Long Nights
We've always run a "night owl" schedule around here, but things are getting ridiculous lately.
On Saturday, Peeper obviously felt crappy and she spent most of the sleeping and/or (mostly "and") nursing, and actually went to bed relatively early (11:30 or so), which was great, but things went all to shit after that.
Sunday, she seemed to feel better, but we just stuck around the house, and I expected her to do a lot of sleeping, so didn't really pay attention to her naps.
When she went to sleep a bit after midnight, or maybe around 1 am, I really don't know if she'd had two or three naps before that, but I do know that when I moved her to bed around 1:30 am, she decided that had been a nap, and was up up up and ready to play.
Shrike went on to sleep, but woke up around 4 am and took over to spell me for a while.
By 5 am, Peeper was tired and cranky, but didn't want to settle down and nurse (probably because it was hard to breathe). I went to bed and Shrike took her in the living room.
About five minutes later, they showed up in the bedroom, a sleeping Peeper draped across Shrike's shoulder.
"What the fuck did you do to her?!?"
When she shifted her to get into bed, she woke up though, so they went back to the living room and slept together on the couch for an hour or so, til she woke up again.
At that point, she was willing to nurse back to sleep, and stayed down until we got her up around noon to go to Dr. T's.
She had a looooong nap in the afternoon, and when she and I went to sleep in the bed at 10 pm we had high hopes of that being for the night, but of course, when I woke up and tried to unlatch her and hour and a half later, she woke up and told me that had only been nap #3, and she and I were up until 4 am again.
Tomorrow, Peeper and I are scheduled to have lunch with a friend at noon, so I might let her sleep until almost time to go, so she isn't hitting nap time (2 hours after waking up) just as we arrive, but then we need to start making her get up no later than 10 am, I think, in order to get her bedtime back to something reasonable.
You know, like 2 am or so.
How old is Peeper now?
ReplyDeleteI think if you want her to stop waking up at night, you need to stop nursing her every time she wakes up. I had the same problem with Alice... she woke up at 12:30 and 4:30, I nursed her and she went back to sleep. It was making me exhausted. This was when she was about 10 or 11 months old, I think. So, when she woke up at 12:30, instead of nursing her, I c&c'd and put her back in the crib. We did this for a few nights and the 12:30 wake-ups stopped. I did the same thing recently with the 4:30 wake-ups. Shortly after her first birthday, I stopped nursing her at 4:30. I gave her a little water instead, and put her back in the crib. Now, I can usually count on her to sleep through to 5:30 am, at least, if not later. Now that she's completely weaned, she doesn't wake up at all, really unless she's teething.
Oh, the issue is not with her waking in the middle of the night, it's about her not getting down for the night in the first place.
ReplyDeleteOnce she's asleep for the night (whether that happens at midnight, or 4 am) she's down for a good 9 - 10 hours.
She will rouse to nurse a few times in there, but usually not for the first several hours, and since we cosleep, when she rouses in the middle of the night, I just point a boob in her direction without really ever waking up myself, and she just nurses right back to sleep with no problem.
(Often it's just a matter of latching long enough to be sure it's still there, and then she's out!)
What we've been having trouble with lately is that her schedule is off and her "night" is starting 2 or 3 hours later than we'd like it to.
With Shrike's work schedule, we would ideally all go to bed around 1:30 or 2 am, but she's staying up til 4, then we let her sleep too late in the morning (so we can sleep!) and then, well, you know how that goes.
We're trying to force ourselves to get her up earlier in the morning and, if necessary, to wake her from naps, so that we can get bedtime back to something more reasonable.
That said, she was down at 2 am last night, so fingers crossed....
LOL
ReplyDeleteAlice's bedtime gradually moved from midnight to ten pm to where it is now, between 7 and 8. I guess it got easier after 6 months when she outgrew the co-sleeper and we moved her to the crib. Best of luck!