Do you ever just want to scream!? (vent)
I don't normally vent but I'm at the end of my rope today. I know DS's sleep is what I should realistically expect of a small little human still getting used to the world but I am SO frustrated right now. Lately, DS's suck-to-sleep association is getting stronger and stronger. I used to sometimes nurse him to sleep, sometimes rock him. Either would work. I used to be able to place him gently in his crib and walk away. He would wake up every 40 minutes until I got in bed with him, then he'd sleep longer stretches. That was fine. I dealt with that. But now I have to lay down and nurse him to sleep. If that doesn't work, I'm S.O.L. DH has to then take over and do this crazy 40 minute long routine of bouncing, rocking, etc. with him that results in quite a bit of screaming/crying. This past week it has been harder and harder to delatch him once he's fallen asleep and sneak away.... So anyway, DH travels about fifty percent of the time for work so this week I'm by myself. Tonight I have a huge assignment and a test due by midnight. Tomorrow my friend is coming to watch him so I can go to class in the evening and my house is embarrassingly trashed because I have to study during any (very little) "free" time I get...which isn't much since DS has been fighting naps since he was three weeks old. Tonight we went through his bedtime routine and I tried nursing him to sleep. It took me about a half hour of de-latching and trying to sneak away before he actually stayed asleep. 20 minutes later my neighbor's stupid dog barks and wakes DS and he screams. I rock him to sleep but every time I set him down he wakes up screaming. And it's this super high pitched scream that makes my skin crawl and also makes me want to go into a closet, and scream and cry myself. So after several attempts trying to get him back to sleep I laid next to him and let him cry thinking maybe he just needed to let out some steam and he'd fall asleep. After about 2 minutes he settled down to a whimper and I thought he was about to fall asleep. But I then he looked at me and even though it was super dark and he could hardly make out my face, he starts smiling at me. He caught a second wind. Now he's on my lap being super cute and it makes me feel guilty for feeling so frustrated toward him but I know in another half hour he's going to get fussy again and I'll try to put him to sleep and the whole process is going to repeat itself. It makes me crazy. To top it off I'm starving because I haven't had chance to make myself dinner. I'm stressing over my school stuff and the fact that I need to clean up the house for tomorrow. And I know once I actually get him to sleep, he'll keep waking every 40 minutes while I'm trying to get stuff done and it will take a half hour to re settle him each time. I just NEED A BREAK!. And YES I would like some cheese to go with my whine.
Re: Do you ever just want to scream!? (vent)
oh hun, i don't blame you for wanting to scream! you are under so much stress. it can be SO HARD sometimes... and with hubby gone, it must be incredibly overwhelming.
i can not stress this enough: please don't worry about your house being trashed. i know that for some people that's really hard to do, but mama, you are in survival mode and the house is last on the to-do list.
survival mode... can you wear him or hold him while you study/take the test? would bringing him into your bed help? do whatever you need to do, mama. you'll make it!
I don't have any sleep advice, but I have learned the hard way that DD has some kind of 6th sense regarding any deadlines I have and always wants to go through a sleep crisis just when I need the time (and energy) most to work and get my stuff done. The pressure of deadlines makes the sleep frustrations even greater, so now whenever possible, I try to line up reliable babysitting if I know I have something that absolutely can't be put off. I've also been known to grossly exaggerate the situation in order to extend to deadlines (so instead of saying "my daughter won't go to sleep tonight and I am about to lose 4-5 hours of valuable work time," I've said "my daughter just spiked a fever and I need to know if I can get this to you next week instead of this week." Unprofessional? Not really, just realistic, in my book.)
On the nurse-to-sleep problem itself, I nursed DD to sleep until she was 18 months old and it took hiring a sitter to come regularly to put her down at night and DH taking a week of vacation from work to "reinforce" it for her to be able to sleep without nursing first. Not fun.
Ok ladies thanks for letting me vent. Someflower I took your advice, DS is laying on my lap, asleep, while I work on school stuff. Only problem is he let out a monster poo as he was falling asleep and it is quite stinky. And now I have some major mommy guilt for knowingly letting my child lay in his poo..... Oh well, going to get some more work done before risking waking him with a diaper change.
Anna - were there a lot of tears involved when breaking the nurse to sleep habit? I'm almost wondering if letting him cry for a few minutes now while laying next to him is better than waiting while the habit gets harder and harder to break....but he's still so little...I just don;t know what to do! I don't mind nursing him to sleep..it's just when it doesn't work..or when i'm at class and DH needs to put him to sleep...it is a disaster!
I'm sorry! DS went through the sucking to sleep phase too. Fortunately I had DH there to take over to get him used to going to sleep without nursing.
Ditto the cleaning the house. Your friend will understand!
