Still having BAD nights!

Last night Emma woke up at 11, l:30, 3, 4, 5. It's absolutely nuts! We put her to bed between 7 and 7:30. She went down fairly easy, though I did nurse her. I don't remember if she woke up between then and 11. We went to bed at 9, and we might have gotten 5 hours of sleep total, though I'm willing to bet it's more like 4 or 4.5 hours total. I'm ALWAYS tired. I'm sure Scott is ALWAYS tired.

We have tried giving her oatmeal before bedtime in the hopes that she'll sleep longer. I don't think that works. During the day time I don't think it keeps her fuller any longer than breast milk does.

Part of me is secretly wondering if we should start adding some formula to her diet...just so we can sleep...and that makes me feel ashamed just thinking about it. Changing her diet just so that I can sleep. Seems selfish. I want her to be an all breast milk baby. I know it wouldn't hurt her to give her some formula. But it goes against what my plans were for her. It might be a swift kick to my psyche. I'm proud that I've been able to feed Emma for 5 months.

I just don't know what to do.

I know that I can't keep functioning on this little bit of sleep.

I know when we see the pedi next month he's going to say, again, she should be sleeping through the night. His suggestion was to already start sleep training her.

I still can't manage to get out of the house on time

I think I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. And it sucks because I end up taking out my frustrations on Scott, and it's not his fault. That makes me feel terrible. The last thing I want is to put a strain on our marriage because of how I'm feeling. It's not fair to Scott, it's not fair to Emma, and it's not fair to me.

I realize that this stuff is something that all parents go through and that my situation isn't any more unique than anyone else's. I do wish that there was such a thing as an easy button and that we could magically get little Emma to sleep better at night.

HO.LY COW!

HO.LY COW!

Maybe we're doing something right the past couple of nights!

We, mostly me, got the longest stretch of sleep since the day that Emma was born.

Last night, probably around 7, we started getting Emma ready for bed. Scott put her in her night time diaper and her pajamas and her sleep sack. He read her 2 short books. I nursed her and we put her to bed. She was asleep by 7:30! First off that is the earliest she's gone to bed in a LONG time. We were shocked.

She woke up at 8:30 and after Scott tried to calm her down and that wasn't working we decided she was hungry so I nursed her.

She woke up hungry shortly before 11 and I nursed her again. I was back in bed at 11. She didn't wake up again until 4am! She started fussing, and I looked at the clock and I couldn't believe what I saw, 4AM! HO.LY COW! WOW. Scott woke up and looked at me and I told him to guess what time it was, he said 12:30, but he thought it might be later than that. I told him it was 4 and he didn't believe me and had to look at the clock. She was hungry so I fed her and she went right back to sleep.

I got up at 5 and while I was setting up the pump she started waking up a bit and fussed a little bit. I didn't go into her room and she went back to sleep. She slept until 6:45 this morning! She got a lot of sleep last night!!!!!

I can't believe that we got 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep last night! That was so AWESOME!!!!!! Keep it up Emma!!!

Better sleep on the horizon?

"She needs to cry it out"

"Babies cry"

"Just let her cry"

These are just a few of the things that other parents have told me about getting Emma to sleep better at night. Yes I understand that babies cry, that is the only way they can communicate with us. But I don't think letting them cry for the sake of crying just because they wake up is the right answer for us.

We tried letting Emma 'cry it out' when she would wake up at night, all 6 or 7 times. This resulted in one very over tired baby and 2 over tired parents. When I don't get enough sleep I'm irritable, quick to anger, frustrated, stressed, on the verge of getting a migraine, on the verge of constant tears and pretty darn functionless. I'm a hot mess.

I told Scott yesterday that what we were doing or trying to do was not working. We had to find some way better to do this. I can't live like this.

We stopped doing CIO last night. We got little Emma ready for bed a little before 7:30 and with about 30 minutes of some pretty hard crying because she was over tired she fell asleep. While she was crying we were not just ignoring her either. We made sure to help her get her brain to slow down. So at 8 she finally calmed down enough that she could fall asleep.

She slept until about 11. We let her fuss for about 5 minutes, not screaming crying, and then Scott went in and calmed her down in about 5 minutes and she was asleep for another hour or so.

