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

I am soooo tired...my little man has been really trying my patience with his sleeping the last couple of weeks and I am at my wits ends as to what to do about it!
He used to self-settle quite well but now will not self settle AT ALL! It used to tak eme about 10 minutes of cuddles and bum patting to get him off to sleep, then I would put him in his hammock and he would stay asleep, maybe waking once or twice at the most during the night, sometimes i would feed him (if he was awake and whingy and other times he would settle with a bit of rocking of the hammock, which is next to our bed) he would always go to sleep immediately after feeding.
The last couple of weeks (and increasingly over the last few days) he is taking at least an hour of rocking and patting to go to sleep, I put him down in his hammock and he wakes up as straight away! He will just lay there looking around so I walk out of the room, he then talks to himself, then grizzles, then cries. When he starts to cry I go in and bounce his hammock till he calms down then walk out again. This can go on for hours if I let it, I always end up in tears, pick him up and rock him to sleep again and pray he stays asleep when I put him down.
This is how it went last night: (a typical night lately)
Start putting to sleep: 6:00........Finally asleep: 7:30
Awake: 9:30..........Finally back to sleep (in bed with me) 11:45
Awake: 1:45, feed.
Awake: 3:45, rock back to sleep.
Awake: 6:00, feed (give him to DH who slept on lounge, they play for an hour)
Back to bed with me at 7am, slept till 9.

He didn't seem to be in any pain, was not crying, just grizzy and restless. He was kicking his legs like crazy as if he wanted his wrap off, but refuses to sleep without a wrap! (I have tried many times). Even in bed with me he is restless and wriggly.
I have tried to put him in his cot (which is also in our room) He HATES that! He "back crawls" to the end of the cot (with his wrap on or wriggles out of it) and bangs his end on the end of the cot.
I just don't know what to do...I really need some sleep. DH is useless, not much help at all during the night and I can't even get him to give Jack a bottle of EBM as he refuses to take a bottle now...grrrrr.

I am so sorry that this post is so long, I really needed to get it all off my chest! I know most people go through the same thing at some stage and I'm sure I did with the other kids (just cant remember, LOL), I just really needed to have a whinge.

:hug: I am not at this stage (dont have children yet) but I just wanted to give you a big hug as it must be really tough and even worse when you are sleep deprived.

I hope that you can get through this stage. I am sure you will but it is good to let it all out.

just a thought...is he teething?

:hug: That is the same age that we started having problems with DS1 sleeping too. I don't know what it is about that age - either teething, or starting to get more mobile and aware. But it's certainly trying, isn't it!

I don't know what is going to work for you, but there are some options of things for you to try. There is always co-sleeping all the time, although it doesn't help you during the day if you don't want to sleep too. You could also try with no wrapping. It might take a few days for that to work, but if it improves the sleeping overall it would be worth it. Or you could try changing his routine. It might be that he's ready to drop a day sleep, so you could try that. Or conversely, it might be that he is having too long between sleeps and you are missing that "window". In which case you could try putting him down earlier for each of his sleeps. You could also try music at sleep time, and/or a gentle massage at bed time.

As I say, I'm not sure which of those things, if any, would work for you, but I hope you can find something in there to make your life easier. He will settle down again - sooner or later - and I hope it's sooner for you. Hang in there hun. You really are doing a fantastic job. :hug:

Marlene, I hear your pain. My DS is about a month younger than yours, but he seems to be going through the same thing. He is up and down all night, and takes about 2 hrs to settle and needs at least two feeds, and a couple of settles in the night. I cant offer any advice, but wanted to let you know you are not alone in this, and I will be watching this thread with interest to see if you get any help.

MR - there are some good tip sin there, I am going to try out too.

