Helping a persistent baby sleep
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| Mon, 03-27-2006 - 10:46am |
There should be an exhausted emoticon!
This question isn't about Sam (6.75, As) it's about his 12 mo. old lil' bro who isn't very good at sleeping and I'm pretty much sick and (literally) tired of it. I thought at least one of you would have some BTDT advice!
Sam did sleep through the night consitently until 5 yo, but he'd sleep until 2 or 3am and go right back to sleep. He had a harder time falling asleep at the start of bedtime though, but outgrew that just fine, thankfully. Now he goes to bed no problem and even has very few night time accidents now *and* sleeps through the night! Yeah!
But Harrison (NT so far) wakes very often, sometimes every hour. He nurses but not always to sleep, he will fall asleep in his crib if someone is in the room, something Sam could never do. But he can't stay asleep and is genuinely pissed off to be awake when he wakes up. By the time we get to bed at 11pm or so, I'm pooped from basically trying to get him to sleep all day. Right now he is in our room until we move next week and he'll have his own room. He ends up in bed with us at some point in the night, which I'm fine with if he slept! But he's waking up all night and I'm rolling back and forth half asleep trying to get comfortable. He will nap ok if I sleep with him on the couch, which I usually need. But I also can't get anything done during the day when he is awake and naps go the same way nighttime goes. I'm lucky if he sleeps 45 min. during the day.
I know gritting my teeth and baring it until he grows out of it will work. But in the meantime I am going insane from lack of sleep and I fear for my family's safety in the middle of the night because I am exhausted and constantly being woken. It's like torture......this is how people are tortured! I get a little crazy at 2am sometimes but I'm not really awake to calm myself down. I'm starting to get depressed about how difficult both my kids are. I just want 4 hours of sleep straight through.......not even a whole night!!! DH is little help, not because he doesn't want to, but because if he tries to help Harrison calm down, Harrison gets more angry that Mom isn't the one attending to him. Plus DH has to get up at the butt crack of dawn and drives around in a truck all day; I don't want him exhausted and getting into an accident.
Any ideas?
Chrystee


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I feel your pain! Jake was a dream child because he slept through the night at 6 weeks and has been a very good sleeper ever sice unless he's sick and even then he's pretty good. Ella on the other hand was a nightmare! She didn't sleep through the night until she was over a year old and I was so exhausted all the time, it really gets to you after a while. It was so much harder for me with her to because she is tactile defensive so I couldn't even lay in bed with her because she would scream even louder when I held her close. We swaddled her until she was about 10 months old because it was the only way she would sleep and thinking back now it was probably related to her sensory issues. Then all of a sudden she just started sleeping through the night on her own and only every so often wakes in the night but I can easily get her back to sleep.Every child is different and what works for one child doesn't always work for another.I really feel bad for you because I remember how hard that was to get so little sleep and have another child who was under two at the time to chase after during the day. I can tell you my patience were stretched to the limit(LOL)
Teresa
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