Otherwise entitled ‘Help, I seem to be kind of letting an eight week old call the shots’.
I don’t know what I really thought having a singleton after multiples would be like in the nitty gritty how-things-go department. Actually, I think I kind of just assumed it would go like a ‘now with a streamlined 50% less baby!’ version of the twins. That it would be easier.
It is easier, indisputably. But it isn’t what I expected.
Yes, it means that there may have been a few wee purchasing inefficiencies in preparing for the onslaught. The twins were Spewers. This baby is happy to keep her food on the inside. Accordingly, I have a shelf full of unused spew-catching cloths, all pink of course. Vomit fashion matters.
I also have a drawer full of unused bibs for the same reason, because at her worst, Naan started the day with five and I peeled the dripping layers off like a stinky onion as the day progressed. I have three tins of unopened formula in my pantry. I’ve talked about this one already, but I REALLY didn’t expect to not need those suckers.
..and I seem to have a baby that sleeps in my bed.
Well, at least from the hours of ungodly am until daylight. We start the night with good intentions, really we do.
I don’t like co-snoozing, or in my case co-arm-flung-to-side-until-numb-babe-carefully-away-from-all-blankets-and-pillows-and-bed-absolutely-slope-free-intermittent-bursts-of-REM-interspersed-with-obediently-poking-areola-into-gob-at-nuzzling-request. But it’s the only way I’ve been able to cope.
Bhaji wants me and only me all the time and the love, it is slightly overwhelming.
She’s in a sling all day, too, stuck on my person and yet again calling the shots. Unless unconscious, she yells at me if I dare put her down. She yells at pretty much anybody else if they dare pick her up. Saag and Naan, as I recall, due to the package deal nature of their arrival, got used to being picked up by just about anybody and were rarely displeased. They also had to suck it up and like their rockers.
Coming back to my point, I need that REM sleep.
Nevermind that the dreams are mostly about inadvertently smothering my child.
It’s just that while Saag and Naan slept in their own beds without fussing, this babe isn’t having any truck with that idea. Not when the booby pillow lady is available.
Help, Internet, I seem to be co-snoozing and it bothers me. It’s that whole slightly-higer-risk-of-accidentally-smothering-my-child-to-death-thing.
Also, good sleep is hard to come by when your arm feels like it might fall off at any moment and somebody is sucking on your chest.
G
February 5, 2012 at 11:51 am
Only sympathy, no advice. I mean, my baby is still in bed and he’s almost one. My only thought is that possibly you are letting this baby nibble at the breast rather than eat a full meal in the middle of the night/early morning. Sometimes we do better when I sit bolt upright and make sure that the dumpling is eating at both breasts (even waking him multiple times to make sure he’s full) before he dozes back to sleep.
February 5, 2012 at 12:01 pm
Elizabeth slept in our bed because otherwise no one slept at all. I just did the research on how to do it safely and never stopped trying to put her in her crib, but it took almost eight months. Maybe she’d like a sidecar sleeper? In your bed but not really in your bed?
February 5, 2012 at 12:06 pm
Ha. See I can’t help you there at all because I am a confined path-of-least-resistance parent. With twins, as you say and as I can imagine, getting them to suck a few things up would be least resistance. With a singleton the whole effort/reward equation is different and, as you’ve already discovered, more in favour of carrying and cosleeping. I’m sure you’ll get lots of tips but I am going to jump in first and warn you that everything I tried the first time around made things worse, not better, so if you’re going to try you need to be prepared to go through some error (although I gather some luck out with babies who are more adaptive and cooperative).
The one thing we did which worked wonders and which is the ONLY trick we went with second time around and which I don’t know if it would work in your house was dividing the night into two shifts of about five hours each. That way each adult gets five hours of uninterrupted sleep (plus some interrupted hours) and this makes things very doable until they quietly grow out of it.
Bea
February 5, 2012 at 12:07 pm
Oh, you need to set up a second bed as far away in the house as possible.
February 5, 2012 at 2:02 pm
I think K slept on me in bed for the first 3 months, and then over the next month DH got her used to the bassinet/crib while I went back to work. It helped that her little tummy was finally getting filled with big bottles of pumped milk, and was even better once we started high-cal solids at 4 months.
