Knitting up the ravelled sleeve of care

[radegund]

I am decidedly frayed around the edges after a difficult couple of weeks. Oisín has adopted the habit of waking up twice or three times a night, rather than just the once. (On Sunday night, in addition, he YELLED for two hours, which necessitated my taking a sick day on Monday. I still have no idea what was up with him - could have been trapped wind.) He wriggles over to the bars of his cot and complains until I hoist him into the bed and attach him to a breast. This basically means that he's flipped his milk-drinking schedule: he pigs out at night and will only take about three ounces all day at the creche.

We tried giving him a bottle feed a few nights ago (milk sneakily diluted with water, in a bid to make him hungrier during the day), but he was having none of it. None. He knows what he wants, and he can communicate it quite clearly. (Needless to say, when he wakes me in the small hours I'll do pretty much anything to settle him so that I can go back to sleep. It's remarkable how little strength of character I have at four in the morning.)

It's a tough one. Physiologically, there's no reason he can't go twelve hours without milk - in fact, it'd be good for him to sleep for longer chunks. (Come to think of it, last night he did actually sleep for almost nine hours - it's just that they were the wrong nine hours for me: 19:00 till 03:40.) It's just habit, everyone says, and the desire for comfort.

The question is, how do we help him break the habit? Do we go cold turkey? Make a decision not to feed him one night, and stick it out, secure in the knowledge that it won't cause him any lasting damage and that we'll all be happier and healthier for it? Or do we try to ease him into a better schedule while working full days on insufficient, broken sleep, secure in the knowledge that we're being the loving and kind parents he deserves?

This is completely irreducible to a poll, but here goes anyway :-)

[Poll #484589]

Comments

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

Oh, darling. I don't know. This is entirely outside my area of experience. But I do know that you and the Nialler are two of the wisest, strongest, most loving people I have ever met, and that I know you can work this out, and that Oisín is growing up in one of the best environments imaginable for a child, no matter what choice you make. Which noble sentiment is not much help to you in the short-run, I do admit. I was put into my own room as soon as I came home from the hospital, but I'm not about to claim that it did me no harm whatsoever.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Aw, thanks, love! It will work out, I know. There are few enough twelve-year-olds, for instance, whose mothers have to wake up three times in the night to feed them... :-)

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

What's worse than GAY? I suppose he might be a communist, too :)

Oh, I don't know, but my little cherub's doing just the same at the moment - after a fair while of regular feeds at 3am and only then, she's all over the place. Hey, she's four months younger than the Infant O, does that make her advanced? But really, since I'm a rubbish and far less experienced mother, I don't really have advice, only to say that I'm just going with it and hoping she'll stop eventually. But that's easy for me to say as isn't back at work yet.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

What's worse than GAY? I suppose he might be a communist, too

*snorts* Well, whatever it is, it'll be ALL MY FAULT.

I'm a rubbish and far less experienced mother

Oy! None of that! I seen the happy baby pictures!

My cousin has a six-month-old, and we were chuckling on the phone only this evening about the vast catalogues of Ways You Can Be A Bad Mother. The checklist, we agreed, should run something like: Is your baby alive? Fed? Warm? Cleanish? Mostly cheerful? You're doing fine.

[jeejeen.livejournal.com]

Not only do I know absolutely NOTHING about this kind of thing, I am also extremely loath to offer advice to anyone else about parenting.

I'll offer plenty of sympathy, though!

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

What Jenn said. And lots and lots of sympathy! The sleep deprivation thing might be the thing the scares me most about motherhood.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Thank yiz both. The sleep deprivation thing still scares me, not least because I'm so much of a night person that when I do go to bed at 10:00 (which I should be doing every schoolnight if I want to survive...), I'm usually still awake at 0:30.

It's all relative, though. My mother has a cousin (in-law) with a profoundly disabled nine-year-old and twin seven-year-olds. She says "you get used to not having sleep". I squeak at her. She chuckles.

No polls

[ailbhe]

We are feeding Linnea bottled water, or bottled milk, at night, because she gets all the nipples she wants in the daytime. And Rob does it, because I can't refuse her - I spring fountains when I try, and anyway, she refuses a bottle from me because I am the bearer of breasts. We started on bottled milk and moved on to water after a bit; she now gets no breastfeed between 8 pm and 5 am no matter what, and often none between 7:30 pm and 6:30 am.

She is still in our room, and still waking once a night at least, if after 5 am isn't night.

Is it better or worse if he sleeps in your bed? Is he teething? Is it warmer than it used to be? Or is it just 8-month clinginess?

Re: No polls

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Might try milk followed by water. We tried mixing them the other night, as I said, and it just didn't work. Trouble with a bottle is that Niall takes even less well than I do to the sleep deprivation. The other morning I left for work, and he went back to bed for half an hour and woke up at 14:00...

Anything before 7:00 is night in my book.

He usually starts in his cot and moves to our bed when he wakes (because I don't stay awake to feed him). He's teething like a fiend, and it's warm, and he's 8-month-clingy. So we're pretty much doomed, I'd say :-)

Re: No polls

[ailbhe]

See, I found I slept fine with her in our bed, but the feeding itself tired me out because I couldn't eat enough to stop losing weight.

Complete heartlessness does work, if you're that desperate. It doesn't sound like you are, yet.

Medised is baby paracetemol with anantihistamine which helps combat teething related snuffles *and* encourages sleep. I, for example, take a quadruple dose when the PTSD is bad. And we give it to Linnea when she's suffering from lack of sleep due to teething or whatever. Yes, I am advocating Drugging Your Baby Up To Make Him Sleep. I assume you ahve enough common sense not to make a habit of it.

But the 8-month clingies you need to ride out, ideally, loving him as much as you can when he needs you to.

Apparently. But Gina Ford will tell you different. Pick a book, any book, and it will tell you you're doing something wrong...

A.

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

I obviously don't have a clue either.

I do remember seeing something on tv. I can't remember the precise problem, but to solve it the mother stayed away for a night. If you're not there you can't give in. It might be a bit hard on Niall though.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine that it'd be very pleasant, no! We've yet to try being hardline, actually, because on a schoolnight I'm unwilling to do anything that'll disrupt my sleep even more.

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

You'd want to go on something more than my say-so, but I've seen a few episodes of baby psychologist programs and it seemed to just take a few days of firmness for new routines to stick. So this weekend might be a good time to try it. But check with people with actual experience (or the interbets) first.

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

Insert I-know-nothing caveat here.