Moms, thanks for all the help so far. I'm sitting here after getting my 4.5 month old back to sleep for the third time in an hour, while also putting my 2.5 year old to bed. (And btw, the way I put him back to sleep the last two times tonight was a hand through the crib slats.) Last night is a blur; he woke up every hour or more. And then when I thought he was back to sleep and began to drift off, he was crying again. I know I need to sift through all the advice and "methods" and try to stick with one that seems to work for me. The problem is that when I had my first, I was a die hard devotee of Dr. Sears, who is pro cosleeping and against any kind of training to sleep. It worked for me then, but its not working for me now, but I have so much guilt about not treating this baby the same way.
Anyway, my question is very specific. I know the constant awakening is a possible sign of overtiredness. I know day time naps are important to nighttime sleep. I even sat by the crib today for the afternoon nap and put him back to sleep three times, for a total of two hours (big improvement!) But I have a problem with my schedule. My almost three year old goes to school from 9-11:30 every day, and the school is 25 minutes away. I re-enrolled him for the year before we closed on this new house, because I wanted to save him a spot and I didn't find the kind of preschool I wanted near the house anyway. He receives three types of EI service, which he gets through the school, and its a wonderful school, but I didn't realize how bad that schedule would be for the baby. Some days he even has therapy after school, so us getting home is more delayed. I thought baby could nap in the car to and from and then in the afternoon and that would be fine. Because the school is too far for me to go home and come back, I have been doing errands, a strollercize class, and I was going to join a gym with childcare. I wear baby or put him in the stroller for all of this, but I can see he's not getting good, restorative sleep that way. Have you ever been in the situation that your baby had to "nap on the go" for a period of 4-5 hours? I was thinking maybe I should forget the gym and choose a time, like 9:30 or 10:00 every day, to walk as fast as I can for as long as I can to help baby sleep for as long a morning nap as possible. Does this sound like a good compromise? I am now feeling so stressed out about this schedule, but there's nothing I can do about my older son's school and therapies this year. Also, a babysitter for that long every day is out of the question. Thanks for listening and sorry if I am rambling or incoherent, I have never been so tired.
My second child did nearly all of his napping in the van or the stroller. I wasn't going to have my three year old sit around all afternoon so his brother could nap. We went to the zoo, the Y, the mall etc and the baby napped in the stroller or we drove to a park where I could watch park near the playground and the baby could sleep in the van while my older son played.
With our son, we (I) often did "nap runs" in the car .... For 2-3 hours at a time. It worked, he slept, and I learned a lot of back roads through multiple counties.
I'm sure you've never been so tired, mom. You're putting ALL the responsibility for him sleeping onto yourself.
The reason I recommended putting your hand through the slats is because you don't seem able to leave him alone when he cries. What this method is, is a way to prevent you from picking him up, talking to him, doing anything other than letting him know you are there. BUT, you are STILL trying to put him to sleep.
Stop trying to put him to sleep. It is HIS job to put himself to sleep. It's called self-soothing. You are only attributing this to him being "overtired". It's not just that. He doesn't know how to fall asleep on his own. He's used to YOU putting him to sleep. He wakes up every hour because he wants to know that you are still there. And when he wakes up, even if he sees you are there, he wants you to put him to sleep again because he doesn't know how.
The only way to change this is to MAKE him do it. That means that you do nothing. You allow him to fuss and cry. If you want to sit there with him, with your hand through the slats, do it. Or, stay in your bed and let him get through this on his own.
You have trained him to depend on you. You have given him positive reinforcement for every cry, every whimper, even waking. You keep making all kinds of reasons in your mind why he is doing this - day schedules, needing more naps, etc, while you continue to tie this child to you, even sitting with him during naps. NOTHING is going to change while you are preventing him from learning how to sleep on his own.
This is hard stuff. Either bite the bullet and let him learn by stepping out of the picture in trying to get him to sleep, or put him back in the bed with you.
I feel really sorry for you, but this is all your making and if you don't learn that you are creating this problem, you're going to end up having a wreck in the car from falling asleep at the wheel, or in the hospital due to exhaustion. Decide once and for all if you are going to cosleep or if you are going to stop bailing him out from learning to put himself to sleep.
