exasperated!!

[arielle]

I really hope it's a phase!!

My daughter hasn't 'slept through,' since about 4mths old, which is no problem, as I don't expect she will just yet, and I've always been able to feed her back to sleep.
Of late, she wakes around 1am / 2am, and feeds, but I can't get her back to he bed no matter how long I sing to and rock her. I'll then bring her to bed with me, which I usually quite enjoy doing, and she'll go back to sleep pretty soon with a bit more cuddling.

The problem is that she'll then wake somewhere b/w 3am and 4am (5 if we're lucky), and cannot go back to sleep unless she's lying right on top of me. Even then, she's still extremely restless, and wakes and cries very regularly as if quite distressed until around 7am, when she finally goes back to sleep exhausted. Unfortunately, I can't sleep with her draped all over me, and the positions she gets into don't seem safe from a SIDS point of view (i.e. head down against my chest and nostrils mostly covered). For the last few weeks I have been living on around 4 - 5 hours sleep a night, and am starting to not cope. Trying to feed her back to sleep during this second bout of wakings has not been successful, dammit!!!

My gut feeling is that it's separation anxiety (as panadol and brauers teething relief haven't helped at all). I want her to feel safe and secure always, but I just don't know how to do this at this time of the morning, aswell as manage to get enough sleep to help me stay sane.

Any helpful suggestions would be greatly appreciated!! My sanity is fast disappearing!!

[Cassius2]

...unfortunately no words of real wisdom here...we have been having similar moments where DD will only rest on me when i take her into our bed of the morning. and like your DD will only do a very light sleep and cry and jump easily (almost out of frustration i think?!).

i hope (and believe) that it is a phase and it will come to a good end (let's just hope it does so before we both go bonkers LOL!)

[Ca Plane Pour Moi]

9-10m old DS just slept on my chest, head buried somewhere there. I needed sleep. His head couldn't go face-down so it was snuggled into my collarbone and it worked well - could you adjust the sleeping position?

Also, how does your DD go to sleep? What relaxes her when awake? DS always calms down when he has his bum patted, so he'd lie on me and I'd pat his bum, then after a while he'd lie next to me, still in my arms, bum patted, now he's in his own bed and bum patted to sleep. Took only a week to get him off my chest and a month before I could put him in bed awake and not walk around all night to get DS to sleep.

HTH.