Occasionally I come across a blog in which someone is discussing X problem, and I think it is so completely obvious that Y is the solution that either (a) the blogger has a serious blind spot or (b) I do as a reader.
So this is when I say to you lovely people, what the fuck am I overlooking here?
My sleep issues are so entwined with Tiny Boy's that sometimes it's hard for me to tell WHO is having a bad night. The quick recap:
1. Sleep has ALWAYS sucked for Tiny Boy. Like, we've gone stretches when he woke every 40 minutes all night long. (Thankfully that hasn't happened in a while, but I think I was awake every hour last night, some due to him, some due to the cat, some probably due to my own self.)
2. We did the whole "sleep training" thing a year ago, which resulted in a month of screaming for 40-60 minutes every night. And had absolutely no effect on night sleep, despite what all the stupid books say. That is, I am not philosophically opposed to sleep training, although it clearly is no magic bullet (and, for what it's worth, I've tried both the Ferber-type checking periodically--which just pisses him off--and the more Weissbluthian ignore-the-baby version).
3. He naps decently at daycare and finally now at home. And by decently, I mean generally 2-2.5 hrs Occasionally he has a glitch at home when he skips a nap.
4. He is able to put himself to sleep (see #2) without maternal intervention at the beginning of the night and at naps but not if he wakes in the middle of the night (or in the middle of a nap).
5. Right now he is drinking MORE rather than less in the middle of the night, which might have to do with the fact that we haven't nursed since Sunday. While I'd like him to not need any bottle in the middle of the night, I really do think some kids--mine--is hungry. I've said it before, but LG started sleeping through the night magically the minute she switched from Neocate to real food. That was age 2, and she was about 5 pounds bigger than Tiny Boy is right now.
6. The past few days he has also resisted bedtime--it's been as late as 10:00--and required me to sit in the rocking chair until he falls asleep, which is a totally new thing (again, maybe this is the weaning?). If I don't sit in the rocker, he does stupid shit in the crib which results in his leg getting stuck in the bars and him screaming and then he really does need help.
7. It occurred to me over the weekend that I used to take prenatal vitamins and I used to take massive amounts of B vitamins, due to both b12 deficiency and MTHFR. Such issues are linked to both INSOMNIA and MIGRAINE both of which I'm dealing with at the moment, although frankly the latter could be caused by the former. So I'm vitamin-ing myself again
8. It also occurred to me that I used to do acupuncture and that was a nice relaxing thing, when I wasn't being starved to death, so I called up acu #1 who got me in and listened to me cry and stuck some needles in my head and it would have been great except then I had to go to work and nonstop meetings/class for 5 hrs.
9. I think I am going to put Tiny Boy back on Gentlease toddler formula, at least for his evening bottle, in an effort to beef up his caloric intake. I hate the stuff, but it really doesn't compare to the oat/rice milk combo (with a dash of coconut oil for fat) in terms of calories and such.
10. Acu #1 suggested craniosacral therapy for Tiny Boy. I suppose I have very little to lose other than some money and time. I tried it for myself about 8 (?) years ago and it fucked me up so I'm somewhat reluctant, but she knows some good people who've done it on kids for a very long time, and, yeah.
I think that's all. Tell me: what is my big obvious blind spot here?
*
And as a Yom Kippur gift for myself (ha!) I am leaving the kids with my mother and checking into a hotel for a night.
So this is when I say to you lovely people, what the fuck am I overlooking here?
My sleep issues are so entwined with Tiny Boy's that sometimes it's hard for me to tell WHO is having a bad night. The quick recap:
1. Sleep has ALWAYS sucked for Tiny Boy. Like, we've gone stretches when he woke every 40 minutes all night long. (Thankfully that hasn't happened in a while, but I think I was awake every hour last night, some due to him, some due to the cat, some probably due to my own self.)
2. We did the whole "sleep training" thing a year ago, which resulted in a month of screaming for 40-60 minutes every night. And had absolutely no effect on night sleep, despite what all the stupid books say. That is, I am not philosophically opposed to sleep training, although it clearly is no magic bullet (and, for what it's worth, I've tried both the Ferber-type checking periodically--which just pisses him off--and the more Weissbluthian ignore-the-baby version).
3. He naps decently at daycare and finally now at home. And by decently, I mean generally 2-2.5 hrs Occasionally he has a glitch at home when he skips a nap.
4. He is able to put himself to sleep (see #2) without maternal intervention at the beginning of the night and at naps but not if he wakes in the middle of the night (or in the middle of a nap).
5. Right now he is drinking MORE rather than less in the middle of the night, which might have to do with the fact that we haven't nursed since Sunday. While I'd like him to not need any bottle in the middle of the night, I really do think some kids--mine--is hungry. I've said it before, but LG started sleeping through the night magically the minute she switched from Neocate to real food. That was age 2, and she was about 5 pounds bigger than Tiny Boy is right now.
