I am committed to updating my blog regularly from now on. I really need your advice and support and I usually just can't find time to write.
My twins are 10 months now. Q-man is FINALLY sleeping through the night and only occasionally requires a feeding between 3-4am. He wakes up around 5:30am every morning like clockwork. He naps beautifully - put him in crib and close the door. Crying for 1 min or less (sometimes not at all) and he goes to sleep for 90min - 2.4 hrs twice daily. Nice, right? (We did the Ferber method of CIO with him months ago and it worked perfectly.)
Miss Muffit has always needed to be rocked before naps and at bedtime. Used to take a few minutes, but gradually has increased to 20-45min of rocking befofre bedtime at night. (naps are quicker - 10 min tops). She has always slept through the night and occasionally needed a night feeding - always slept in crib and was the easiest baby. Both used to go down at 7pm and woke at 5:30am. We never needed to do CIO with her because she went down so easily and slept 10 hrs straight.
One week ago, it all started going downhill. Miss Muffit decided she would not be put down into the crib. She would be asleep in my (or DH's) arms in rocking chair, and would instantly sit up and raise her arms when put in crib. (WTF???) I had to travel Mon - Thurs last week, and this all started last Saturday. DH was home alone with them and Muffin's sleep issues began. He could not put her down! After an hour of this, he brought her back downstairs and she fell asleep in his arms watching baseball. Several more attempts to put her down in crib ended badly, and he brought her to bed. She would cry for 5 minutes and vomit. This happened 3 nights in a row. He cleaned her up and brought her to his bed.
While I was away, I instructed the nanny to begin CIO with her during naps. we did progressive waiting with a 30 min max, so checking in after 1min, 3 min, 5 min, 5 min, 10 min, if still crying, she is brought back downstairs to try again a little later. After ONE MINUTE, she vomited all over herself and had to be bathed, changed and rocked again.
One week later and here's how it goes. She stays up until 8pm now, falls asleep in rocker and is put into crib. Wakes up at 10pm and is brought into our bed. She sleeps until 6:30-7am now.
Part of my thinks its okay. She has 4 teeth coming in and she is experiencing terrible separation anxiety. I can't walk away from her with the nanny without her screaming bloody murder.
I know "this too shall pass" but am I creating a monster? I hope I'm just indulging her in her time of need with the teething and sep. anxiety. I hope I'm not creating really bad sleep habits that will haunt me until she's 5. Any advice?
4 comments:
I think you gotta do what works for you. My kid's sleep went to hell when he was teething too. It was BRUTAL. I never had him sleep in our bed, but I bet if I did, we all would have gotten more sleep. I was up all night for many nights. I am not afraid to let him cry if I know nothing is wrong. But when he is sick or in pain? All bets are off. When the teething nightmare subsided (after a few months) we had to do some more nights of CIO, but he went back to being a good sleeper. It sounds like you are doing just fine - we all do what we need to to make it through those rough nights.
Hey. I read that if its teething just to go with it. There is a 9 month sleep disruption that happens to do with advancing brain activity in the little ones. It makes it really hard to get to sleep. Add to that teeth pushing through and you have crap.
Here's what we are doing - getting them to nap later in the day and then bathing longer with various relaxing agents!
Pain killer if needed before bed (often Pip needs it and Mimi not). The way I can tell if he needs it is if he is going nuts trying to bite me, the bed, teddy like a little mini vampire whilst screaming!
On the night Pip isn't teething he sleeps like he used to. Goes down easily and stay asleep.
Hang in there!! Maybe some sushi would help???
Eeshk! I'm sorry for the sleep "troubles" (feels like an understatement!) My girl was starting to also not want to be put down if she fell asleep in our arms. She started rolling onto her tummy to sleep a few weeks ago and sleeps so well like that. So now we just put her down on her tummy. I know sleeping on their tummies is a HUGE nono. And it did make me nervous at first. But she is able to push herself up and even sit up at this point. So it's not like she doesn't have the strength to get off her face. That's what's working for us right now. Ours has also been a really good sleeper but we had a little hiccup like this right before she discovered tummy sleeping.
First of all, congratulations on the Q-man sleep achievement! You have the balls to do CIO, which is more than I have!
Your last description - about Miss Muffet sleeping till 10 pm, then waking up and coming into bed with you till morning - is EXACTLY what happens with Scout. Sometimes after he's fallen back to sleep in bed with me, I put him back in the crib. I don't know if this is right, wrong or creating a monster, but I figure he is only a baby for a short while, it is something I can do to comfort him (his first 2 year molar has been coming in and that thing is a monster!) and he sure as heck won't be sleepig with me when he's 12, so I just go with it. Besides, this morning I awoke to find Scout was laughing in his sleep! It was a gift I would not have enjoyed if he had not been lying next to me.
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