Thursday, January 6, 2011

Sleep baby, Sleep!

You'd think as a mother of 5, I would have this parenting thing down pat. I should have been faced with all sorts of issues that I've overcome in the past, so baby number 5 should be a breeze.

Well, she's not.

She WILL NOT SLEEP...unless we are holding her and then once we put her down, the screaming begins. I have never been faced with this before as I was blessed with boys who were sleeping through the night from 6 weeks old, so imagine my dismay when my darling girl didn't follow the trend and is a week shy from 8 months  and still not sleeping well at all.

On a guess, I would say that she wakes around 6-8 times a night. I am exhausted. And frazzled. I have no time to make products for my business, during the day I'm contending with 2 toddlers and running the kids to and from school and karate, etc. It's just really, really hard and I am at a loss on what to do. The hubby works night shift and is well and truly gone before bedtime.

I simply cannot let her cry it out, it breaks my heart and she gets so distressed to the point of vomiting all over her bed and I end up having to bath her and change the sheets, etc. I've tried a bunch of different things to no avail and now I'm at my wits end because I NEED SLEEP!

What do I do? Surely someone can give me some advice on how to get her to go to bed and stay asleep without letting her cry it out, I don't believe that crying it out is any good - all she would be doing is crying to the point of exhaustion and passing out. Yeah....nah....

I've worked out that she is only sleeping one sleep cycle, once she gets to the end of the first cycle she wakes up and I don't think she knows how to get back to sleep.

Tonight after her bath and books, I nursed her to sleep at around 7pm and put her into bed at 7.15pm. She was awake again by 7.50pm and I nursed her and rocked her and got her back into bed by 8pm. I literally have to wait until she has zonked out completely before I can put her down. It's just gone 9pm so let's see how it pans out and pray for me that I get more than a few hours sleep tonight!

No comments:

Post a Comment