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@twoofeverything: thanks! This gives me hope. My dinner last night was a leftover piece of pizza and a microwaved burrito eaten on the nursery floor while rocking and shushing
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I hope you get some sleep tonight!
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@ladyfingers: another thing that we still encounter is that our LO has never slept the recommended number of hours per day for her age. She just isn't a big sleeper. Last night she only slept 8 hours and I forced her to go backdown for another 55 minutes before she was literally wide awake.
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This might not be relevant at all, but if we ever have another and had the same problem, I'd look into food allergies. But only because my DD has allergies and an intolerance to milk. When we got back onto her normal formula (to see if it was better) the only obvious difference was her sleep. She would wake up every 3 hours screaming. It started almost immediately after getting back on it and lasted for a week. If we kept at it, I'm positive her skin would have eventually got as bad as it did at it's worst.
It was surprising to me because it was so clear that the milk was the culprit since we eliminated everything - and I mean everything else. If she was younger, I would have just passed it off as just teething, a developmental stage, or reflux. Now yours might not be food related at all, but thought I'd just share and throw it out there.
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@ladyfingers: yep my MIL keeps suggesting we just let him go until he falls asleep "wherever". Ummm yeah does not work with him!! I will say two things that I know helped that have been mentioned were probiotic drops for gas and lots of bicycle legs and then I cut out all dairy and chocolate and his reflux was gone. It used to wake him when he was in light sleep- he'd swallow it back down but grimace or cry and it would smell sickly sweet. Completely gone for us with my diet adjustments and he had a muh easier time falling and staying asleep smoothly!
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@scg00387: What type of probiotic drops? Is this something you can get at the store, or from the ped? Do you give it to him, or is it something I take while breastfeeding?
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@ladyfingers: they're from Walgreens I think the brand is biogaia ? It's drops that are over the counter with all the baby gas drops in a little white box. I ran out this week and thought maybe he'd gotten old enough that the gas wouldn't be as bad but boom the next day his tummy wa rumbling like crazy.
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@ladyfingers: sounds like my LO. It's exhausting, I know!!! I'm still constantly tired, and its better now.
I didn't read all the posts so forgive me if this has been said already. My LO would wake after 5-10 minutes for about a month or two. It was exhausting but DH and I would take turns putting her back down.. The only thing besides nursing that would get her to fall asleep was cradling her and bouncing on an exercise ball. Have you tried this? She would fall asleep withing 5 minutes. I would wait for 10 more minutes before putting her down and it eventually would work.
She still needs help falling asleep. She will not do it on her own. We bounce her for every nap time still, and she only naps for 30 minutes at a time, but that's just how she is.
She will not do drowsy but awake! She gets agitated and worked up and becomes a crying mess. I only put her down completely asleep.
Bedtime has become much easier from 4.5 months til now (7 months) she nurses on one side for 15-20 minutes and is out like a light and very rarely wakes up before her first night feed around 1-2.
I hope it gets better for you soon!
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I know this doesn't help you out with sleep, but I jur wanted to tell you that you sound like you are doing an amazing job coping and doing the best you can for LO. Hope you all get more sleep soon!
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@ladyfingers: we use biogaia probiotic drops too ! Love them !
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@yellowbird: that's a good idea, thanks! We'll add it to our arsenal
@Mrs. Blue: aw, thanks
Last night was bad - 2 hours to go down, fell asleep at 9 after I got desperate and nursed him again, woke at 12:30 (typically takes 5-hour stretches but was apparently way overtired from only having slept 10 hours total that day), ate, put down at 1, woke up continually until DH was able to keep him down at 1:30. Woke at 3, ate, put down and kept waking up to the point I slept on his nursery floor till 5 so I could rock him when he stirred. Woke at 6:30, ate, put back down at 7:30, up for the day at 9.
We'd planned to test longer wake times today, but he kept getting sleepy then aggressively fussy by the hour-10-minute mark. But he'd go down within 20 minutes, albeit with multiple wakes. Then when he went down at 1:30, it wasn't until I finally moved his rock n play back to our room at 2:30 that he drifted off. He only slept 30 minutes because he got hungry, but he fell asleep almost immediately after I moved him. And again for his 4 pm nap, he was droopy eyed and yawning, I put him down and he was asleep within 5 minutes with no wakes.
So his rock n play is back next to our bed. I guess I was expecting too much from him to sleep in his own room yet, even if he was still in the rock n play. He just wants to sleep next to us still! Part of me initially considered this a failure, a regression, but then I realized... If this is how he sleeps best got now, who am I to rush him?
I don't know that this will be a permanent fix or how he'll sleep tonight, but I'd at least rather lay on my bed and rock him back to sleep than constantly going in and out of the nursery and sleeping on a hardwood floor. We'll stick with this for now and shoot to transition him to the crib when he seems ready. I need to remember he's only 2 months old... Why am I in such a rush to have him in his own room?
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@ladyfingers: oh i'm sorry you had a rough night but totally agree with your mentality. Maybe he isn't ready and that's ok! Little man will make the transition when he is good and ready so just enjoy having his sweet self next to you and enjoy being able to rock him while laying in bed. It's not like he'll be in the rnp when he is 6 years old - haha!
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@coacheswife123: I always make the error of comparing him with other babies -- I see somebody with a 9-week-old in a crib and suddenly he needs to be in a crib or there's something "wrong" with him. He's his own kid! For goodness' sake
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@ladyfingers: i've totally gotten caught in the comparison trap! "why can't my baby hold his Sophie yet?!?" haha! I have to remind myself to go with the flow sometimes!