It's not the fact that you are out with him, it's all the activity surrounding the outings. Can you find a nice quiet place to stroll or sit in? Like a library or a park/greenway? Also ,with all this activity, a much earlier bedtime is a must. Like 7:00 at the latest or even earlier if it's needed.
I'm a crib person. I believe in restorative, consolidated sleep, for everyone. I also don't believe in CIO. But I do believe you can help teach your baby to sleep peacefully. I do believe in sleep training, with sleep training meaning actually helping them learn to sleep, not just letting them CIO. Pantly and the baby Whisperer have tons of great ideas on how to go about this. But first thing is first, I do think you need to find some compromise for baby. baby has needs too. It can't all be about your 2 year old. In fact, since your oldest is only 2, can you move to a 2 or 3 days of school schedule? I make baby sleep on the go 1 or 2 days a week, but 5? No way. What I do is try to make sure baby gets at least 1 quality nap a day, so even when we have outings, she gets a good nap. We are off on an outing today, but she will get her morning nap, and then we will leave. But most days, we do out outings between naps. And I do get babysitters to let baby nap when the other kids have classes and things.
And yes, forget the gym. You need to consolidate that morning nap. it really will help with everything else.
btw, the constant awaking isn't a possible sign of overtiredness. Your baby is overtired momma. You need to set the conditions for him to sleep, and learn how to sleep. He is right at the age when they learn how to do this. This means that you will need to be there for him. I pick up and put down. So when baby cries, I pick baby up. When baby calms down, I say my good-night and put baby down. I may spend an hour doing this, or only 5 minutes, but usually within about 3-5 days, baby gets it.
Also, I was thinking about this the other day. You need to try the 5 minute startle. If baby is waking after 1 sleep cycle (45 minutes), go to baby's room about 5-10 minutes before you think he will wake, and make a slight noise. This will cause him to roll over and go back to sleep. I just open the door and close it (our door squeaks). You can do this for naps and at night.
Also, hang in there. 4 months is a hard age. They are really learning about sleep now. So be consistent, and just remind yourself that it will get better soon.
One thing you could try to do is get baby on a nap schedule that corresponds with the car. I have a friend who does this with her kids (she has 5). So wake baby in the morning and get baby on a schedule where nap time will be 5-10 minutes after getting in the car. If you do it right, your son will associate getting placed in the car with taking a nap.
He will adapt to sleeping on the run. They really do not get settled into a schedule until around six months old. At night, quit running in every time he makes a noise. Sometimes you perceive it as being awake, but they are just fussing. Let him fuss. Try a pacifier if he cries. Second babies and all others must adapt. Your sons schedule is set. So be it. Actually babies that learn to sleep on the run are much more flexible and easy going.
Our son was known as the "sleepless baby" even at the daycare center. He would spit out pacifiers, so we all just figured out that pacifiers were a waste of time and money for us. Funny thing, it was the daycare center's request to take the pacifiers back home and not bother with them, since he didn't use them anyway, that made us just throw them in the garbage. Nothing worked for him except country line dancing. We'd turn on the radio, the country channel that used to have music videos, or sing to him and hold him while we did make-shift country line dancing moves. He seemed to love the mini dips and rhythmic movements and would fall right off to sleep. You haven't lived until you've woken up at 3:00AM to dance with your baby. (lol) When he got bigger, it was a lot more difficult to ease him into his crib without him waking up, so....we did wind up co-sleeping. I hated it! We took turns sleeping in his room with him. DH loved it and MIL only slept with him 2 times. We decided to sleep in his room rather than him sleeping in ours, so it would be easier to get him to sleep alone when the time came and for the other reason. (Use your imagination.) DS did wind up wanting to sleep by himself later on, but MIL wasn't ready for it since she feared him kicking his covers off when it was cold and keeping the covers on when it was hot. She didn't seem to understand that I would check on him everytime I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. (That's a lot.) We tried to get him to sleep alone again, but this time it was DH.....DH got so used to sleeping with him, that he couldn't sleep with out DS.....We had to get DH to learn to sleep on his own. (lol) Good luck and do what makes you and your baby happy.
