Exhausted and in tears every night....A VENT!!

[Marlene]

Trish.....yes, I do wake when he starts to stir. I try to resettle him by patting but then he ust starts thrashing around and gets upset, so I end up feeding him.

Kmn....he seems to have pretty good feeds, although it is hard to tell how much they are having when you BF, especially when you fall asleep half way through.
Thanks for the sleeping bag suggestion, I am going to try and find a summer one for him. Any suggestions where I could find a light weight one that is not too expensive?

Dh and I went out last night for his footy presentation and ended up being called home by the babysitter because he absolutely refused to take the bottle of EBM!! I have been trying to teach him to drink from a cup (sippee and straw) but he doesn't want a bar of it. Its just all getting so difficult! Jack used to be such an easy baby. My next challenge is getting him to self-settle in his cot...fun, fun, fun.

[~Trish~]

I hope things get better for you both really soon Marlene. Re: a sleeping bag, I'm not sure which state you are in, but I bought a lightweight sleeveless sleeping bag for my DS last weekend at Baby Bunting for $25. You can also buy them from Target and Big W, but they didn't have the size I needed when I went and I think they may have been polar fleece, I can't remember...HTH

[MummyPig]

Sorry to jump in Marlene but I just wanted to say I am so with you on this one!!

When Freyja hit 4 1/2 months she turned into a nightmare baby! I find myself in tears most days wondering what I'm doing wrong and why I can't just get some sleep. No daytime naps unless exhausted, waking continually through the night, always overtired and suffering from every teething sign possible, not even smiling and laughing like she used to. I've had to go back to giving her a nighttime feed to help her settle and give her her dummy back... we'd unfortunately decided to do away with it just before this stage hit - I was so desperate for some sleep on Sunday I gave her it back!

She has now just turned 5 months and is still the same. Monday was hell, yesterday was better and today better still. Nights were still bad with several wakenings, and it's just taken an hour to get her to go down for a nap, but I'm hoping now she's asleep she'll have a good one!

I'm with the other girls that it's just a stage and am praying that it will be over after this week.

Oh, one thing to try I think hasn't been suggested... bub needs about 15 hours sleep right now - 10 at night and 5 during the day. Freyja is in bed at 8pm and normally we try to get her to sleep as long as poss so I can get a rest in the morning after hubby goes to work at 6.15. Obviously, as far as she's concerned, 6am is time to get up as she's done almost 10 hours! Today I got her up at that point and was as bouncy and chirpy as a sleep-deprived mum can be and so far today (until the 1hr to nap issue!) she has been gorgeous - almost herself again.

Can't help but think I've been oversleeping her or something, so might be worth considering if it could help you to change

Of course, if you start putting Jack to sleep at 6pm, that means morning is 4am, so you might want to reconsider those hours first!!!