Sleep and the Modern Oyster
Jun. 4th, 2006 10:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radegundA few days ago I wrote in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
plan_survive about how Oisín's nap schedule had gone haywire. I wanted to update, more for my benefit than anything else, as the sands have shifted a bit since then.
On Thursday morning (the day after my original post), I took a deep breath, gritted my teeth, put a very tired Oisín in the car and drove around with him FOR AN HOUR. He stayed on the cusp of sleep, but never quite made it - so I couldn't even justify giving up. I got home in a state of stomach-churning irritation, fed the two of us and then packed him off with his grandmother for the afternoon (by pre-arrangement - she takes him usually twice a week). She, as I've mentioned, is entirely too interesting for him to waste time sleeping when he's with her, but he did succumb in her car on the way home, and I managed to transfer him to his own bed without waking him (much). So we broke the late bedtime cycle, which was good.
On Friday I copped on, and instead of focusing my energies on getting him to sleep, which is impossibly frustrating when it doesn't work, we went out with the buggy on a long, relatively pleasant shopping trip (we took trams!), bought him summer clothes and sandals, ate some staggeringly overpriced sandwiches, and came home to meet the aforementioned grandmother, who was taking him out for a picnic with some aged relatives. He waited until we were on our way home from the tram stop to fall asleep. But - miraculously - I managed to transfer him to the car seat without bursting his bubble (yay!), so he got a decent nap.
On Friday night we launched Operation Enduring Somnolescence, the chief feature of which is that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
niallm is now handling night wakings. The aim here is to eliminate night feeding, which we hope will eventually lead to the precious Grail of which I hardly dare speak: an unbroken night's sleep. Bedtime was long-drawn-out, but Oisín eventually went to sleep a little before 21:00. He woke at 2:20 with his usual cries of "Mama? Mama? Mama?" (heart-melty), and when Niall went to his room he ROARED AND WAILED for five years minutes, while I lay in bed, forcing myself not to go to him. Longest five minutes I've had in months. I very nearly caved. I got as far as the door of his room. But then he stopped crying, and Niall soothed him back to sleep and came back to bed, and after a while I calmed down enough to go back to sleep. Oisín woke again at 4:00-ish and 5:00-ish (but nowhere near as upset), and then for the day at 6:45. (I was on morning shift, so that last bit was a little unpleasant.)
All in all, an excellent first night - and nothing like the last time we tried this, about a year ago, when basically Niall and Oisín spent the night crying in our bedroom, and I spent the night crying in the spare room, and it felt as though we were breaking our little boy on the wheel, and after three nights of it my milk supply started to collapse, and it all failed a few days later in any case because he got ill. Jesus, I never want to go through that again.
Yesterday we went to the zoo. (Zoo! Mediated by small child's earnest fascination! So cool!) Oisín fell asleep on the way home, but napped for only 45 minutes, which was fine as it was late and I was getting antsy about bedtime. In the event, things worked out OK. We made sure to have a dimly lit, calm period before bed. I even burned some lavender oil in the living room (which all but sent me to sleep). I thought it would be good to introduce a further separation between bed and milk, so I gave him his bedtime feed downstairs, and then Niall took him up and did the needful. Again, getting him to sleep was a fairly long process with several parental shift-changes. Again, he woke three times, but seemed relatively happy to be soothed back to sleep by Niall. He didn't wake for the day until 7:30, either, which was much easier on me.
Today his nap was unfortunately broken by our arrival at my parents' house, so he had barely half a cycle. This evening we did the lavender oil and the downstairs feed again. Niall took him up, and he was asleep in 20 minutes. Could this possibly be a sign that things are working? Could it? Could it PLEASE?
plan_survive about how Oisín's nap schedule had gone haywire. I wanted to update, more for my benefit than anything else, as the sands have shifted a bit since then.On Thursday morning (the day after my original post), I took a deep breath, gritted my teeth, put a very tired Oisín in the car and drove around with him FOR AN HOUR. He stayed on the cusp of sleep, but never quite made it - so I couldn't even justify giving up. I got home in a state of stomach-churning irritation, fed the two of us and then packed him off with his grandmother for the afternoon (by pre-arrangement - she takes him usually twice a week). She, as I've mentioned, is entirely too interesting for him to waste time sleeping when he's with her, but he did succumb in her car on the way home, and I managed to transfer him to his own bed without waking him (much). So we broke the late bedtime cycle, which was good.
On Friday I copped on, and instead of focusing my energies on getting him to sleep, which is impossibly frustrating when it doesn't work, we went out with the buggy on a long, relatively pleasant shopping trip (we took trams!), bought him summer clothes and sandals, ate some staggeringly overpriced sandwiches, and came home to meet the aforementioned grandmother, who was taking him out for a picnic with some aged relatives. He waited until we were on our way home from the tram stop to fall asleep. But - miraculously - I managed to transfer him to the car seat without bursting his bubble (yay!), so he got a decent nap.
On Friday night we launched Operation Enduring Somnolescence, the chief feature of which is that
niallm is now handling night wakings. The aim here is to eliminate night feeding, which we hope will eventually lead to the precious Grail of which I hardly dare speak: an unbroken night's sleep. Bedtime was long-drawn-out, but Oisín eventually went to sleep a little before 21:00. He woke at 2:20 with his usual cries of "Mama? Mama? Mama?" (heart-melty), and when Niall went to his room he ROARED AND WAILED for five All in all, an excellent first night - and nothing like the last time we tried this, about a year ago, when basically Niall and Oisín spent the night crying in our bedroom, and I spent the night crying in the spare room, and it felt as though we were breaking our little boy on the wheel, and after three nights of it my milk supply started to collapse, and it all failed a few days later in any case because he got ill. Jesus, I never want to go through that again.
Yesterday we went to the zoo. (Zoo! Mediated by small child's earnest fascination! So cool!) Oisín fell asleep on the way home, but napped for only 45 minutes, which was fine as it was late and I was getting antsy about bedtime. In the event, things worked out OK. We made sure to have a dimly lit, calm period before bed. I even burned some lavender oil in the living room (which all but sent me to sleep). I thought it would be good to introduce a further separation between bed and milk, so I gave him his bedtime feed downstairs, and then Niall took him up and did the needful. Again, getting him to sleep was a fairly long process with several parental shift-changes. Again, he woke three times, but seemed relatively happy to be soothed back to sleep by Niall. He didn't wake for the day until 7:30, either, which was much easier on me.
Today his nap was unfortunately broken by our arrival at my parents' house, so he had barely half a cycle. This evening we did the lavender oil and the downstairs feed again. Niall took him up, and he was asleep in 20 minutes. Could this possibly be a sign that things are working? Could it? Could it PLEASE?
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Date: 2006-06-04 10:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2006-06-11 08:50 am (UTC)London is treacherously hot.