Post Punk Kitchen Forum

reading this thread, i am so happy that i have absolutely no recollection of how the first 8 months were, sleep wise. (I assume that means they were pretty frigging horrible).

i get the same thing lb. wolverine scootches all over and i wake up all sore from the weird positions we end up in. he has kept me up from constant nursing. i think he is going through a lot development wise.

Has anyone experienced a pretty good sleeping baby not sleeping so well anymore? Malka used to give us a 6 hour stretch without waking up and now won't do more than 3-4 hours and will sleep 7 hours or less total overnight (she's 5 and a half months). She doesn't seem hungrier overnight (or in general), so I don't think there's a growth spurt and it also doesn't seem like she's in teething pain or anything. It's really frustrating.

I have a friend with this issue. Her baby used to sleep through the night and now she is up several times during the night. That being said, Fiona is now almost 9 months and is walking, so she has gone through a ton developmentally in a short time. She was an early crawler, 5.5 months and she has 4 teeth.

Ada slept through the night as a newborn but she is waking up a few times a night now (at 9.5 months). She started waking up once or twice a night at around 5 months or so. I think there's just a lot of developmental stuff going on like littlebear said. She also has 6 teeth already. I wish I knew how to get her to sleep all night again. I'm exhausted!

Alright, so it's normal. Just really, really annoying!

Yeah, Violet was really good when she was 2-3 months old - I'd say we usually had a stretch from about 10pm to 4am of sleep, a big nursing and changing break then and then a cluster nursing marathon from about 6:30-8am or so and then sleep until 9:30 or 10. I'd get out of bed around 8 and have a couple hours to myself. Now (7 months) my morning time is gone, she wakes up a few times during the night (not sure exactly since I don't keep a clock by me, but I think around 1am, then around 3, then around 6 for a while to pretty much alternate nurse-doze until 8:30). She does, however, nap much more during the day. Yay?

Its good to remember that the goal posts are always shifting. She has slept like a champ for the last few nights, and i'd be crazy not to profit and grab some serious sleep while I can.

Good night!

Between 5&6 months we went from pretty good sleep most nights to pretty terrible sleep most nights. I miss 4-6 hour stretches of sleep. Like violet, grey is taking long naps, but I am so tired I usually lay in bed with him.

wolverine didn't nap at all again today. Everytime I tried to walk away from him he would wake up and want to be attached to me. I now know how people who's kids only nap on top of them or in a moby or ergo feel. I thought it was annoying that he would only nap in his swing. It is now 11 and he was so tired I was able to put him down in his crib. Weird.

Phew. The heat is fixed and Raygold slept a lot better. I think he only woke up 3 or 4 times. Phew!

Babynut kept us up ALL night and morning! I feel like things didn't normalize until about 10 am. Starting around 2 am, she was screaming maniacally and refusing to nurse. My partner and I took turns walking her as she screamed. What the hell? No weird poops or farts. I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. Ugh! Finally she nursed and acted like everything was normal, but jeez! Why?

this thread is what nightmares are made of. i feel for every single one of you, who doesn't get proper sleep!

It's great birth control, huh?

Still no sleep. I actually cried this morning because I am so tired. I am so tired and I haveto take a red eye flight tonight and in the morning I will be with my in laws, they are intense and I am not ready for it.

I am so sorry LB. I hope that Grey has an easy flight, so you can rest a bit and that Nate is able to take him for just as long as it takes to have a blissful catnap.

And Smoothie, sometimes they sleep so sound and sweetly and snore their little butts off, and its amazing.

LB, I hope the flight went well.

Does anyone wake the baby to keep a nap from going too long? A few afternoons in a row babynut has taken a really long nap, like 5 hours, and then has gone on to fitfully sleep (hour or two hour spells) in the late night hours. She used to do 5-7 hours in the night time and everything was glorious. maybe she has night and day mixed up?

I feel like I should wake her, but I'm so tired from not sleeping all night that waking her seems crazy. There are no guarantees she will ever sleep again! So wake or not wake from long nap?

Can you get some sleep with her?

We do co-sleep when I go to bed, but the past few nights she has been fussy and refusing to be in the bed or to nurse! Very weird. I'm happy to nurse off and on in the bed, which was our old routine.

ETA: I took a nap with her and got up, cooked dinner, ate it, she is still sleeping.

I think I have a tummy sleeper on my hands. Trouble is, all the back-to-sleep stuff out there. Madelyn sleeps so much better on her tummy but I only let her do it when I can closely supervise. When I put her on her back, naps are significantly shorter if they happen at all. I'm working on getting her used to it, but it's a process.