Firstly :hug:. Your right in your saying under your name, this will pass, it's just a bugger not knowing when.
My DS went through something very similar and in my case it meant moving him from our room to his own in his cot (not saying you should do this). I also had to teach him how to self settle again as he was used to being rocked to sleep in my arms and he was just getting to heavy for me to rock for very long. I ended up giving him a feed and cuddle before bed. I would them put him down and let 'protest cry' for about 10 min. I would then go in and pat him to sleep without making eye contact or talking to him. I would stay with him till he fell asleep though (once took 45 min of patting). Just want to point out that his protest cry was more of the occasional yell or whinge. If he had tears or a 'real' cry I would get him up for about 15 min and try again.
Im not sure what will work for you but it can't hurt to try some new techniques. I hope you find an answer soon and can get some much needed sleep.
Oh it may help regarding EBM, my neighbors DD never took a bottle but after a week of trying she started taking a small sippy cup. It made it easier for her DH to do the odd night feed. Maybe it could help you.

marlene i really sympathise, having been through the same thing with ds (now 4) and currently having similar problems with dd (6 months).

i think around this age there is an increase in awareness and some bubs find it more difficult to get to (and stay) asleep. they may also be fighting sleep because being awake is so much more interesting - my ds certainly seemed that way! he's a brilliant sleeper now, but i endured two years of sleep deprivation to get there...

i hear you on the problem of taking AGES to get to sleep. i can get dd to sleep by feeding, but laying her down after is a different matter. after several nights of getting to bed after midnight i've given up on the cot for now (she was starting off there, then coming into bed with me later) and am taking her straight into bed where i lie with her and pat her back to sleep. she then wakes at least every two hours - often more frequently - and is fed or patted or rocked back to sleep. EXHAUSTING.

have you started ds on solids yet? there's always the hope that it might help!! best of luck getting through this difficult time. i hope things improve for you soon. :hug:

Thankyou everyone for your support and suggestions. Last night was a little better with 3 hours between waking....if he could stretch it out to 4 hours I would be even happier.
I will definently try the suggestions posted here, but I'm sure its just a matter if waiting it out.:rolleyes:

:hug: Marlene.
(And LOL at your little comment under your username - man, I can relate to that!
You're right, wait it out. No doubt there's some sort of developmental 'shift' going on there. I remember at 4 months Natty's great sleeping turned to crap. It is soooo hard. I know you said your DH is useless (and I understand, LOL!), but is there someone else like a parent or friend who could help you out for a couple of hours so you can catch a little nanna nap one afternoon or something?

Marlene :hug: two of my 3 children went through this at about 5 months (the other child is still kinda over wrought easily)... and i put it down to over stimulation and the new degree of awareness during this age. What I found helped was increasing times of 'sensory deprivation' (ie reducing the amount of sensory imput: sight, smell, sound etc). So I increased time spent in a dimmed room, in my rocking chair, in silence with no new smells etc or in a bath, with just a candle light, no sound except the water, and me saying as little as possible, slow movements etc). Some babies i find just need a bit more 'time out' from the world at this stage of their development. They need time to process all the new information that have have been exposed to during the day.

Imagine that you are a tourist in a foreign land where everything is new... absolutely everything... even the colour of the sky (imagine it was green)... and all the local customs... it would become exhausting for us after a while and the same happens with babies. I remember travelling overseas for the first time and "wasting" (not really) a day inside my hotel room just reading a book. I felt that I needed to centre myself... I needed to stay in a place where I knew what to expect and where I could control my environment a bit more. If someone had insisted that I drag myself out and keep exposing myself to more new sights and sounds (foreign languages) I would have thrown a hissy fit too! The stress of exposure to "newness" is a learned skill and easier to deal with when you are an adult. I'm not saying that this is definatley the issue here... but it might be... it's common at this age. Maybe just try slowing down life for a little while... contracting your son's world (limiting the number of new activities, places and faces) and I'm sure (if this is the problem) then this phase "shall pass" too.

