The Smell of Little Pong

Night Seven in the Lightly Household...

...and we're still not getting much sleep.

Previously, it was sort of on and off - some good nights, some bad, exactly the sort of thing you would expect with a newborn, possibly even a little better than you would expect, dare I say it (I dared, and therefore haven't had much sleep recently...) I count a good night as one where Theo feeds and then goes straight back to sleep - I'm not expecting any sleep through the night miracles here.

For a week now we've been having trouble settling him after one or both of his night feeds. On Saturday night I decided to leave him in his own room for the whole night - I think moving him in to ours when he woke for his 1am-ish feed was disturbing him more than necessary. I think it helped as he did sleep after the 1am feed but then he took ages settle after the 4am feed.

On Sunday night I decided to try a 10pm dream feed. This worked really well - he didn't wake up and then slept until 2.30am. Unfortunately I then spent an hour and half settling him back down only for him to wake up again at 5am. And I didn't even get that nice long stretch at the beginning of the night anyway because Freyja woke up at 1.30am and I had to go in to her.

Last night I tried the dream feed again. This time he only lasted until 1.30am - which he has previously managed without the dream feed (and he usually lasts until about 1am now anyway). He then didn't settle and at 3am, on the verge of dropping dead from exhaustion (that's what it felt like at 3am anyway) I banished Adrian to the spare room so I could bring Theo into the bed and get some much needed sleep. Except it didn't work! I fed him again and he still didn't go to sleep. By this point I was crying and it took every ounce of strength and patience to get up and soothe him to sleep - I walked and patted and eventually he went back down in his basket (which I had brought back into my room - we're really making progress here!!) He was up again at 5am and then again at 6am.

I don't know if he's sleeping too much during the day, getting over-tired in the evenings, if I need to give him longer to settle himself once he's fed, if I need to stay longer to settle him after the night feeds. I don't think he relies on me to go to sleep - during the day I never feed him to sleep and he settles quickly with a few pats and his dummy. Who knows?!!

I've been telling myself and everyone else that it really isn't that bad - he goes down at around 8.30pm and he sleeps until around 1am so I am getting some sleep in the early part of the night . It all seems so much better in the daytime when you look back on it and even as I'm writing this I think that I'm probably being rather dramatic and it isn't so bad really. I feel relatively okay once I've managed to get myself out of bed in the morning and he's such a good baby on the whole - predictable, goes down for naps easily and even his fussy times aren't too difficult.

But the thing is, at 3am when you've been up for 2 hours already for yet another night, it is that bad. Thank God for patience, deep breaths, mother love and wide, gummy smiles!

posted by solveig @ 8:50 AM