Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Mommy Needs Sleep!

Oh Patrick!

Mommy needs sleep.

I feel like I can't really complain, because for most of Patrick's life, he's been a champion sleeper.  But these past few days... oh my!

Last night he woke up around 10 and then around 11 and 12 and 1 and 2 and 3... before finally sleeping until 7.  Each time he woke up he would scream until I let him nurse for about five minutes and then happily smile as I put him down awake while he quickly drifted back to sleep... for another 55 minutes.

For a kid that's been sleeping through the night, or just waking up once a night, for a long time, I am not impressed with this new pattern of waking up ever sixty minutes or so.

We started out co-sleeping with Patrick, but just like Maggie (and totally unlike Sadie) once he was six months old or so, he just didn't sleep well in the big bed.  He wanted to play.  Now when he's there he wants to roll over and wrestle with Daddy, or jump up and down and look out the window.  Sleep just doesn't happen for Patrick in the big bed.

And of course part of the problem is that I can't really let him scream and scream, since my number one fear is that he wakes Maggie up and I then have two screaming children... because I know that Maggie, once awake, will be up for at least an hour or two, bouncing and yelling and climbing the baby gates, and so I avoid that at all costs.

If I'm in the room with him, not holding him, he's screaming.  If I'm holding him but not nursing him, he's screaming.  I have a feeling that this particular 14 month old knows that he has the upper hand because Mommy will do just about anything to get him to stop yelling to keep him from waking up his sister.

I vaguely remember going through periods like this with both girls that came and went between 10 months and 18 months when they finally seemed to really start sleeping consistently through the night.  In fact, while I know plenty of people who dread those first baby days of sleeplessness, Patrick and Mae were such good sleepers originally that from the start I find myself dreading the sleeplessness that always arrives around the one year mark (give or take a few months).

On an I'm-so-thankful-for-Paul note, he got up with Mae (and Sadie who'd been woken up by her sister) at 5:27 so that I could sleep until 7 when Patrick woke up and was ready to rumble... so I did get a couple of small stretches of unbroken sleep between 3:30 and 5:20-something and 5:30 and 7:00.

But seriously Patrick, sleep through the night tonight.  It makes Mommy so much more fun to play with during the day!

When do you tend to find your little one (s) have woken up the most?  Were the first few months the most sleepless or do you dread the toddler waking more than those first days?

5 comments:

  1. We've always coslept well into the toddler years, and all my kids have gone through phrases of waking up a lot and sleeping all not, but none of them consistently slept through the night until I made a point of nightweaning them around age 2. My toddler has been waking a lot lately but that is also because we've been sick and since we cosleep, it's not tooo distubing. It's hard to really say when they wake up more, but they always woke up more when sick, teething or if on the verge of a milestone.

    Cosleeping is the only way I can deal with nightwaking, so that just works for us. I wouldn't let my kids scream at night...I just cant do it.

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  2. My firms started sleeping through the night between 6-8 months and have been pretty good since. There seems to be a patch around 2-3 for us where they have a lot of waking up though.

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  3. My firstborn went through a bad spell around 9/10 months, and we realized that it was because she was ready to drop her second nap. She just was not tired at night with that second nap. She went through another bad period around a year, which we quickly realized was because she was getting her molars. The rest of her teeth didn't bother her all the much, but the molars were bad. On a related note, Tylenol did not work for her, she needed Motrin. I hope you figure out Patrick's deal soon! No sleep is awful, especially with multiple kids (so napping during naps is not possible). Good luck!

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  4. After 10 months, my older son slept through the night, no problems. He's 3 1/2 now and is still a great sleeper. Mr. 15mo is proving much more difficult...he does the "wake up screeching" and then when we go in there, he's cuddled up fast asleep. So we go back to bed. 10 minutes later...scream. Run to check on him. Fast asleep. 20 minutes later. Fussing. Go in to check on him. Fast asleep. It drives me nuts because there is nothing I can do! I can't say "If only he'd go back to sleep things would be better" because he IS asleep. I don't know what to do with the kid. And of course the times I ignore him, he starts really crying, and I go in to see him standing up, tears streaming down his face "Why did you abandon me??"

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  5. All of my kids so far have started sleeping through the night between six and twelve weeks (on their own, no attempt at sleep training), but then gone through short periods of night waking when reaching a milestone, going through a growth spurt, sick, or teething. The reaching a milestone usually doesn't involve crying - you just hear rustling and go in to find the baby practicing rolling over, crawling, sitting up, pulling to stand, climbing out of the crib, or whatever else is the current fascination over and over. With a growth spurt they are ravenously hungry, but as soon as they have their fill they go back to sleep for the rest of the night. Sick orteething is what leads to the waking every hour and wanting comforted mode in our house. With my first I did the night's on end of comforting until the tooth came in or she was well. with the others I discovered if they were not playing, and not hungry, then often a well placed dose of Tylenol would dull the pain and let them go back to sleep for the rest of the night. I'm not someone who advocates over medicating children, but if they are uncomfortable enough to not be able to sleep, everyone is going to bemiserable the next day!

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