Today was a busy day for all three of us. So poor Ollie's nap time was a ride in the car, a ride in the stroller and then an hour or so in his swing. God help us all, this baby is so tired it's devastating.
I have been trying to get him to sleep for hours. My second feeding just passed and thankfully he seems to be falling asleep from this one... I'm barely breathing, moving or doing anything that might stir him. Oh it's so hard getting a baby to sleep sometimes!
Anybody out there have any tricks to help us first timers along? I need a miracle!! And some sleep too... I'll write the follow up to this in a few hours to let you all know if I lost my mind or if Ollie actually went to sleep. I seriously feel like he's going to stay up all night at this point!
4 comments:
Have you tried swaddling, yet? That's the only thing that will help my LO fall and STAY asleep. It's worked wonders for us!
This is a book for mommy and daddy before their little one can talk...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3UwbpUKCTo
On a serious note...
Like you, hearing my baby cry is worse than any physical pain I've ever felt... and I had a natural, unmedicated birth, so that's saying a lot. After a particularly rough week when she wouldn't take a nap unless I was holding her and I was almost delirious from lack of sleep, I asked her pediatrician what to do. In all honesty, I didn't like what he said. He told me to check her diaper, make sure she was nice and warm, top her off so that she wasn't hungry, then lay her down and let her cry. He told me that, when a baby is that tired, sometimes the only way to get that energy spent is to cry it out. She was six weeks at the time and he advised letting her cry up to 45 minutes. Wasn't going to happen, no way in hell.
The next day, however, I literally could not put her down without her waking up and crying. I had reached the end of my rope and decided that I would lay her down and, if after 10 minutes she was still crying, I would pick her up and feed her again to calm her down (my boob worked better as a pacifier than anything else). I had to walk outside. I could not listen to her cry. And, even though I had turned down the baby monitor and was just watching her, my breasts started leaking immediately and I cried right along with her. At the 8 minute mark, she stopped crying and cooed herself to sleep. She slept for five hours that day.
My daughter is now 6 months old and she is well-adjusted and a very happy, loving baby. She shows no signs of anxiety. She now recognizes her nap routine and cries for about five minutes when I first lay her down, but then self-soothes and coos for another 5-10 minutes before falling asleep.
Letting her cry the first few times was the hardest thing in the world for me to do, but I realized that she needed a way to release and wear herself out and that I also needed to be able to put her down for my own sanity as well.
You know your baby and his cries. You know what he needs. Trust your instincts and ,whatever method works best for you, do it.
I'm a first time mum myself, with a 4 week old son. Ditto on the pain from hearing him cry, it makes me physically sick to hear my boy in distress, it's awful!
What's worked for us do far is to feed, burp, change and then swaddle him (wrap him up tightly in a muslin wrap - its popular here in New Zealand) then put him down and then run to the end of the driveway for 10 minutes. When I come back if he hasn't settled completely (which 99% of the tIme he has) or at least partially, then I'll get him back up for a cuddle.
Thank you so much for your replies. I do swaddle him, tightly. The letting him cry out might kill me. but, I guess if you both lived to tell me the story, I might too.
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