Thanks for the vibes!! I know, my friend won't care about my messy house...I just hate having people in my house when it's messy... Oh well, I need to get over that!
Just noticed your child is only 5 months old. I have ZERO advice on how to break the suck-to-sleep association that young and would not risk letting him cry without doing more of your own research. (A lot of ladies on here have suggested the No Cry Sleep Solution, but the Pantley "pull off" never worked for us.) At 18 months, I was able to reason with my daughter a little bit more, so while she did cry a little (and I was always right there in the room with her), we were able to talk through it much more productively than if she had been younger. It worked for bedtime, but when I stopped nursing her to sleep for naps at 22 months, she dropped her daytime nap altogether. This, despite the fact that I worked outside the home during her first year of life and our nanny was able to successfully get her down for two naps/day just by sucking a bottle of EBM. Sigh!
My only regret is that I didn't involve my husband or anyone else in the bedtime routine much earlier on. DH works long hours, so I was always getting DD to sleep on weeknights and a lot of weekends while he worked. I figured she wasn't used to him and it would be harder/take longer/not work if he tried it on the random nights he was home early, but what I found once we started doing this at 18 months was that even if he was only putting her to sleep 5 or 6 nights out of the month, over the course of a few months, that made a huge difference. I should have had him putting her to sleep whenever he could as soon as I was pumping, but it just seemed like so much "work." I had no idea how much more work it would be to undo 18 months of me being the only person who could get her to sleep at night. And I can only imagine how many date nights we could have enjoyed if we'd gotten a sitter in on the bedtime routine earlier than 18 months...
Good luck to you.
First off, you have my total sympathy! That sounds like an absolutely cr*p night.
Secondly, I've wanted to say for ages that you have the most handsome wee boy ever. I think he is just divine
And thirdly, we were heading this way and I did the pat / shush with my DS and it totally worked. I definitely recommend giving it a go. DH lost DS's "Soothie" brand soother that we got from the hospital, he wouldn't take a different one and we couldn't find a replacement in any shops so we were forced into cold turkey. We decided to get rid of any and all sleep associations.
To start we'd pop DS in his cot (sidecarred to our bed), give his a kiss and say sleep well, then leave the room. If he started to cry we waited 30 seconds to see if he'd settle himself. If at 30 seconds he was crying, we'd go into his room, no eye contact, place one hand on his chest and with the other pat his belly gently and rhythmically and shush him also. I found a "shhh shhh shhh" in time with the patting to work better than a "shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh".
At the beginning he'd cry quite hard. Their cries have a crescendo so they do get really intense and then calm down a bit, they cycle through this type of crying. If after 5 minutes he's still crying, roll him onto his side, facing away from you. One hand on his shoulder staying steady and the other hand rocking his hip forward and back gently. Keep going with this until he relaxes and his breathing is steady but he's still awake.
Leave the room while he is still awake. Hopefully he goes asleep himself but that probably won't happen the first few times. If he cries again, repeat.
Now, we started this on Saturday week. It started to work straight away. The first maybe 2 days were hard going but we saw big improvements so quickly which made it easier to stick with it. The hard crying stopped within about two days. By the following Saturday we were doing maybe 2 minutes of patting while he was mildly whinging, not proper crying at all. I've just put him down for a nap now and I literally put him in his sleeping bag in the cot, closed the curtains, gave him a kiss and left. He's asleep without any grizzling within 2 minutes!
Yes, there's a bit of crying at the start but in the grand scheme of things, one of us was always with him while he was crying, offering comfort and the total amount of crying he did is less that what he'd be doing if we hadn't done this.
I don't know if that's what you're looking for but I'm so against CIO and I found this to be brilliant. Best of luck!
I understand! This is me in a nutshell, I hate when my house is messy when people come over. I even make sure things are cleared out of the way for our nanny who comes over 3 days a week, ha ha.
Sorry you are having such a hard time. On the studying level, if things don't go exactly the way you like and if you feel you haven't studied enough, you might want to talk to the teacher. Most teachers are really understanding of personal difficulties and know how complicated life can be with kids. But perhaps use Anna's trick :-)
Our kids are almost the same age. I seriously have had that moment a few times....like about to run away and find a new family without kids. Seriously...and then DS smiles and I'm like I guess I'll stay a little longer. LOL!!
Have you tried the swing? That thing works wonders for us. It's like I'm rocking him but I'm not!
You got some great advice from the other ladies here. I'm sorry it's such a stressful time and I hope your LO gets some sleep soon!
I just wanted to chime in that I too nursed my DS to sleep until he was 14 months old. It didn't get harder, but rather easier. He just grew out of the need for it. Every baby is different and your baby is so little right now! It could also be the growth spurt at 6 months and he's trying to up your milk supply by sucking all the time. I would encourage you to wait until 8-12 months before trying to break the suck to sleep association.