My eyes are sore, red and burning. What does that indicate?
Here are some options – you guess:
(1) Jeremy and I enjoyed a bottle of wine last night
(2) I decided to stay up and read a book until 2am
(3) Jude decided to not sleep…again OR
(4) Wild night out with the ladies
Well since I have an 8 month old little boy and it was a Sunday night (school night as we say) pretty sure you guess right – NUMBER 3 is the correct answer!
Seriously Jude, remember that Sleeping Through The Night thing (STTN)? Yeah let’s go back to that, if you could do it when you were 8 weeks old certainly you can handle it when you are an 8 month old!! Please Please Please! Mommy looks and feels like hell today.
Okay, to my fearless readers I need your help! Here is our routine now and how he usually sleeps.
We do a late bed time – I have issues with putting him down at 7:30 or 8 because we do not get home from work until 5:30pm, that isn’t very much Turtle time and I just can’t let him go!! Maybe that is the problem, I don’t know.
Our “Normal” Perfect, More than I can ask for Routine!!!
9pm – start routine, if it is a bath night we do bath, if not it is straight into PJ’s.
9:15ishpm – In his nursery, lights dimmed, Rockabye baby cd playing, humidifier on and bottle in mouth. He eats about 5 ounces at bed time.
9:30ishpm – he is asleep while he finishes bottle, into his crib he goes, swaddle him up. Turn off lights – shut door. He is asleep.
6:15am – wake him up for the day.
Jude’s Recent Routine from HELL!!!
Same as above! 9pm – start routine, if it is a bath night we do bath, if not it is straight into PJ’s.
9:15ishpm – In his nursery, lights dimmed, Rockabye baby cd playing, humidifier on and bottle in mouth. He eats about 5 ounces at bed time.
12am (or earlier) – wakes up screaming!!!!!!!!!!!! We go in, he is wide awake. Pick screaming baby up. Rock in glider, he falls asleep – start to lay him down in crib – SCREAMING begins again!! Pick baby up! Try feeding, changing. Falls asleep in arms. Start to lay him down – SCREAMING BEGINS AGAIN!!!
Do you see a pattern? This went on from 12am-2am this morning (see above: reason why my eyes are killing me!!)
Jeremy and I took out the big guns last night around 1:45am – time to try the dreaded Cry It Out routine. He cried for 15 minutes – I was sick to my stomach and almost in tears myself. Not good!! He never fell asleep.
2am – we give him – he comes into our bed. Not something that we want to do but what else are working parents supposed to do? We have to get up and go to work!! And Lord knows that we both need our sleep.
2am-2:15am: Jude wins – he is wide awake and laughing and playing in our bed! Seriously child!!!!!!
6am – alarm goes off. All 3 of us are exhausted.
Here I am at work – now what? We need help! Any suggestions would be great! Thank you!
Much love from your red eyed, grouchy, barely awake author;
PS – these suggestions will not be used until after this weekend . Jeremy’s parents will be coming in on Thursday and staying with us until Sunday, no point in starting any sort of training yet! LOL Jude will probably be in our bed for the next week. Lucky Turtle. :O)
How long has he been doing this? It could be teething pain waking him up. Try tylenol before bed? I really don't have many suggestions for you as I'm struggling with the same thing myself. DS goes to bed at 8ish and sometimes wakes up to be comforted and/or fed around 11, but almost always wakes up at 12, 1, 2, 4, and 6 which is usually when we get up because he just won't sleep any more. We thought we were getting somewhere when I stopped nursing him every time. He had 2 good days and then back to bad and worse! Before I could get him down in no time, now it takes 30 mins to 1 hr to get him back down in the middle of the night.
Sorry for the lack of advice. I feel your pain. I will be stalking this blog post for answers!!!
Having btdt three times, the best advice I have for you is that he needs to go to sleep on his own. No rocking to sleep or bottling to sleep. Give him his bottle before bath so he doesn't fall asleep with it. He will likely need to cry a lot longer than 15 minutes. With Adeline, one of us would sit next to her crib while she fussed. We would rub her back now and then so she didn't feel so alone. Over time we backed away so she didn't need us in her room to fall asleep. She was older than Jude, but it worked well. Braxton we just let cry. I didn't have the same energy for him. That was a quicker process, but hard on mama. We aren't there yet with Sadie, but we've been working on letting Daddy cuddle her to sleep. Otherwise she wakes frequently wanting to nurse.
Hang in there! I know it's tough!
You have probably read my fight with this as well. Here's what we have figured out.
We put him to bed when he's tired. Period. Sometimes it's 6pm if he didn't nap well at daycare. Sometimes it's 830 if he napped late. We let him dictate bedtime.
Also… when he wakes up at night I let him fuss/cry for at least 5-w
10 minutes. We didn't do this for a long time because I hated to hear him cry… and he used to be a kiddo that only cried if there was truly something was wrong. Also going in to see what is wrong ususally make him WAY more upset than before. Picking him up made it almost impossible to put back down. He almost always settles himself back down within 5 minutes. Actually since I started this… he has yet to not put himself back to sleep. Our pedi said that unless you know something is WRONG that it inhibits the learning ability to put himself back to sleep.
Hope that helps! Good luck momma! I know we all hate to hear them cry, but remember… it's the only way they know to communicate and so it sounds worse than it is most times 🙂
This sounds strangly familiar!!! We have had the same troubles with Adler. I've done quite a bit of research on sleeping and it seems most people say routine, routine, routine! But of course our working families makes this difficult, so blah blah, blah! I'm great for 4 days Friday thru Monday when I'm off work trying to set a routine, than a work day comes and everything is wiped out!!
So we did the same thing, brought him to bed with us because he would sleep there. So we have finally caved and just start off the night with him in our bed. I've read some interesting things about co-sleeping and it feels good and natural with us and we sleep better. I do miss cuddling with Aaron but we've worked around it (hahaha obviously since I'm knocked up again!), even if it's just holding hands in the middle of the night.
So it wasnt our original plan, but once we embraced the co-sleeping system, we've all slept better! It's nice to not have to get up and go to his crib to make sure he is breathing and not wedged under his mattress or tangled up in his blankets. It's something that has worked well for us. It is a personal decision but one that's good to consider especially if your doing it some already. Read about it some first tho! Have to make sure your bed is safe and no one is heavily medicated…obviously! Good luck!!
Hearing your child scream is the most heart wrenching sound in the world. If you are sure that he is fine then let him scream. I always let Rex cry for 20 minutes before I check on him (unless I truely think he's not ok and mom's intution is normally all you need). If his crying is still screaming I go in and check on him. If his crying is calming down then I wait another 10 minutes before checking on him. It's hard to listen to but watch the clock because a minute will feel much longer than it is. Normally he falls back to sleep without me even having to get out of bed. For us it was never an option to have Rex in bed with us because we didn't want to have to break that habit later and there were many days that he went to work exhausted and I barley functioned throughout the day. The good news about suffering through a few bad nights is the result of not having them much after that. The only time Rex wakes up now is when he is sick or teeth. Plus as a bonus the transition to his 'big boy' bed should be much easier. Rex even knows now that he is not suppose to get out of his bed unless one of us comes and gets him. This worked for us but it might not work for you guys but I hope you try different things and get it figured out soon!
Thanks for all the great advice. Last night we started with earlier bedtime, seems to be working again tonight. Fingers crossed!