By-the-way....Most gifted children were "sleepless babies." Their minds are very active, so it is hard for them to sleep. They will sleep when they need it.
Bookworm-
We used Ferber, it worked for us.
At this point, I think you probably need to step away from some or all of this in order to be effective.
Enlist parents, friends, neighbors, sitters, volunteers to mind the older one from Thurs after school- Tuesday after school. Take yourself and the little one out of the picture. Book into a hotel/ motel, a friends guest room etc. During this time, do nothing but sleep and help baby learn to self soothe. Give up your errands, gym, housework, chauffering, etc.
It will take 4+ days to train both of you, if you are consistent. Once you've got that down pat, you can work on tweaking the sleep schedule to meet your collective needs by shifting the start and end times by 15-20 minutes a day until you are in a happier place.
Good luck to you and yours,
F. B.
We have done a few days here and there of naps on the fly, but it messes my little one up.
You should try to get sitter during nap time, so a good nap is achieved. A nap in bed for 20 mins is actually better than a nap in the car for longer.
Slow your schedule down, extras-stop them. Unless it is not during at time of sleep.
I live in a condo, so even though my sons school was much closer, if my little one was sleeping then I would ask a neighbor to watch her, but his school was only 5 mins..
Take it one step at a time... breath, you will find a schedule that will work.
I would forget the gym for now and get your exercise at home while he naps. I've been doing the Gillian Michaels DVDs while my little guy is asleep and it's working out great. It's really important that he learns how to sleep well so he can develop good sleep habits. It's OK to slow down. Ultimately, it's better for you and baby.
If my third didn't learn how to nap on the fly we would have never gotten anything done!
I am also a fan of Dr. Sears. While he is against sleep training, he is not against finding things that work for your family.
http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/parenting/sleep-problems...
None of my kids slept in our bed unless they were sick or having a really bad night. They all have their own cribs and slept most of the time at night in them. Only 1 was actually in our room, more because of space in the house then anything else. The other 2 were in their own rooms that were right next to ours. I counted once and it took 12 steps to get from my bedside to theirs. It takes just the same for the one that was in our room because of where the crib fit.
Are you certain he's actually awake and not just fussing in his sleep? I had a couple of noisy sleepers that turned into sleep talkers when they got bigger. I learned to not jump up at every whimper and fuss. So long as their noises didn't escalate to something obviously awake and needing something and only lasted a minute or so I let them be. First few nights I would sit in bed and listen to make sure they didn't esculate. After that I would wake, listen and doze back off, waking if it got louder and obvious they weren't going back to sleep. This is far from any of the sleep training of crying it out etc! They weren't awake and needing something. They were simply being vocal while resettling.
Take a look at his comfort in the car seat and stroller. Are you using an infant seat in the stroller or are you using the seat in a full flat position. We never used an infant car seat, instead we used a convertible seat that was rear facing. When we put them in a stroller they were flat and later at a slight incline as the got older or we wore them in a sling. Maybe he doesn't care for the type of carrier you are using to wear him in. He can't sleep because he's not comfortable.
Instead of running errands, find a nice quiet parking lot and try to get both of you some sleep first. I can't count the times I'd do something like that when we had to run places that was too far to just run home in between. I'll never forget when I had to run my husband into his work office after he had a really bad accident. He could not drive himself. I put my oldest in the back of the minivan, we had the third row down so he had lots of space. He had a brand new Thomas the Tank "take a long" playset to play with and some special snacks. I nursed his little brother, got him asleep and carefully buckled him back in to his carseat and reclined a seat and rested. I couldn't fall asleep because I was in a nearby mall parking lot with a 3 year old playing in the back but I got to wind down.
Think outside the box.
I know it's insane dealing with 2 kid and not enough sleep. But it does pass. And there are ways to help without going against your very instincts, ignoring them, letting them cry until they simply pass out from frustration and exhaustion. You can't let him be because nature tells you not to!! Don't fight with nature. Instead look for ways to work with it.
