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Babies: 9 - 12 Months
lanie26
member
Painful exhaustion.
lanie26
member
The benadryl post made me wonder today. All the people who "couldnt' IMAGINE even thinking of keeping benadryl in the house and using it to help a baby sleep."
Of those people, how many experienced exhaustion to the point of pain? I mean physical, every time I move it hurt in your back, your eyes, every muscle. I remember thinking "I never knew fatigue could hurt so badly." when Jo was not sleeping more than 30-45 minutes at a time and I was seeing fraggle rock characters dance in my closet. The sane part of my brain was thinking "uh oh, this isn't right." and the insane exhausted part of my brain was wondering what they were looking for and wondering if my husband was going to get mad if they woke him up."
She never napped, she slept in tiny bursts all night long and woke up early for the day. It was agony. And I thought about doping her with benadryl, inventing baby nytol, etc...
I heard once that if you formula fed you could get them to sleep so I made her a big bottle of formula and she lasted an hour. I remember crying and crying, trying to figure out what that saying from Labrynth was where the goblins came and took the baby away.
No really. I was insane.
And my point is, I thought about it every day. EVERY day. I also have not slipped into that momnesia people talk about. I remember every agonizing minute and have 0 desire to repeat it.
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Painful exhaustion.
That is the response from a mother getting sleep delgreco.
I hated people giving me advice. Especially those who got to sleep.
Lanie, I feel your pain. Liam was very similar those first few months - never sleeping more than 45 minutes at a time, and taking longer than an hour to get back to sleep. I would have murdered to find some cure for it. I remember reading in one of Dr. Sears books that he would sometimes give his babies medicine to sleep and I would have signed my life away for one night of good sleep.
I don't see any harm in it AT ALL. Maybe if it's used daily, but here and there when your baby is exhausted and needs sleep (and you too!) then absolutely I have no issue with using some baby benadryl here and there.
YES.
there were plenty of times i stuck S in his crib while he cried, and i went to our bedroom, put my head under a pillow and cried. i couldn't remember my own address when i was filling out forms at the dr's office (wrote in my parents, and i haven't lived with them in at least 4 yrs)
when he was 7-8 weeks old, my OB told my DH i absolutely had to get more than 2 hrs straight sleep or else. so he blew up the air mattress in S's room, and i slept all alone in our bed "doped up" on ambien. ahhhhhhhh
(this is why i don't get why people judge those who have night nurses. especially if they have PPD, which sleep deprivation can only make worse.)
*raises hand*
I never once gave my child tylenol, benedry, motrin or any other medication to get him to sleep, however.
But that odesn't mean I didn't think about it. I thought about a number of crazy things, but I didn't follow through on them.
The pain of true exhaustion is unlike anything I've ever felt up to now in my life.
I started hallucinating. I was losing my freaking mind because she wouldn't sleep and I couldn't sleep. This is not good when you work with children, no it is not.
So we did Ferber. And she moved into a crib.
And I stopped seeing spinning goblets on the ceiling. That was nice.
BW, I was just discussing with my husband that we're getting a night nanny 2 x per week. My husband works nights every 2 weeks and I cannot do what I did before.
If I have another hellion like Jo, we're hiring help. End of story. And yes, whenever I see people say "Why even HAVE children if you don't even want to see them at NIGHT?" I laugh. Because they have no idea.
BUt I will not go through that again.
DH was on the verge of making us gat a night nurse a few months ago. DS went from STTN to getting up constantly. And my medical condition causes chronic pain whoch doesn't allow me to sleep for more than a few hours at a time. So after I'd get up in pain & finally lay back down, DS would wake up an hour later. I do have strong pain meds which I couldn;t use b/c I had to be able to wake up w/DS. It was a vicious cycle of no sleep & pain.
i wish i could hire a night nanny, but seeing as i'm a SAHM, i get to "nap during the day"!! yeah right when i will have a toddler.
this is why i have begged my mom (she thinks i'm joking) to move in for the first 3 months.
Been there, done that. I would just cry and cry and hold him and cry more. We'd both just be sobbing and I'm sure it made a pitiful sight. I would see posts about babies who slept through the night and get so angry -- literally shaking with anger where I needed to step away from the computer. And as he got older and those types of posts increased I got more angry. Then I'd feel like the sh!ttest mother ever because during the day I lived from naptime to naptime. I just wanted him to go back to sleep for goodness sakes.
I'm so happy those days are over now. It was so hard to enjoy being a mom when I thought I was dying from the exhaustion.
Are you pregnant Lanie?????
Just be careful if she is like Brock the med will do the opposite and wake her up even more!
Good god no. ::shivers:: No way. But I think we'll try next year and I wanted to lay my cards on the table. My husband is fully supportive. He was transitioning to a new job and things were so crazy when Jo was born, he wasn't around at night because of work and he went to school during the day.
He'll be helping more with the 2nd but for sure we're hiring night help after I convince my mom to help for a few weeks.
I hope to never get to that point, Del!!! And if that happens, I'm blaming Brock!
I would have sold my soul for a night nurse during those first few months. Thank goodness things started to get better around 3 months, or I would have had a nervous breakdown. I was also seeing things.
I remember vividly one night when DS had been crying and crying for hours and nothing helped. It had been days since I had more than an hour or so of sleep at a time. I laid him back in his bassinet and just stared at him, thinking "shut up shut up SHUT UP!!!!" in my head. I remember feeling sorry for him, for having such a terrible mother that clearly didn't love him (because if I did then I obviously wouldn't be so upset by the crying....right??). Then I turned over and shook my husband awake and told him if he didn't get up and deal with the baby right then, I was going to lose it.
I am praying that we get one of those "sleeps five hours at a time from birth" babies this time around. If we don't, we will at the very least find some money to hire help for a few hours, a few days a week. I only needed to try to do it all by myself once to learn that I'm a better person when I can get a break. Worse comes to worse, at least this time I'll know for a fact that it gets better
That is insanity!
Breleigh & Mason
I am so with you.
I sat in our chair with a book light and the Nursing Mother's Companion, while I tried to nurse the damn kid to sleep.
Painful does not even begin to explain it. It created a whole new dimension of insanity for me.
I am so with you lanie
When Alyssa was a couple of weeks old, she was waking up every hour and a half. She just would not sleep. I would cry, and ask "why won't you just sleep" nothing helped. I prayed that someone would just help me.
I never judge a parent (unless they are intentionally putting their baby in harms way) because until you have been there, you never know.
LOL it was the same person. ABM said she treasures every second.
i'm thinking ABM is watching too many nick at nite reruns. its all a little too June Cleaver for me.
Oh, I definitely think its crazy when people say they enjoy that time or the people who judge those that do sleep training. Usually turns out their kids aren't waking up much.
One of the main reasons keeping us unsure if we'll have another one is the way DD slept (or lack there of!). She was also just a very unhappy fussy baby overall, which I think had a lot t o do with lack of sleep.
Then we tried Ferber and all of our quality of life improved dramatically. I told DH, I hope he doesn't mind but I want to marry ferber. I will not hesitate to try Ferber earlier than we did with DD if we have another child with huge sleeping issues.
I NEVER said that I treasured every second Robbie was up all night long and I hadn't slept for days on end. I said that I love having those memories of getting up and rocking him in the middle of the night. I wouldn't trade those for anything. Were there times I wanted to cry (and did!) from being so tired? Absolutely. I have hurt from being exhausted- Robbie was only 6 months old when I got pregnant and it has been really, really rough. He went through most of his big milestones during my first tri which caused him to wake up 5 times a night. I remember sitting on the floor of my living room one morning (actually... it was the morning of Obama inaugaration) just sobbing hysterically because I was scared I wasn't going to be able to stay awake to take care of him. I was so exhausted I was falling asleep sitting up. (At this point I didn't know I was pregnant)
June Cleaver I am not, but don't ridicule me for enjoying those middle of the night wakings. It makes me so sad to know that I will never again be woken at 2am to feed Robbie a bottle. I'm sorry for those of you that weren't able to enjoy those times, but staring in to my baby's eyes while I rocked and fed him was very, very precious to me. I realize that I am very lucky to not have dealt with PPD or reflux or anything like that, but I highly doubt that I'm abnormal in treasuring that time in Robbie's life.
