Thursday, December 9, 2010

White flag! Uncle! I surrender!

I'm struggling here, folks. With sleep that is. For the babe.

I cannot for the life of me figure out what the deal is. Nothing has changed as far as our normal routine. He still takes one long nap in the mornings that is about 2 hours. He still follows the "Eat, Activity, Sleep" routine. He's awake for about 1.5 hours including eating time before taking a nap. His other naps range from 30 minutes-an hour.

When it's time for bed (usually around 9), he used to get swaddled, get cuddled, go into the rock and play, get the seahorse turned on, get his paci, and get rocked to sleep. This would take about 20 minutes but he'd be asleep by 9:30.

Now we're lucky to get him asleep by 10:30-11! I thought he was TOO tired, so we moved up his "bedtime" to 8:30. Tonight we started bedtime at 8:30 and here it is at 10:30 and he is FINALLY (knock on wood) asleep for the night.

Tonight bedtime went like this:
eat and swaddled at 830
in rock and play- rocked by dad- until 9. cried on and off the whole time (never used to).
mom couldn't listen to him cry anymore so i had him bring him to the LR where I rocked him in the recliner. he fell asleep in about 15 minutes (no tears).
kept rocking him to make sure he was really out, put him in rock and play at 930.
mom gets in shower and tells dad to listen for him.
mom isn't in shower for 3 minutes when i hear him cry. it progressively gets louder and angrier.
mom hurries up and finds him getting his diaper checked (was dry)
mom scoops him up and he quits crying
mom reswaddles, puts him in rock and play and he screams
mom nurses and he calms down, eventually falls asleep (though he normally doesn't require this nursing session, and i don't think he was actually hungry).
by now it's 10.
put him in r&p and he wakes up and cries.
mom sits next to him on floor and strokes his cheek and shushes until he's asleep.
mom leaves room and no sooner makes it to kitchen when he cries.
mom goes back, reinserts paci, shushes, and he's out.
mom leaves, he wakes up.
mom returns, reinserts paci, shushes, and he's out.
It's now 10:30 and I'm surrendering. WHAT GIVES!?!?!!!!

This has been going on for about 2 weeks. I don't think it's a growth spurt because his eating pattern hasn't changed.

I need some help. My husband, though good intentioned, just isn't nurturing. He talks "rough" and Nolan doesn't respond well. He wants soothing, quiet talking and Dan gets too impatient to do much to help me. So, it's all on me. I get ZERO me time. I'm LUCKY to get a shower every other day.

Any advice? Help? PLEASE?!

5 comments:

  1. See my recent blog post! It will get better!!!

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  2. I know you said about 1.5 hours of A time. Are you putting him down in time to fall asleep 15/20 minutes on his own? That might help. Going down for naps when you see that 1st yawn always helps DD even before all our issues. Our issues started when I rocked her to sleep for naps. I created a nap monster hahaha Also I know since you follow the EASY do you do the cat naps? I cannot ever get B to do them really and she melts down by 7:00 and isnt ready for bedtime till 9 so that is still a battle I am trying to figure out but I do realize the cluster feed helps so I have been cluster feeding and that helps at night...like feed at 7ish then try to catnap and then when she wakes feed again then bedtime routine and another quick feed and she gets super drowsy and I put her in bed. Since she wont let me swaddle arms in I stay there with her and hold her arms down & shussh until she settles in and drifts off and putting a shirt in her crib with my scent has helped too! GOOD LUCK

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  3. Maybe try nap routine 10 minutes earlier based on how long it takes him to fall asleep because the 1.5 max is supposed to include time it takes to fall asleep

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  4. OOO and I found this article http://www.smartparentshealthykids.com/blog/?p=975

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh I also bookmarked this one ;O)
    http://www.babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=64168.0

    ReplyDelete