This past week I splurged and bought new bedding. Cute stuff, too. Sheets, a quilt, decorative pillows, the whole nine yards. And I have been so excited to sleep on my cute new bedding, but guess what? Sleep for this gal has been pretty non-existant lately. And when I say lately, I mean like 3 months or more. So I need some advice. Here's the deal:
A few things are making it difficult to get consistent rest during the night. For one thing, Mike's first alarm goes off at 3:45am. That's right folks, 3:45am. If he sleeps through that, a second alarm goes off at 4am. Of course, the alarms wake me up too, so that interferes with my sleep.
Then at 4:30 on the dot, the baby wakes up. It doesn't matter when I lay him down, or when I give him his last feeding, he wakes up at 4:30 every morning. Almost like his body is conditioned to wake up at that time. When he wakes up, he's pretty hysterical and it's very difficult to calm him down. Rocking him and a pacifier do nothing. I've tried to let him cry it out, but I can only listen to that hysterical cry for so long before I'm up trying to console him. Even my giant fan can't drown out his cries. The only thing that seems to work is nursing him, and that's a habit I really don't want him to get into (although it seems to me he already has.) He is almost 9 months old and he shouldn't be waking up for a feeding in the night anymore. In fact, between 2 and 4 months he was sleeping through the night, so I know it can be done. He used to do it all the time. So what's going on now?
Anyway, I usually nurse him now because it calms him down and he'll go back to sleep afterwards. By then it's about 5am and I'll try desperately to fall asleep again, but if it happens it is short lived. That's because out of nowhere, Jacob has started to wake up at around 5:30 every morning. Actually, he has been waking up multiple times in the night for the past month or so. Usually the first time happens around 2am. At any rate, if he doesn't wake up in the night, he's guaranteed to wake up at 5:30am. Not sure the reasoning behind that, considering that he's never had a problem sleeping in the past. In fact, he's been my best sleeper so far and has always slept through the night until about 7:30 each morning. So at 5:30 I have to go reassure him that everything is okay and get him to lay back down so he doesn't wake up his brother. Then by the time I get back to bed and fall asleep again, Vessel is up sometime between 6 and 6:30am. If I'm lucky they will watch t.v. QUIETLY so I can sleep a little longer. But "quietly" isn't usually the case, so I will wake up or the baby will wake up and then I will have to go get him and start the morning. It just feels like there is always something keeping me awake. I have gotten to the point that I subconsciously won't allow myself to drift into a deep sleep because I don't want to be jolted out of my sleep by a screaming child. Trust me, when that happens it gives me the worst anxiety EVER. If I am jolted out of my sleep like that, I can rarely fall back asleep again because my heart is pounding and my adrenaline is pumping.
Some of you might say, just go to bed earlier. And I probably should. But after we put the kids to bed around 8 or 8:30, Mike and I need time to decompress from the days' events, talk, and spend time together. So we're up for awhile before going to bed ourselves. And even if I did go to bed at like 9:30pm, it doesn't make 4:30am seem bearable. It's still too early to start the day.
I would just like to get AT LEAST a consistent 6 hours a night. I might get about 3 uninterrupted hours of sleep if I'm lucky. Good, restful sleep is just not happening for me between Jacob's wakings, Mike's alarm and him getting ready for the day, the baby's waking, and my difficulty relaxing my brain after being woken up several times in the night. By morning I am cranky and I have anxiety and I am irritable and those kinds of issues don't make for the best kind of mama to start the day.
So give me your advice. ANY and all advice. Why do my children wake up in the night? Why is my baby waking up at 4:30 every single day, and how can I stop it (without nursing him.?) How can I allow myself to relax and fall back asleep if I do get woken up in the night by my kids? And should I pitch a tent in another room to avoid hearing Mike's alarm? :) I don't wanna do that, and I know Mike would disapprove...but seriously...what is a girl to do???
4 comments:
I can relate to so much of what you wrote. And the anxiety and heart pumping when awakened from a deep sleep by a crying child-oh man I know that feeling.
We have sleep issues at our house too. You might have read on my blog before about Seth's issues. He has some separation anxiety issues and we have tried several times to get him to sleep in his own room all night and every time the results have been disastrous. He goes crazy and his anxiety level is so high that he can't function. Last time we tried, he started going downstairs and playing the Wii in his sleep in the middle of the night. The solution we have found for him is that we have a little bed on the floor of our room and he comes in in the middle of the night and goes back to sleep on it.
Ezra has nightmares and wakes up screaming, hysterically quite often. He babbles nonsense and just screams and I get so upset sometimes. Especially now that I have a baby. I just get the baby to sleep, and then Ezra comes in with his nightmares. Grrrr! But the solution we found for that is we have a little bed alongside Jon's part of the bed and Ezra comes in when he's having his nightmares and sleeps by Jon.
Then I deal with the baby, but you can't do much when they're only 6 weeks old.
I have dealt with children's sleeping issues since Seth was 6 months old and he started going crazy. My advice is to pray hard for solutions, and then experiment with different things. People think we're crazy for ending up with all three kids in our room with us by morning, but it's the only thing that has worked so far and it's the only way anybody gets any rest around here. I"m not saying sharing a room with your kids is the answer, I'm just saying sometimes you have to be innovative and do things you hadn't necessarily planned on doing to get things worked out. I also don't think you HAVE to let them cry it out. In fact, we tried that with Seth and Ezra when they were each babies. They both cried for basically the whole night for a week solid. It wasn't working and I couldn't bear it.
This is a whole lot of rambling and probably not helpful at all, but know that I feel your pain!
Best line: "Pray hard for solutions, and then experiment with different things." It's interesting that you mentioned prayer, because I pray that my kids will sleep through the night and when they don't, I'm like, "Throw me a bone Heavenly Father." But maybe He needs me to pray for solutions rather than pray to just resolve itself. :) I also appreciated your other advice and your sympathy. Sometimes it's nice to know that someone out that can relate and I don't feel so alone in my trials. :)
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I get it. I am wondering if Haven is going through a growth spurt?
Mac climbs in to bed with us every.single.night. Every night at 12:30 a.m. it is getting pretty ridiculous!
Anyway, does it matter what time you put Vessel to sleep? Does he still wake up early? Maybe you could give him a alarm clock and tell him he can't get out of his bed/room until 7:30. Give him a bunch of books and tell him that he has to be super quiet. It's worked for Spencer. I'll have to think of some other ideas...
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