Thanks Bath...I think you may have hit the nail on the head! Jack is a very active (probably over-active) baby. He is doing things that just amaze me, things that his 8 month old cousin isn't even attempting to do yet....I think his brain is just miles ahead of his body, he gets frustrated easily ...and now that I think about it, the extra stimulation of having his brother, sisters and their friends around all school holidays has probably sent him a little bonkers...you can actually tell he wants to be up and running around with them, LOL. School goes back tomorrow, maybe he will start to sleep a bit better soon.:pray:

Can i just quickly say that if he is a very active baby, then my advice would be to KEEP the wrap for as long as possible!

And try to be proud of the fact that you have a super-intelligent being, whose body will catch up soon, hopefully.

My other suggestion is based on your initial example... when he wakes around the 930 time, do you ever BF then??? dunno, just a thought.....

And not to discourage another suggestion made about sippee cups.... my DD wasn't fooled by any of it - after about 10wks of age and despite many attempts - breastmilk came from mum's boobs only!!! But also some constructive advice around this too..... if you are thinking of trying EBM through a cup, choose the cup wisely, as some of them just don't let the EBM through very well and the "creamy" bits get stuck in the holes IYKWIM.

all the best. xx

Thanks Kym....yes, I am very proud of him, he just amazes me more every day.:D Yeah I do BF at the early (9:30) wakeup, I BF most wake ups...so he is getting plenty of milk.

Last night was no better, but, I am feeling better about the wakeups. I'm trying to take it in my stride and not stress so much.

Marlene :hug: hun ... my DS1 was like this - it was like he would miss out on something if he went to sleep ... I spent about the first 6 or so months of his life surviving on 2 hours of sleep per night (I was also at uni, so essays and the such had to be done!!) He hated being wrapped, and was so alert all the time.

Nothing worked for me, I just had to persevere until he got over it ... mind you, he didn't sleep through the night til he was nearly 4! All I can do is sympathise with you, I really understand how tiring it can be (especially when you've got 3 other kids to look after!)

As for not taking the bottle, DS3 won't (and he's such a mummy's boy!) And "useless" partners - well, mine is gone all week for work! :hug: hun, and I hope Jack settles back down for you!

Well things have not gotten any better Jack is still waking every 2 hours....I am handling it a bit better now, no more tears, but I am sooo tired. We have been co-sleeping from the first wake up and I have been BFing every wakeup. I think I need to stop feeding every wakeup but I am just too tired and it is so easy to just put him on the boob and then he falls straight back to sleep.
I am wondering if I should try and move him from his hammock to his cot (cot is in our room as well). He is still refusing to sleep without a wrap but I dont really care about that too much at the moment, just wish he would sleep!!

:hug: You poor thing, I went through a period like this with my DS2 too. Sleep deprivation is a terrible thing.

I'm sure they must hit a developmental stage at that age and it throws everything out the window.

I don't really have much advice, the lovely ladies here have given some great tips. The only one I can suggest is if you are co-sleeping - do you wake up when you hear him stir (before he starts crying)? If so, could you try patting him on the tummy (or something else that he likes) as soon as he stirs to help him get through to the next sleep cycle? I did this with DS2 during the day - although I didn't co-sleep, I just snuck in his room a few minutes before his sleep cycle would end - and he eventually worked out how to settle himself back to sleep without any help from me.

:hug: I hope this passes really really soon for you.

When you BF in the night, is he just sucking for a little while to go back to sleep or is he really drinking? It might be worth an experiment where you actually do a "day" feed in the middle of the night - both get up, wake him up as much as is needed to get him really eating, change his nappy, give him the other boob, do whatever you can to stuff him as full of milk as possible - and hope that he lasts for longer. And maybe try a sleeping bag rather than the wrap if you want to put him in his cot - they make it harder for wriggly babes to get to the end to bang heads.

hugs and hoping that something makes an improvement
Kate

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:rolleyes:.
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.

:hug: 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 :D

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. :D

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!!! :lol: