Maine Nesties
jd72878
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
sleep troubles (HELP!!!!)
oh ladies, the last few nights have been horrible. I almost realize how some parents resort to "shaking their baby". Please don't think I would ever do this, but the height of frustration coupled with lack of sleep and patience can really do a number. We've gotten no more than two or three hours of sleep at a time and it's broken by 30 or more minutes of incessant crying/screaming. I just don't know what to do. We've tried a loose Ferber method - walk in, rub her back, leave at.10 minutes, 15 minutes, etc. We've tried to figure out if she's hurting somewhere. I thought it might be because her bum is a little red, or gas, or hungry. She's asking for a snack, water, juice, milk, etc. Last night was ridiculous....10:30 to 1:30 of screaming. Finally at 1:30, I went in, threw the light on and she was so wide away I knew we weren't seeing sleep anytime soon. As soon as I brought her into bed, we didn't hear a peep. This is crazy, not even the newborn stage was like this. I'm exhausted. Please tell me this is normal or just a stage....
Our Abby Jean
Re: sleep troubles (HELP!!!!)
First I know exactly what you mean by this, I had two colicky newborns it was a nightmare. Anyway could it be an ear infection? or 2 year molars? Is she acting fine during the day or napping fine? Sleep problems are the WORST!! We have gone through some awful periods. Liam is getting his one year molars and has had some rough night. Will she let you rock her and then lay her back down in her crib? Sorry I don't really have much advise I hope she starts sleeping soon!!
I hear ya!!! This sounds exactly like what we just went through. We tried to blame 2 year molars, ear infection, switch to toddler bed a month earlier, etc. I even took him to the doctor and she said "I see no medical reason why he isn't sleeping." UGH! The not knowing if it was medical or not was really frustrating, so I would take her to the dr just in case.
We tried tons of different things- modified Ferber, staying in the room til he fell asleep, sleeping in the room next to him (our bedroom is on the first floor and his is on the second), giving him a new flashlight to sleep with, etc. We really, really tried to avoid having him sleep with us because we thought that would extend the troubles. I also resorted to having him nap in the car a lot going/coming from somewhere because I couldn't take the battle.
It's a little different for us because I assume Abby is still in a crib and lot of our trouble was getting him to stay in bed. Two things that did work were giving him something to look forward to after nap or in the morning. Like, "If you can be a big boy and stay in your bed all night then we can go to the playground in the morning. Okay, fine, it's a bribe, but it worked! He would wake up the next morning and say "I wanted to get up. I stayed in my bed. I want to go to the playground." It's also been helpful to talk to him from outside of his room. We can see him on the video monitor and would tell him to lay back down and get comfy, then praise him when we saw he did.
Now he is pretty much back to normal (knock on wood!) the only thing we still do is play music for him outside of his room for a certain amount of time. There is a certain song (Pumped Up Kicks- yeah, that's kid appropriate!) that is his favorite. We leave him in his room awake and say we'll go play the music. We play it 4 times from my iPhone and he's usually asleep when it ends. If he wakes up in the middle of the night and gets out of bed or upset we either call up to him and encourage him to lay back down, etc or play the music again.
I really think it was just a (horrible, frustrating) phase, but it lasted about a month at both nap and night. Hang in there!!
You poor thing.
We just went through this with one of the boys, but have figured out it was his molars coming through. Now it is starting again, since he is getting another set on the other side.
We tried everything is well, and nothing was working. If it isn't molars, ear infection, it could also be some seperation anxiety. I know (mine were a lot younger), the only place Zach would sleep was in our bed. The minute we laid him down in our bed he was out.
Long story short, good luck, I hope she gets past it soon.
so frustrating. we've been there too lately. and i agree that it's worse than the newborn phase...at least the newborn phase is to be expected. adrian hit a rough patch when we went on vacation in july. apparently he doesn't do transitions well, or bounce back from them at all once we return. pretty much he wants to be with mama all the time. including bringing mama to bed early in the evening. and mama can't even get up to pee at night without a tantrum.
the last couple of weeks i tried to really work on it, as DH said we shouldn't even think of #2 until we have some sort of sleep. (not that i'm ready for that yet....but i didn't know how long it would take). i'm not a CIO mama. and i just don't think that's the way that matches what adrian needs either. my friend gave me:
http://www.amazon.com/Sleeping-Through-Night-Revised-Toddlers/dp/0060742569
i liked it because it helped me define the reason why we were having the difficulty. for us, he wasn't soothing himself to sleep at night (even though we did a routine), which meant he woke up in the middle of the night needing me. it said just work on bedtime, not the rest of the night or naps at first. just do what works in the meantime, except for bedtime. work on bedtime for 2 weeks and it should be down, then middle of the night and then naps. often with working on the bedtime, the rest improves. it could be something completely different for you, but that is what it was for us. and what i like about the book is it helped me define the problem and gave the steps to work on it, but it didn't tell how. it left that up to me and what feels right (it did give some examples). my friend did CIO, but i did not. i taught adrian 'be right back' during the day as i left to go to the other room. i then did it at night, with increasing intervals. if he needed to be scooped and snuggled, i did it. he learned in a calm way that i would be right back to snuggle if he waited patiently (which was way less stressful for all of us than CIO). now, i'm not saying this is what abby needs, all i'm saying is that the book helped us identify the problem and gave us confidence in choosing our own way to fix it. the book also said that most often illness and teething get blamed for poor sleeping, but it's usually not that...as the restlessness/uncooperative period of no sleeping happens around the same time as teething and that consistency is needed.
again, i'm not an expert at all. i wish i had a magic want to help you out. until then, i can at least offer hugs and prayers. hang in there jess.
A month?? Lord help me!
Thank you so much for all the words of encouragement. This morning (2am) was the most frustrated I have ever been with Miss Abby. We've ruled out ear infections (no fever), molars (unless we can't see/feel them yet), and she naps really well at day care and for us on the weekends. It's so so so hard to figure out. We also did a bit of research and wonder if nightmares are part of it. Thankfully she is still in her crib and can't wander. Great suggestions on all accounts. I'll be sure to report back :-) Thank you!!!!