6. The past few days he has also resisted bedtime--it's been as late as 10:00--and required me to sit in the rocking chair until he falls asleep, which is a totally new thing (again, maybe this is the weaning?). If I don't sit in the rocker, he does stupid shit in the crib which results in his leg getting stuck in the bars and him screaming and then he really does need help.
7. It occurred to me over the weekend that I used to take prenatal vitamins and I used to take massive amounts of B vitamins, due to both b12 deficiency and MTHFR. Such issues are linked to both INSOMNIA and MIGRAINE both of which I'm dealing with at the moment, although frankly the latter could be caused by the former. So I'm vitamin-ing myself again
8. It also occurred to me that I used to do acupuncture and that was a nice relaxing thing, when I wasn't being starved to death, so I called up acu #1 who got me in and listened to me cry and stuck some needles in my head and it would have been great except then I had to go to work and nonstop meetings/class for 5 hrs.
9. I think I am going to put Tiny Boy back on Gentlease toddler formula, at least for his evening bottle, in an effort to beef up his caloric intake. I hate the stuff, but it really doesn't compare to the oat/rice milk combo (with a dash of coconut oil for fat) in terms of calories and such.
10. Acu #1 suggested craniosacral therapy for Tiny Boy. I suppose I have very little to lose other than some money and time. I tried it for myself about 8 (?) years ago and it fucked me up so I'm somewhat reluctant, but she knows some good people who've done it on kids for a very long time, and, yeah.
I think that's all. Tell me: what is my big obvious blind spot here?
*
And as a Yom Kippur gift for myself (ha!) I am leaving the kids with my mother and checking into a hotel for a night.
Tiny Boy sounds like my son in the sleep department...My son wasn't breast fed, so the weaning doesn't come into play, but he is currently almost 23 months old and up until about a month ago was waking up at least every 2 hours at night to have a bottle (that made it about 36 oz of milk between 8am and 6am). I was at my wits end and the doctor told me that the bottles and milk were impacting his system and his sleep and that we had to stop. Now, my son is also a screamer. We co-sleep for the most part. So now he gets a sippy cup of milk (he eats next to nothing during the day so I still feel a little guilty) at bedtime and one four hours later (around midnight). That way, I know he's not hungry per se, but using the sippy cup has decreased his dependence on the sucking to fall asleep, so he drinks the milk, turns over and sleeps (4 hours at the first stretch and 6 hours at the second). I was literally crying in the am because of exhaustion, so while he's not "sleeping through the night," I'll gladly take the change. It took about a week of him crying, screaming, slapping me, waking up all night, etc for him to get with the program, but it's worth it now. I also have a 6 year old and had to get the baby on a better schedule before school started...Good luck, I can understand your pain.
ReplyDeleteIs Tiny Boy in his own room now? I think earlier you said you moved him but can't remember, Erin
ReplyDeleteYes, he is.
ReplyDeleteHe's been in his own crib for a year and his own room since maybe June?
The house is so small that there is nowhere I can't hear him, except the garage.
Ok, you asked.
ReplyDeleteLong time lurker here.
Sorry if this sounds blunt, but it doesn't seem that you really followed sleep training correctly. I read ALL the books. We code to go with Ferber, followed it to a T, and it worked. Don't stop reading.
When you do sleep training you have to commit. That means no more codleeping, no more nursing, rocking, etc.
I have read posts where you say things like " we did sleep training, then I brought into bed at 2 am". It won't work like that. Once you start that's it. You need to really read Fetber all the way through.
Also read Bedtiming--it covers which ages are good/bad for sleep training. It will be more challenging since your son is so old but you might have another window where you can try it.
Been there: thanks for your comment. I'm assuming you're not a single parent. I'm assuming your kid isn't in the first percentile for weight. I'm assuming your kid didn't have chronic health issues. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know you...
ReplyDeleteI *did* sleep train my son, insofar as I let him go to sleep on his own, in his own bed, without any intervention from me. And, as I said, it took a month of listening to him scream for 40+ minutes at a stretch and then he'd wake up about 20 minutes later and we'd do the whole thing over again. But I did it. For a MONTH.
So if you think that sleep training covers ALL SLEEP ALL THE TIME, I suppose you're right, I failed. And while I know I asked for someone to point out the obvious here, I didn't really ask for a lurker to tell me I need to commit to listening to my kid scream for hours in the middle of the night when I literally have not slept more than 4 consecutive hours in almost two years and most nights it's less than that. I've *tried* letting him cry at night; it means everyone loses more sleep.
What I'm asking for is not what to do but what I'm not seeing because I can barely function anymore.
I think vitamins sounds like a good idea - have you checked out kelp - you may be short on iodine? i take us to the chiropractor it helps us with a lot of things including sleep.
ReplyDeletealso check elemental magnesium - OxyTech thru dulwhich health.
@been there: You really got to me. Kept thinking about your comment while not sleeping last night.
ReplyDelete1. Sleep training does not mean the same to all people. And it does not necessarily mean "crying it out"...and there are many versions of that as well. If the goal of sleep training, whatever, is to have a kid learn to put himself to sleep, I've done it. If you consider that I've taken a baby who co-slept and nursed round the clock and is now a night-weaned, sleeping in his own room, putting himself down at night guy? Umm, I did it. It's just slow going.
