Hello everyone! I am no longer the depressing, exhausted, grumpy person that I was last night. Sure enough, I woke up this morning in a much happier mood. I knew I would snap out of it. I always do!
I am so utterly frustrated and confused by Brooke's sleeping patterns. Last night she went down and 8. She woke up at 12 to eat so I gave in and nursed her. I put her back in her crib only for her to wake up at 3 and 5. At 5 I was too exhausted to care where she slept so I brought her into bed with me. I know that was bad but I had had it at that point. I don't understand why she's waking up so much. Before bed time I give her an entire container of yogurt that has cereal and fruit mixed in it. I then nurse her for an entire feeding. There is NO reason why she should be waking up hungry in the middle of the night.
In addition to being completely full before she goes to bed, I also make sure Brooke's plenty warm and that she has her music on. She listens to the same music every night and it really soothes her when she's falling asleep. What I'm saying is that I set her up completely to be successful in her sleep and suddenly she's waking up more than she ever has.
When we co-slept Brooke NEVER woke up in the middle of the night to nurse. She would sleep for 10 hours straight at least. Now that she's in her crib (and has been for almost 5 months) I think that she wakes up and doesn't understand why nobody is there. I totally set myself up for failure in that area and I'm truly paying for it now.
I can continue to make excuses for her night wakings for as long as I want. I'm wonderful at blaming her issues on teething, a cold, or some other ailment that she could possibly have. I guess the longer I do that the longer I'll be waking up with my baby all throughout the night. Ya know?
John has the next 2 nights off and he says that he'll do whatever it takes to help me to teach her that she can't nurse every 2 hours throughout the night. He says that he'll go in and take care of her so I can get some rest. She responds much better to him when he tells her to go to sleep. With me I think she thinks that I'll nurse her.. And she's right because I do.
I love my girl and I'm not trying to starve her or be unsympathetic by any means. I'm just trying to teach her to sleep without using my breast as a crutch. It's much easier to plop her in my bed and let her nurse all night as she chooses but at almost 11 months old I don't think that that is a habit we should continue to entertain.
This is just so hard! I don't understand why sleeping is such an issue lately. I'm going to continue to be patient and before we know it, hopefully we'll have this figured out. Wish me luck! If anyone has any insight on this PLEASE FILL ME IN!
1 comment:
I can very clearly remember a post I made when Marissa was 10 1/2 months old where I miserably lamented over and over and over again about Marissa's terrible, horrible, no good, very BAD sleeping patterns. Unfortunately for you, I don't think there was anything we did that fixed anything :-( Eventually she just grew out of it. I was doing the same thing you are - nursing in the middle of the night, feeling guilty if I let her cry instead of nurse her, etc. It was awful. After going through all that, I vowed that with our next child, we'll do bed/naptime VERY differently! Once we finally instituted a routine and strict bedtime (not until she was almost 18 months I think, carried out by ONLY Dan, until she got used to it) - she was sooooo ready for it! She only cried for 3 minutes the first night of it, and after that was totally fine. I think when Marissa was 11 months old, I didn't think she felt old enough to do that though. I really wanted her to understand that I wasn't just leaving her in there to cry for no reason. But I also remember the first time I let her CIO was right around that awful time, and it just about killed me. But sometimes you just can't take it anymore! Sorry to write you a book on here, but at least you know you're not alone! It's weird that it's at the exact same age though. Maybe it's just something developmentally - is she walking, or close to it? Marissa was cruising like crazy, but didn't walk til the week before 1. I don't have any magic tricks to try, but be assured she will grow out of it!
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