Kate missed the memo

    This child hates afternoon nap time. Apparently her memo wasn't delivered that afternoon naps are balls to the walls amazing and mommy loves them just as much as she should! You see, Drew has been a rock star, A+ napper for years and still takes a 3-3.5 hour nap daily. Now, don't reach through the computer and strangle me just yet, he wakes up at 5:30 or 6am every single morning.

    Back to the younger sibling in casa de B&A. Little chicky takes a great morning nap, wakes up happy, eats a great lunch, plays with her big bro until he goes down and then has some one-on-one momma time. When it's time for her to go down its like Rocky V. She screams, cries, and squirms like a drugged circus monkey. The poor child is tired but apparently momma is just way too much fun and she wants to stay up. Holy buckets people this is exhausting and the poor child needs more sleep. What I usually end up doing is laying her down and letting her play in her crib with her lovey and sea horse. Sometimes she"ll go to sleep and other times I have to go in and rock her again.

  I always knew two kids would be different but man oh man this is night and day. Kate is still waking up through the night which is fine with us, and she's eating 6oz at night(not sure if this is relevant but just in case someone would ask later on).  Her morning nap is around 90 minutes and I try to lay her down about 3 hours after she wakes up. Please tell me she's not dropping to one nap! I'm not sure that's possible because she's awake in the morning around 6am so she's tired by 8:30am for a morning nap.

  Kate really needs to get this memo quickly because this is my time to get things in order around the house and get dinner started. Not a first world problem but any mom of 2 knows it's nice to have a few minutes to clean up and have sometime to yourself. Thoughts or suggestions?? I'm all ears, and so is Kate.



 

Let's chat about sleep

We've been here before...Drew is having some issues with sleep, and today I can barely keep my eyes open. Drew is waking up way too early in the morning, I'm talking anywhere from 4-4:45am. That darn daylight savings time screwed our house up big time. I need some suggestions on how to get him to sleep later. Brendan and I both struggling to stay awake these days.

Drew goes to bed around 7:30pm, we moved his bedtime back from 7pm thinking this might help. He did go to bed at 8:30pm this past Friday night and still woke up at 4:45am. We also gave him a big boy pillow in his crib, which he loves. Drew takes about a 2 hour nap each afternoon, from around noon until 2-2:30pm. I will add that when he goes to bed, he's tired, doesn't fight going to bed, most of his naps go the same way. Some days I have to go back in and rock him a bit, but for the most part, he does sleep well at nap time.

Our bedtime routine is bath, Pj's, milk, brush teeth, books and then bed. He sleeps with a fan on in his room for noise, doesn't seem hot or cold, but is still waking up at the butt crack of dawn...or before. When he does wake he is crying, I'm thinking because he's still tired. One of us goes into his room, rocks him, and lays him back down, sometimes this will work, most of the time he seems wide away at 4am. However, by 7am he's dog tired again. If when he woke he was content just playing in his crib, then I'd be just fine, but he literally wakes and screams and cries. We've waited it out a bit to no avail. We've tried a night light, we've tried no night light, and nothing seems to help. We've even tried bringing him into our bed and he thinks that's play time. We've tried giving him some milk while rocking and then back to bed, and still nothing.

We are both at a loss, so that's why I thought maybe just maybe someone would have a suggestion that may help. I am all ears to your suggestions. How do you get your toddler to sleep later? By later I mean 6am, I'm not asking for the world, just for him to sleep past the middle of the night. 

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

Let's talk sleep

I've talked about how Drew is not a great sleeper and how we were trying to win the sleep war in our house.  Well, I have good news to report, Drew is now consistently sleeping through the night with no wakings to eat.  After posting about sleep last time, and thinking we may never sleep at one point, Brendan and I read Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child by Dr. Marc Weissbluth. 

I got the suggestion to read this book from a fellow blogging mama and let me tell you, Bear's mom, I owe you one!  Both Brendan and I loved the book and how it approached sleep.  We then used some what Dr. Weissbluth says and our own plan of decreasing the amount of ounces Drew was eating at one time gradually, and making sure he was actually hungry.  Drew cut out his second feeding all by himself.  After getting rid of the feeding completely, for 3 nights if Drew woke up and was really awake I would go in a rock to comfort him back to sleep, after those 3 nights, if he woke, then it was rubbing his tummy and giving him his paci back while he was in his crib.  As you can see Brendan and I had a very hard time with letting Drew cry for long periods of time and this seemed to fit our family very well.  Drew did in fact cry a few times, but it was minimal and when I say minimal I mean under 5 minutes at the very most.  The one thing I wish I would have done sooner was read the book and approach Drew's sleep patterns and habits differently.  What I didn't realize is that we were creating bad habits for Drew and since stopping those habits, he has been sleeping more soundly, napping better during the day and waking a happy baby.  I know this won't be my last post on sleep, because inevitably this post with jinx myself and this pattern will cease.  I do know we will have bad nights here and there, he's a child and who doesn't for cripes sakes?!?  I do hope that we have established a new pattern and habit with Drew, a good one at that!  One that we are all feeling more rested and happier with!