She woke up again at about 1:30AM I think. We did the same thing we did at 11 only after 5 minutes of calming not working I went in and nursed her. She was hungry and ate at a pretty good clip for about 6 minutes. As soon as she switched to comfort nursing I put her back into her crib and she slept for another 3 hours.

She woke up again at about 3:30. Again we went through the routine that Scott did earlier. I nursed her again after 5 minutes of soothing not working. She ate again pretty good for 4 minutes or so and, again, when she switched to comfort nursing I put her back into her crib and she slept for another 2 hours.

I was up to get ready for work at 5AM, a miracle, I heard her fuss a little bit but she didn't fully wake up so she must have been sleep fussing because she didn't keep going. She woke up again at 6AM and Scott went in and got her to go back to sleep until 6:30 where she woke up and wanted to eat again.

After that she was up for the day. I think we both got more sleep that way then we have been the past 5 nights or so. And today I feel human.

Scott's going to pay more attention to when Emma shows signs of being sleepy during the day to start getting her into a nap routine. And we're going to go through the same routine (only longer) at bed time to get her ready for bed.

I think for bedtime we're going to start by getting her ready for bed, getting her in her pajamas and night time diaper.
Then I'll nurse her for her last feeding of the day.
Then we're going to read her a book or too, keeping things calm.

We did these things last night but little girl was too over tired for it to be really effective.

If we can get her to go to sleep when she's tired instead of waiting until she's over tired all three of us should have a much much better nights sleep!

The 4 Month Wakeful Period..or Whatever this is

SUCKS!!!!

I am not going to lie and say having a 4 month old is all candies and rainbows and that I love every second of it, because I don't! This doesn't make me a bad parent or a bad person, just an honest one. I love my little girl more than anything in this universe but right now I hate night time!

Night time should be when we can put sweet little angle Emma to sleep and have some quiet time to ourselves, where we can get some mommy and daddy cuddles in and spend some quality time with each other. The past few weeks this has not been the case. It has, instead, been the return to newbornhood. I thought we left that a few months ago. Apparently it's come back to haunt us.

We HAD been down to a decent sleep pattern. Emma would go to bed between 8 and 9:30pm and sleep for about 5 hours before waking up to eat. She would then go back to sleep for 2-3 hours and get up to eat again and would go back to sleep for another 2-3 hours before she was up for the day. It worked for us.

That lasted about 7-8 weeks and I have to say it was marvelous.

The past couple of weeks, it may not have been that long but it sure feels like it has, we have been having some rough nights...rougher than when Emma was a newborn.

Here's an example of what happened last night. We put Emma in her crib without a problem at 8:30pmish. That's normal. Then Emma woke up at 10:30pm (which has been the norm for the past how ever long this has been going on, I call sleep deprivation on my part for not being able to remember). I went in and was able to just rock her until she fell back asleep, she wasn't interested in nursing. It took me 20 minutes to get her to go back down. Then she woke up at 11:45pm. Scott got up to get her to go back to sleep which he did. Then she woke up again at 12:30. I nursed her and she went back to sleep. She was awake again at 1. Scott went in this time and spent probably 40 minutes trying to get her to go back to sleep. He came back in our room and not after he'd been in bed for 2 minutes did she start up again, so It was my turn, it's 1:45am at this point. I try to calm her, which she's having none of so I resort to nursing her in the side lay position on the bed we have in her room. I fall asleep with her there. She wakes up at 3, isn't interested in eating. I can't calm her and Scott comes in and we trade off. He gets her to go back to sleep in her bouncy chair on vibrate, I discovered this at 5:00 this morning when she work up again. I nursed her and she was then up for the day.

Mind you, if she's fussing at all I'm NOT sleeping. And every time I go in to try to calm her, I offer to nurse her but if she's not hungry she gets PISSED, but I offer nonetheless, it use to fix everything.

What happened??? She did roll over by herself for the first time on Wednesday. Could this be a contributing factor? I don't know.

Did you experience this around this age? If so, what did you do?

Here's where y'all come in. Time to help a sista out!! All of you!! Family, friends, blog buddies, lurkers...advice please!!!!