I was doing some reading on the topic and found more lenient information on Dr. Sears' website. Anyone deal with a similar issue or bend the tummy sleeping rules? I'm scared to, but she sleeps better, eats better and has happier awake time when I let her get a nice long tummy nap.

http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/sleep-problems/sids/prefers-sleep-tummy

It's depressing to me when no one replies to this thread...it's like no one knows any answers about sleep! It's so hard.

Sarah Bo Berra, my nephew would not sleep on his back and my SIL eventually gave up trying. He was a tummy sleeper with no problems. I know so people do it because it is rumored to make babies sleep longer. Have you asked you ped about it yet? That is probably where I would start.

Butternut I'm not sure what you should do. I'm not sure how old your baby is now, but I know Kai had night and day mixed up for the 1st month or two. I think you do want to try to get them on a schedule at that point, so maybe you would want to wake her up but on the other hand, you might just want to nap while she does.

The way I tried to get him used to it was to keep the house well lit with noise going on during the day, then at night even though he wasn't sleeping I would keep the lights low and everything quiet and try not to play with him too much. Eventually he got used to it.

All in all Kai was a terrible sleeper, I think maybe part of it was that he is a tummy sleeper, Sarahboberra. Now he almost always sleeps on his tummy with his butt up in the air. I still always put him on his back until the SIDS danger was mostly over, after 12 months.

For the 1st few months he wouldn't sleep hardly at all except for 1 3 hour nap in the evening, then he would wake to nurse every hour or two. Then I slept with him on my 'breast friend' pillow, sitting up, which I do not recommend. I think it was probably a combo of tummy sleeper and needing to nurse so often because I had a low supply.

As for Refinnij's original question in this thread, around 2.5 months I started putting him in his crib with a routine because I had to go back to work. Then, I put him to sleep around 6pm, because I think really young babies need a lot more sleep, and I had to get up at 5AM for work. He still woke up every few hours though.

I can't remember exactly when, but I think maybe around 9-10 months? I started putting him to bed later at 8pm. That's his bedtime now (at 16 months). Thankfully lately he has been sleeping through the night almost every night, and wakes up between 5-6AM (which is fine because that's when I get up for work anyway). At most he wakes up 1x at night for a little nursing then goes back to sleep. This past month has been like heaven!

I'm so sorry for everyone experiencing the dreaded No Sleep. We were there for a really, really long time and I just want to say that it does get better. Eventually you'll be properly rested and look back and be like, wow, I totally survived that. <3

B-nut, I am sorry, and I totally feel your frustration. Supposedly they don't have circadian rhythms until 4 months so they just sleep whenever they feel like it and you can't really schedule them at this point. I do think that Aubade's suggestions sound really helpful for encouraging her to sleep during the night and stay awake during the day.

I don't wake Leela, primarily because when she is overtired and fighting sleep it is horrible. She can barely keep her eyes open, and cries and whines and nurses for a few seconds and then punches (its like nursing Taz) and generally is a whirlwind of activity, until we can get her into the glider and rock her until she finally falls asleep. So I prefer to let her just nap when she wants to, so we don't get to that point. I just try and lie down and nap if she is napping (and pray she doesn't wake up in 15 minutes, just as I've dozed off). I know everyone knows this but being woken up by a hail of hungry punches is a crappy way to have to get up. But Lucinda (still love her name so much!) may be completely different.

Sarah bo berra, I think Guineapig posted that Bradley Celeste sleeps better on her tummy too, and I think her solution was to put her on her side. I am not sure though. For a while Leela slept on her tummy on top of me. Its so funny that tummy sleeping has become such a huge taboo, when it used to be the norm in our parents generation.

Butternut, I'm sorry you're going through this as well. My problem with the whole night-and-day mixup is I can't really sleep during the day. I've always had trouble napping (poor me!) so it was crucial that Dahlia start sleeping more at night as soon as possible (especially because Howard is kinda useless at night, sorry). We definitely just tried to engage her and kept the house kinda loud during the day. I know Howard experienced some super-crankiness while I was at work 5 weeks postpartum but eventually Dahlia got it and started going to bed around 9pm (I know, that's late for a baby but we don't get up til like 9am ourselves), waking around midnight to 2am for a bottle for a few months and then sleeping through til a respectable hour.
also, major laugh at Tofulish nursing Taz! and yep, my mom goes on and on about how all 5 of her kids only slept on their stomachs and they were fine blah blah blah.