LukeAndAmanda, I'm so sorry you're feeling this way. If you have the resources to be able to talk to someone, please don't put it off. Feeling like nothing will help is also a symptom of depression. Even just talking to someone about all of the stressors in your life can make you feel better sometimes. I hope things get better for you soon!
Joseph had colic. I thought about Benadryl. And Nytol. And Ambien. And chloroform.
If you haven't had a colicky baby, you can't understand laying on the floor by the crib at 4 a.m. thinking that if you were dead you wouldn't be tired.
Stress can also trigger fibromyalgia, which I have now but didn't before Joseph was born, and which a lot of women develop after pregnancy. I think what the doctors are missing there is that "after pregnancy" comes about 3 hours of sleep over three months.
In my experience with Ambien if you don't get in bed and go to sleep right away you may do some goofy things that you don't remember the next morning- it might have been fun to get that on videotape!
Again, I can kind of agree with ABM here.
I have no more babies waking in the night (on a regular basis anyway, sometimes one or both will have something going on and wake up randomly in the night). And I miss it.
And NO, I did not have both great sleepers. Evan was a nightmare and I barely slept for the first year of his life. I still was able to find SOME moments that made it all worthwhile. And some moments that I truly felt I'd gone over the edge of sanity for good.
I don't think it makes someone crazy to find some way to make the best of the moments we're given with our babies - bad sleeper or good.
My husband takes Ambien. He remembers nothing that happens after 10 p.m., which is sad because we've had some interesting conversations. And he's eaten a lot of pizza that he doesn't recall.
LOL
In college, I was taking ambien for a while and my Mom said I'd call her every evening around 11pm and have some very odd conversations with her. I don't recall too many of those.
Totty had a quote in her siggy when Jack was born... it said something like "When the baby wakes at night just remember that you can never get this moment back" it was really touching and made me put things in to perspective when Robbie woke up at night. To be honest though there are still times when I don't mind if he wakes up. He very rarely does any more, but we always pull him in to bed with us when he does and I love it
I guess that'll have to stop soon though with the new baby since he'll be sleeping in our room for a while.
i think ridicule is probably the wrong word. I was teasing - which has a different level of severity, imo. but whatevs. its semantics, you made this schmaltzy and eyeroll worthy statement that could be boiled down to treasuring every moment. its a nice way to look at your situation but a little over the top and idyllic to me.
as for the whole benadryl debate - i fully plan on doping DD for our next plane trip. as long as the medicine is not being abused, i dont see the issue.
*pins on bad mother button*
Have you taken Izzy on a plane yet? I've been on one with Robbie and it really wasn't bad at all (although it was only 2 hours). I'm pretty sure he ate about an entire container of puffs, but he was pretty good about the whole thing. (Although if I had to take him by myself now I'd probably check him with my baggage! I don't have much of a lap anymore)
I just don't think it's eyeroll worthy that I did treasure those night time feedings. Sure... there were times I didn't treasure. Like the times when he would scream hysterically until we gave him more and more milk only to find that he actually had an air bubble and projectile vomited 8 ounces all over me. I don't have any desire to relive those moments! It's funny to laugh over now though. Again, I realize I'm so lucky to not have dealt with some of the more serious things people on this board went through, but he's more than making up for it now. I have one rotten little boy on my hands!
well i was being a little flippant. i should have said i fully intend to dope her up if she turns out to be a nightmare. we took a flight when she was 4m old and she slept the whole time. well, except for the 45 minutes she spent flirting with the jamaican guy in our row. hehe
but yeah, we will try to avoid the benni if we can but i am totally open to it. at 15m old i will be hard pressed to get her to sit in my lap for 8 hours.
as for the rest...well, we can just agree to disagree. i like you AB - i agree with you a lot. but (in my eyes) you paint a very pretty picture and there are times when it doesnt translate well. thats what everyone is trying to tell you and you seem to get it - i think.