Night weaning = Night mare

So I’ve had a long standing wish now to stop feeding the Imp at night. Now that I dissect that wish, I realise I’d been making a fatal assumption that if he stopped feeding, he would stop waking. WRONG! In fact, not feeding makes things worse. I have been desperately trying to feed the Imp back to sleep for a few nights now and he won’t have it. He won’t feed. And he won’t sleep. I have realised I have no other tricks up my sleeve. Feed or nothing. And so, the Imp has been awake. Why was I in such a hurry to night wean? The Imp doesn’t wake for milk. He wakes simply because he wakes.

And the dad’s point of view…

can be found here…

Shhh…My Child Is Sleeping (in My Bed, Um, With Me)

Shhh…My Child Is Sleeping (in My Bed, Um, With Me)

“In most of the world, sleeping next to your child is a necessity. But in the West, the practice is widely frowned on by grandparents, friends and the medical community. Still, studies have shown it is more common than many people think.”

Perhaps the Imp is a dolphin?

Insomnia Mania: Newborn Mammals Don’t Sleep for a Month

Colds and other nasties

Just when you think it can’t get any worse, along comes a cold.  Loudboy was up all last night, coughing and snotting all over me (the downside to breastfeeding is that I am the comforter of choice, leaving his dad to roll over and try and get a bit of sleep in between coughing fits).  Now, other mums speak of the glories of Medised, which helps clear up snot and knocks babies out for hours.  Unless you’re Loudboy, who is immune to sleep-inducing drugs.  Two large doses of Medised during the night had little effect other than a gigantic nappy explosion at about 6am.    I left him muttering and staring moodily at a rice cake.  It’s going to be a fun few days…

Don’t night wean!

And PS. Moxie says not to night wean at 9 months (a typical sleep regression time). She says wait a month. To Moxie we listen!

Ultra bad night? Chuck the clock out the window

My little travel clock that I used to have by my bed finally faded to a quiet death. It would no longer display those ungodly times containing 2’s, 3’s, 4’s, 5’s as their first digit. Since that, I’ve been searching for the perfect little bedside clock. Not too big, not those monster digital clocks with LED display that set the room alight like fireworks. I have to admit also that it’s probably not high on my list of priorities, so for the moment I am clockless.

And sometimes, that’s honestly not a bad thing. You see I’m in the habit of ‘clocking’ the time of each wakeup as I get out of bed and again as I get into bed. So most times I will therefore know:

• - what times the Imp woke up
• - how long each waking was
• - and perhaps how many times he woke up (if I can still count them on my fingers)

Under the clockless system you stumble out of bed wondering was it half an hour ago when he was awake, or 4 hours ago. Sometimes you don’t have a clue. Often in the morning it’s a bit of a blur. What time did he wake up? How long was he in bed with us? Was he awake for long? I found myself in this state the other day not really knowing what kind of night we’d had. So I analysed how I felt … hmm, strangely not too bad. After a coffee, half decent even. So conclusion - the night was not that bad.

Had I been under the clock system, I may have overanalysed the number and length of wakings and concluded I should be tired, therefore I would feel tired if you see what I mean. The mind is very impressionable with these kinds of things.

So in summary, hurl your clock out the window and get a better nights sleep without it.

Going pear-shaped at a year (or so)

Thanks to Amber for pointing this out:

http://moxie.blogs.com/askmoxie/2007/10/55-week-sleep-r.html

So we have a good reason why our nights are really, really awful at the moment.  This reason makes a lot of sense to me: Loudboy is definitely starting to work out that things follow on from each other (mainly that bedtime = milk!).  Any tips for getting through on hourly wakings or worse?

Slings and things

OK, not technically a sleep issue, but many mums find their babies sleep much better in a sling.  I have a lovely Didymos sling that has been stuffed down the side of the bed for months since Loudboy got too big for the front carry position.  Last week I dug it out, took a deep breath, swung him over my shoulders and tried the back carry.  A bit tricky to tie when he was wriggling about, but he loved it.  And he fell asleep in a very cute way with his head against the back of my neck.  I’m going to try it more often: it’s great in London but not so good if you have lots of shopping to carry.  Any suggestions of failsafe back-carry positions for wrap slings are welcome!

Slowly slowly wins the race…..

Monkey boy turned 20 months on 25th september and with it came sleep!

We’re by no means the model sleeping family yet. We still sit with him until he falls asleep and he still wakes for a second at around midnight to come in with us but other than that he is managing 7.30-7.30 most days.

I am a beacon of hope that even if you don’t ‘do’ anything that your little one will grow into sleep. Whether you can wait that long is another matter! If someone had told me at 4 months that it would be another year and a half before we had anything like a good night i’d have crumpled in a heap on the floor.

The truth is though that you get through it relatively unscathed, you learn to function with less sleep and the 4 or 5 night wakings start to fade from memory.

Our next hurdle in a few months is to move from co-sleeping to his own little bed. I hope I can hang on to my positivity and know that it’ll be ok no matter what but I have a feeling i’ll be on here tearing my hair out! watch this space…….