better nights (and naps) SOON.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we can get you an nice room at a hotel when you're visiting and Grandma and I can watch the munchkins while you get some well deserved sleep... something to think about. ;)
ReplyDeleteHugs!
Oh poor you, and Mae too, I totally sympathise. Its terrible not getting proper sleep. My guys are pretty good now but we did have some very bad patches. I've never been very keen on letting them scream (but that's a personal thing and definitely not a judgment on anyone) - in the end what worked at about three yrs was using a clock that wakes up at the 'right' time (the boys clock had a bunny that woke up and Islay's is a moon that changes to the sun). I'm not sure if you can get them in Aus or if you have seen them but I can easily look out some links if you want to find out more. We still use Islay's, she's nearly 4 1/2, so she knows when she can get up - all of them still wake up at 6ish and sometimes earlier but we get them to stay in bed until 6.30 - yay!
ReplyDeleteCan't believe we'll be back to babyhood and starting to tackle all this again in a few weeks, mad! Juliex
It is terrible not to get good sleep and taking care of kids with too little sleep or sick is a very hard day.
ReplyDeleteI hope it improves for you soon.
Perhaps it will cheer you up to tell you I made two oobees and the kids are absolutely in love with the
I feel your pain sista! My 8 month old woke once a night for the first 3 months and now averages between 4 and 7 times a night. My 3 year old also likes to pop in for bi-nightly visits too. Sleep deprivation is the worst form of torture. And don't ever expect your man-folk to understand!
ReplyDeleteminimal sleep is bloody awful. my son (now 2.5yrs) is finally now sleeping thru and that is the rule rather than the exception now when it was the other way round til a couple of months ago. i have lived & felt every tooth & erupting illness since he was 8 months & when he was born my then 3 year old made me think there was serious need for an exorcism (or few) given her midnight wakings and subsequent temper tantums-jealously reined supreme here. my son is proof it gets better but boy does it take patience (which i have never had!). Plus school for my daughter was a godsend! Hang in there. Quilting/crafting serenity WILL come!
ReplyDeleteDude, I know.
ReplyDeleteLeon comes into my room at 12:30am and 3:30am. Mahlie is up at 5am and wakes up the whole house. I am about to purchase this here thing to hopefully stop the early rising:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m4CgEEeQHk
Hugs Leslie! I know it's so friggin hard!! My first was a crazy bad sleeper when he was young and my husband almost had to take a medical leave due to the sleep deprivation then at 8 months, his pediatrician basically forced us to sleep train him (he never slept for more than 2 hours at a time, ever). After 2 weeks of absolutely soul jerking screaming (he lost his voice), he went from difficult baby to sleeping through night till now. Only once in a while does he wake us up when he had an accident, but sleeps through colds, nightmares, everything. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do but it was so worth it! Before having kids, I thought kids just fell asleep when tired. No, he had to be taught to sleep, and it dramatically changed his personality from grouchy unhappy to smily baby.
ReplyDeleteSo I knew better the second time around. I made sure she fell asleep on her own and other than some awful crying at around 4 months, she's been a champ. But guess what, when she turned 3 she went through a sleep regression and woke us up several times for about 1 month. Finally I made a sleep chart for her and gave her a star for sleeping through the night which earned her TV for an hour the next day. Mean I know!! but it worked thank god.
I don't know if you have read Healthy sleep habits, happy child by Dr. Weissbluth, but I really recommend this book. It helped us make it through some tough beginnings with the first one. Hang in there!!