2. Kids wake at night. All humans wake at night. So I don't really expect that my son not make noise in the night. But he makes a TON of noise, not necessarily to get me out of bed, that's just how he is (i.e. I heard him around 5 and 6 but did nothing and he's still asleep) but I'm such a light sleeper that he wakes me.
3. On that: one little baby noise and I'm UP, not just a light waking but heart-pounding anxiety sort of awake. Maybe I've got my own issue going on (high cortisol?) but there's no way I can or will listen to my son cry at night. That doesn't mean I'm not committed to helping him sleep; it just means I'm not committed to YOUR WAY of helping him sleep.
4. I really do welcome comments. But like I said, I don't want to be told what to do from someone who never commented before, in a very judgmental way. What I'm looking for is, like I said, blind spots, reasons that you can think of that my son is such a poor sleeper (why he wakes), which is NOT the same as what to do to get him to stop waking me. He is SO much better than he used to be. But progress is a slow thing.
@bun. Kelp? Nope. Interesting. Will look into it.
I honestly don't think you've missed anything. I think Tiny Boy is showing normal sleep for his age but the variety of normal sleep in babies and toddlers is just very large. BlueEyes (who is 2 and a bit now) had periods where he woke every hour. I stopped trying to figure out why he did that (teething, hungry, just learned something new?) and just went with it until he slept better again. We sleep in the same bed and I nurse him whenever he wakes up (although now that I'm pregnant my supply is very low). BlueEyes also has periods in which he wants to nurse A LOT more all of a sudden, but that goes away by itself too. He never falls asleep by himself, except for at daycare but we're slowly working on that.
ReplyDeleteBUT in our house the ratio large people:little people is 2:1, which is the opposite from your situation. We take turns sleeping in in the morning as BlueEyes likes to wake up around 5 am. Also, I have no sleep issues myself, I sleep whenever I see my bed. So I totally understand your at your wit's end and I think trying to take good care of yourself (with vitamins, good food and as much sleep as you can get) is the best thing you can do. And I guess giving him a bottle of formula before bed won't hurt either. I fill BlueEyes up with whole fat yoghurt when he hasn't eaten a lot of dinner. And remember that it WILL get better. This won't last forever, it just sucks when you're in the middle of it.
Have you tried giving him melatonin? My doctor recommended it for my son at our last visit, but I haven't tried it yet...My son also has a chronic condition (epilepsy) and a hard time gaining weight, so I can relate to that too :)
ReplyDeleteNikki, I haven't yet, but it's definitely on my short list of things to ask about. What's the dosing, do you know?
ReplyDeleteThe other mom in my nanny share has a kid who does not sleep for obvious reasons. I hold my tongue in saying, oh, E slept 11 hours. It comes down to the kid. You are doing the best thing you can and without that second person to punt sleep issues onto, it helps jettison your own sleep depravation into orbit. Our expensive and mostly useless sleep coach said that three is the magic number. So my only tidbit is to extend the night into a long weekend to help recharge your batteries. Her plan invloved switching "on call" nights in three day chunks between parents. useless advice to a single parent, but three nights of sleep in a row may be enough to make a dent in your own sleep deficit.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, I'd only recommend some transition items. E sucks on a mousy. Mostly kisses, but it is part of her ritual of soothing herself to sleep. The sleep deprived nanny share kid has taken on E's baby doll to help her get back to sleep. If he's got a lovely, I missed it. So sorry if this is useless.
The neuro suggested that we start with 1.5-2 mL, but not to exceed 3mL if that didn't work...
ReplyDeleteMy son (2 in a couple of weeks) sounds like Tiny Boy in the sleep department except we weaned at 12 months and he doesn't EAT when he gets up, just cries, and needs comfort and needs holding, and wants to play with my hair/face/belly/etc... He just is this way. Its been going on too long for me to believe anything else. and FWIW, we did the classic "sleep training" for my first born and it worked by the book. The kid started sleeping through the night at 6 months and never looked back. We tried it the same way for #2, and it just never took. We've tried it multiple different times and finally decided its not working and we're not going to do it again---especially now that he's old enough that I'd be worried about him climbing out of the crib onto our hardwood floors. I'm generally an advocate of sleep training, but so many die-hard people (who probably only have one child or just naturally have good sleepers) insist that if it doesn't work you're "doing it wrong"---why would ANYTHING work for every single child in the world??
ReplyDeleteI have a partner, but I'm the light sleeper (of COURSE) and I can hear every last whimper. And once I'm up, I'm up for hours. Sometimes I wake up because I THINK I've heard him, and still---up for hours. So I totally feel you on the poor-baby-sleep-induced-insomnia thing, too.
Ana, Ambien (or something) might be helpful for the going-back-to sleep part of the night for YOU. It hasn't been a magic bullet for me, but it has helped minimize the nights I'm just awake.
ReplyDelete