Trying to win the sleep war

I know I have posted about sleep issues on my blog before, but here we are again, still battling sleep issues with Drew.  Well, just one main issue, he doesn't like to sleep, my child in fact hates to sleep longer than 5 hours at a time.  If you've ever battled sleep issues in your house you know what a bear they can be, and having other parents comment about how well their children sleep is a knife in your heart.  Although, it's completely not their fault, please don't ask me how Drew is sleeping and when I say not well, do not answer with " well you probably don't want to hear that little Jonny slept through the night at 6 weeks."  Yeah, nope didn't want to hear that.  Sleep issues are not fun and I'm sure those parents that don't have them are battling other issues of their own with their child, so that's neither here nor there.  Anyway, I digress,  my point is Drew is not a good sleeper, he was still getting up twice a night and a few months back we had decided to try to combat these issues, and we were but then he got sick, was teething and everything came to a screeching halt. Then we got lazy and it just became routine for us each to get up once a night.  Brendan would get up first, I would get up second and we alternate who got up with him in the morning.  It actually would work pretty well, but we were tired.  Drew even went for a stretch of sleeping through the night.  I thought our sleep issues may have magically gone away....I was being naive people!  That lasted all of maybe 2 weeks!  It was glorious when it did last. 

Drew has been regularly getting up twice a night and eating 6oz. of formula at each feeding.  Our routine would be to change him, feed him and back to bed.  Each feeding takes about 20 minutes.  Not a big deal right, except he's 11 months old and he was waking up at the SAME EXACT TIME EACH NIGHT.  A light bulb finally went off in my head saying, hello Abby, he's doing it out of habit, not hunger, DUH you moron!  So Brendan and I chatted and we devised our own sleep training method that I'm sure lots of other parents have used.  Combat one feeding at a time.  We decided to gradually decrease the amount of ounces during the first feeding. Decreasing 1oz every 3 nights. We feed when he initially wakes up, then if he woke up with in 3 hours of the initial feeding he would have to cry himself back to sleep, an adaptation on the Ferber method of sleep training.  If he went longer than 5 hours of sleep, then we would feed him the second feeding.  After we eliminate the first feeding, we combat the second feeding.  Our hope is that we could gradually wean him and there would be minimal crying periods. 

How's it been going you ask?  So glad you did, we've been gradually decreasing Drew on his first feeding and it's going very well.  Drew goes to bed between 7-7:30pm each night.  He takes 6oz. of formula then and he goes to sleep awake but drowsy.  We've done this for sometime and it's worked well for us.  As for the first feeding we are currently down to 3oz of formula, tonight is going to be our 8th night and Drew has cut his second feeding out all by himself.  He still wakes up for his first feeding around midnight, we change him, feed him, and rock for a few minutes, he's usually still awake and then back to bed.  He's minimally fussed a few nights but it's been maybe 30 seconds and then back to sleep.  As for the second feeding, this has been absolutely a Godsend.  Two nights ago has been the only night Drew has woken up within 3 hours of his first feeding, I let him fuss for a couple of minutes to make sure he was awake, I went in gave him his paci and his Mr. Cow, his lovey he sleeps with and he fussed for 10 more minutes and went back to sleep.  Last night again the same thing, woke up within 3 hours of his initial feeding, fussed for 30 seconds and went back to sleep.  Drew then has been sleeping until 6:30am when he wakes up for the day and wants his morning bottle.

 

   I have no idea what tonight holds, this could very well blow up in our face, who knows.  I post this because at one point I had no idea what to do, I wasn't sold on the Ferber method of sleep training, I couldn't listen to my child cry for that long, although it's had amazing results for many, many families, it just wasn't right for us at the time.  What we are doing very well may not work in the end for us either, but I post this because if it can help another stressed out mom who's child is having sleep issues to know, she's not alone, then this post was a success.  I will report back about how everything ends up.  I'm sure every night is not going to be perfect in our house, he's a baby and although we can have the best laid plans, they never seem to work out as we plan.  My hope is, that this does give Drew a better nighttime schedule because everything I've ever read says kids who sleep through the night wake up more rested and better equipped to face the day.  Who wouldn't want that for their child.  So here's to hoping our little plan works, all I can do is say a prayer, and stick with it and have a little faith!

We may never sleep

After going back and reading my post in my sleep deprived state I wanted add a few things to make a bit sense.  So this post may be a bit different if you came back to read it for a second time.

How in the world did two parents that love sleep have a child that Hates sleep? Please riddle me this? Drew still doesn't sleep through the night, never has. Yes you read that right. NEVER has slept through the night. Now my standards I don't think are too high. All I'm asking is to sleep like 7 consectutive hours, but no dice.

I've read just about every sleep book and I even caved and we tried The Feber Method last night. That didn't go over well. It ended with Drew screaming, me in tears and I just couldn't do it anymore and neither could Brendan. You might think we need to toughen up and maybe we do, but he's my child and watching him have huge alligator tears rolling down his face pleading for me to pick him up, I can't handle that. We did try it for a good hour mind you.

The problem isn't so much him going to bed, but staying asleep. He gets up twice nightly to eat and he eats 6oz. both feedings. Usually he sleeps from 7-12am and then again wakes up at 3 or 4am.  This is the feeding that is killing me.  He does not want to go back down after this feeding.  He will sleep on me, but not in his crib.  I honestly don't think he is hungry for 6 oz. every 3 hours.  This is where our next plan to cut down his first feeding comes in.  What I would utimately love to happen in my storybook world is that he would be able to sleep until 1 or 2am wake up eat 6oz. and then go back to sleep in his crib until 6am.  Oh how I would love that.....This is where our next plan comes into play.  We could be dreaming, but we will give it a shot.  Our pedi suggested this, as she told us that at Drew's age he should be able to go 6-8 hours without eating.  He goes 5-6 hours during the day, so I am confident my little guy can do this!  I have hope!

Our last plan is to gradually cut down his first feeding in oz. After that I'm at a loss. I am open to suggestions or I might just plan to sleep when he leaves for college in 17 years....

Again suggestions please!!! I'm at a loss!!!

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