The other day S posted about how awesome Jude is doing at sleeping and it totally ruined it for us to have it spoken “out loud” and so because we got the comment from Michael "When I saw the title I thought, "I hope he's sleeping through the night now that he's at 3 months." And then I read the post and saw he's almost there! It gives me hope…” I knew we needed to fess up to the truth. Jude isn’t always sleeping great. In fact, I would say at least 3 days this week he has had horrible nights where he is up every hour or two ALL NIGHT LONG. In fact, Thursday night he was up so much and I was so exhausted the next day that I totally lost it. In a very not mom of the year moment, I was so tired and so very tired of his all day scream fest that I yelled at him and told him that I hated him. Of course I cried for an hour after doing that, which upset him even further. And that was only 1 of the 4 times I cried yesterday. And I know he can’t understand me (yet), but I just felt so horrible about it. Clearly, something needs to change.
So, when in doubt, I turned to Facebook and a friend of mine recommended to me Moms on Call, which is a website that you pay for and it has videos instructing you on how to set up a schedule and get your baby to sleep through the night. She actually let me borrow her log in so I could check it out. And I have to say that I was pretty impressed with it. But her log in is for the 4-12 week old program and as Jude is already 12 weeks going on 13 weeks, I don’t think it is quite right for him. We tried doing their 3 hour rotating schedule today and it was OK but I think he is old enough to be on a 4 hour schedule (meaning he eats at say 7am, plays for a bit, takes at nap at 9:30 and by 11 is up again and eating). So I think that is what we are going to do going forward. By the way though, if you are pregnant with baby number 1 or have a baby that is still little (not 12 weeks yet) then I think the program is totally worth the $30 or however much exactly it is. I think we would be on a better track with Jude at this point if we had started this all much much sooner. Some of it is a bit duh, some is a bit controversial because they do allow for a small amount of “crying it out" and some is just silly specific, like the instructions on how to give a bath. But still pretty good.
We are going to combine this with trying to get him to eat during the day and less at night. Right now he only wants to eat 2-3 oz every 2-3 hours during the day and then at night he will down 5oz bottles. So hopefully stretching out how long he goes between feedings will help. Today going 3 hours made for much better eating already. All in the name of everyone getting a good nights sleep.
-Liz
I just wanted to say hang in there, and try not to beat yourself up too much. Having a baby and being sleep deprived is frigging HARD. Your post brought me right back to the night I got so frustrated with our first son that I put him in his crib screaming and walked away for a few minutes to calm down. Which was the right thing to do. Except when I came back, I still wasn't as calm as I thought I was, and when I tried to put the side of the crib down and it wouldn't go, I freaked out completely and shook the crap out of the crib. It was a terrible, terrible moment and to this day I'm thankful it was the crib I shook and not the baby! The good news is, he's five now and our second will be 3 in July and we have two wonderful sleepers. It does get easier (even though I know those words are meaningless right now) with some consistency and work on your part as he gets a bit older. Sleep was very important in our house too. It just wasn't an option for us to be sleep deprived forever because neither of us functioned well that way for very long, so we worked hard at getting our boys to sleep through the night. Sending you lots of encouragement and hope for a good night's sleep, soon!
ReplyDeleteShannon, thank you for the lovely comment. It’s good to know that everyone has little freak outs sometime.
DeleteOh no!!! I jinxed it for you. But can I say how much I love the honesty about how hard it is and how it doesn't always go as well as we hope. Thank you too, Shannon, for being honest about the frustrations new parents have. I was recently told that my Facebook updates need to be more upbeat. Well, at 4am after being up for 21 hours straight I may not be feeling upbeat, people!!! One of my friends had a baby and felt like she wasn't sure she made the right decision after a few weeks of no sleep. She told her mom and her mom said "Oh...that's normal. I didn't like you very much for a couple months. You had to grow on me." I think we're told that we're supposed to love every moment of our newborns but the truth is that it's hard and not always fun. Let's get the truth out there and let us have our frustrations in the open.
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