I’m betting this is a phase she’ll grow out of.
February 5, 2012 at 9:57 pm
“Also, good sleep is hard to come by when your arm feels like it might fall off at any moment and somebody is sucking on your chest.” this sums up my life right now. My Little Bear just turned 8 months though, eats ~very~ well & anything you put in front of him & starts off in his own bed every night. I am at a loss. With our 1st she spent every night from the hellish 6 week growth spurt to 14 weeks old with us & then transitioned to her own room. She was still up once or twice a night until a year old, but actually went back to sleep. This one has decided that after a 2hour boob snack & doze fest that 4 or 5 am is just his wake up & play time. Which is not cool. I just keep telling myself that they eventually grow out of whatever the heck is making them do this & they eventually sleep in their own room again. Just keep starting off the night with the same routine & cross your fingers that it’s a quick phase. Co-sleeping is ~not~ comfortable for me either- and the lack of REM is about a month old- I think some days he is a mini- interrogator in training- and a damn good one!
Good luck- at the very least you are not alone…
February 6, 2012 at 12:31 am
Bin there!
I borrowed a cot that was the same height as my bed – which, come to think of it, I still have – and took a cotside off. I shoved it up against my side of the bed, plugged the gap with a pillow or something, and spent a week grrraaaaadually accustoming H to being slid away from me and into his own zone. When he started chuntering, I could reach out and pat/sooth/retrieve. You can also get something a bit like a glorified box that goes between the pillows at the top of the bed: the idea being that the box walls fend off bedclothes and drowzy mothers.
H being a low birthweight prem male made me a tad concerned, that being the highest risk group for SIDS, and it wasn’t until a week after his first birthday that I finally evicted him into his own room. And he’s slept awfully ever since.
February 6, 2012 at 5:48 am
I wish I had something useful to add. All I can do is hope you manage to get some decent sleep soon.
February 6, 2012 at 10:13 am
I had this with every one of the three. Each time I crossed my fingers for one of those mythic sleeper throughs. Hah. I just went for the path of least resistance and co slept even with the low birth weight one and the 4 was early one ( they are different ones). Ive never been wholly convinced by he evidence of he risk once you cut out some of the other factors like smoking, alcohol etc which increase the SIDS risk. She’ll grow out of it eventually……
February 6, 2012 at 11:20 am
that is exactly how i feel about co-sleeping.
in our case, the i-must-be-on-you problem was mostly for naps. (and i mean ON me — next to me in bed Would Not Do.) i thought i might die, because i wasn’t getting any sleep at night, either. at 10 weeks i took some good advice and 1) started putting him down after 90 minutes, whether or not he looked tired, and 2) let him wail a bit. he is a cry-to-sleep baby, not the sort that gets more awake, but it made me feel like a monster. however, i was a monster without an attached symbiotic buddy, which was a relief.
for night time, sugar was always the one to get him in and out of the bassinet and later the crib. i think it was helpful that the person putting him down wasn’t all milky, but we usually put him down asleep in those days anyway.
February 7, 2012 at 12:59 pm
No advice… just sending good sleep thoughts your way! I am still snuggling a 12 month old each night, and know how the sleep deprivation feels.
February 8, 2012 at 6:04 am
At my daughter’s 3-day checkup with her pediatrician, the doctor said, “She’s sleeping with you, right? I want her in bed with you, sleeping on or next to Mom, so that she can breastfeed easily all night.” The doctor taught us that Hubby and I should have separate covers and that Baby should sleep with *me,* not her dad. She’s been with us ever since and she’s now nearly 9 months old.
We love having her with us. It’s the only way I can handle being at work all day, because I know I get to hold her all night long. Her dad loves seeing her smile and laugh in her sleep because she’s so happy with us. She eats about five or six times a night, even still, and I get excellent sleep because she’s right there. I just latch her on and go back to sleep. Baby *rarely* opens her eyes from 7 pm til 6 am because she’s got food right there. She certainly lets me know when she wants to eat, but she’s a great sleeper. We do go to bed early because she does, but I read in bed or read the iPad or even watch tv or have a snack. We will certainly co-sleep with our future babies.
PS – not that it matters but she was also an IVF baby, which may be part of why I hate leaving her during the day so much – it took us five years to have her and I just want her with me all the time.