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@coacheswife123: lol I keep forcing Sophie on him too. All it does is make the dog come running because he thinks its a new squeak toy for him
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@ladyfingers: same here
haha
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@ladyfingers: go with what works! We had a similar night last night, garh sleep regression. Their sleep is ever changing, wait it out and try again in a few weeks.
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subscribing
hope things get better soon. at just over 3 weeks, I am already tired of talking to people IRL about this stuff. it seems like they all say "oh, my LO was sleeping at least 4 hours by then." grrrrrr.
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Dylan is older and still sleeps next to our bed in his rnp, so compare to me :). Curious to see how tonight goes!
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It went slightly better, not perfect, but it only took an hour to get him down, so I suppose that's progress!
My main concern right now is that we have to constantly rock him while he's drifting off or he wakes up. I worry that we're creating a dependence on movement that will be really hard to break... but I guess we'll deal with that when we come to it.
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i just moved LO to his crib in his room from the rock n play in our room last week! he is 5.5 months old, he was ready and it went well!
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@hellobeeboston: How did you handle the transition? Did you just go cold turkey? Were you putting him down drowsy already in the RNP, or helping him to sleep? I'm just worried how he's going to put himself to sleep if he's always used to being rocked by us.
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i could have written this exact same post a few weeks ago. we did everything you're "supposed" to do--bedtime routine, awake no more than an hour, white noise machine, blackout curtain, etc. no matter what we did, he'd always cry and take forever to fall asleep, and would often wake up when i knew he was still tired.
i couldn't even "cheat" with a swing, carrier or stroller because those did not work.
i have come to accept that my LO is not great at getting himself to sleep and staying asleep past the 45-minute cycle for naps. we were doing the pacifier dance for a while, but my patience wore out, particularly when i heard that it may take babies up to 6 months to learn how to replace the pacifier on their own.
at 11 weeks, we decided to CIO. i know it's early, but i was at the end of my rope--i was anxious and stressed all the time, not a nice person (particularly to my husband), and was resenting LO.
i'm not going to lie and say that the heavens opened up. we did a solid week of CIO--it did not transform my LO into a magically wonderful sleeper. he still takes about 10-15 minutes of fussing/crying to fall asleep. and for naps, he *still* wakes up after the 45-minute sleep cycle, but i give him 15 minutes and he usually soothes himself back to sleep. nights are much better. at the very least, i have a better idea of his sleep patterns and can work with them.
i drove myself crazy at the beginning, wondering whether i was 15 minutes too late or early, whether baths were a good or bad idea, whether he should be on his side, swaddled or not, and so on. i don't have much advice, but just wanted to say that i totally know what you're going through.
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p.s. i'm not advocating CIO--i know it's different for every baby and it sounds like your LO gets really upset. my LO would cry, sometimes quite vigorously, but not continuously for long periods of time. so overall there would be long periods of time of crying/fussing, but they were usually punctuated by silences where he was trying to suck his thumb. there was one time when he cried hysterically--it was the one time i caved and went in to pick him up when i knew he wasn't hungry/dirty/etc. he threw a f*ing fit after i put him back down. i realized i had made a mistake by going in there but luckily, after 7 minutes (which felt like an ETERNITY) he went to sleep.
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@ladyfingers: i was sooooo scared of the transition. I think I talked about it for like 2 months before finally doing it. in the end, LO was literally growing out of the RnP, so we sorta HAD to do it - he also started sleeping on his side in there (so bad) so we knew it was time.
What we did was go sloooow. We started having our daycare lady do some naps in the PnP, and at night I put him in his sleep sack in the crib - he usually falls asleep nursing. So first night he made it like, half an hour, then next night was an hour, then 3, then 5, etc... he regressed a little in the middle, but when he would wake we would put him back in the RnP.
He also figured out he was more comfy in the crib on his side, then on his belly - so once he figured out he could sleep on his belly he was good in the crib for the whole night.... We're going on one full week of crib only sleep! and it's going great! yay.
i stressed so much about it, and in the end it wasn't that bad. We kept him a pretty long time in the RnP, but once he could roll well it seemed like it was time. Don't stress too much. if he sleeps well in the RnP, stick with it for a while, that's why we did the transition the way we did. We didn't let him CIO really, a little bit, but we just got him slowly used to sleeping flat.
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@ladyfingers: Does your LO have (silent) reflux?
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it sounds like you are doing everything possible out there, but i just wanted to say that i promise it will get easier to put LO down for naps and nighttime, it just takes some time and you are not creating any bad habits by rocking him or getting him to sleep however he needs to. i dont think my LO napped anywhere but my chest for the first 6 or 7 weeks, then slowly i started putting her down in her crib. then i tried putting her on her belly in her crib for naps only, and she slept so much better. so that helped for nap time. she still gets rocked to sleep for naps, but it is sooooo much easier now that she is almost 5 months. she is usually out cold in a minute or so. for nighttime, around 12 weeks or so we slowly started putting her in her crib more and more awake (they are more tired at night, so it is easier to do than for naps during the day). i would just keep going to her and reassure her i was there and rock her again, put her back down, and keep trying. some nights i wasnt consistent and she would fall asleep nursing, but as she has gotten older, i just wake her up a bit before i put her down and she goes right back to sleep. it WILL get easier, i promise! your LO is still SO YOUNG and he will learn to sleep better in his own time
haha
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