Q. and I are in sleep hell at the moment.
For the last month or so (seems like forever) we’ve had a problem with E. waking up pre-11 (which is the earliest I will feed him). The problem is made worse by us waking him up when we go to bed because our floorboards are so loud, so every footstep can be heard in his room, even with the white noise machine. Before the last couple of nights, this wasn’t a huge issue, as Q. would just go in and settle him. Sometimes he had to go in twice, but he could always get him back down, and then he’d sleep either just for a little while to 11, or for another couple of hours. We’ve also started going to bed well before the pop ups normally start and just reading in there, but he’s waking up regardless (at least we know that these wakeups are not caused by us).
BUT, the last two nights, E. has just NOT gone back down. We are talking completely hysterical screaming, even while being held and comforted. Last night I took over, and I could get him to calm down and fall asleep on me in the rocking chair, but any time I tried to put him in the crib, either awake or asleep, he would start screaming again. Both nights, at around 11:30 I fed him and he then went down successfully and slept the rest of the night, popping up only once more for his usual later feed, and then going down after that with no trouble.
He is pulling at his ears and clawing at his cheeks when he does this, so we suspected teeth (he has at least three on the way from what we can see). Last night we gave him infants’ tylenol, and then he was doing the ‘arched back, hands in fists’ scream that often means his tummy hurts, so I thought that maybe the tylenol did have something in it, even though I rang the company yesterday to make sure that ‘flavour’ didn’t mean ‘surprise- there’s soy in this’. But what I don’t understand is if it is teeth or tummy, how it can cause hysterical screaming from 10 pm until 11:30, and then not bother him at all for the rest of the night.
We definitely have some separation anxiety happening in the day at the moment, so maybe that is part of it too? He is also still THIS close to crawling- spending a lot of time doing yoga poses (hands and feet and head on carpet), and I have caught him a couple of times on his hands and knees in the crib, although not the last two nights.
I don’t want to feed him any earlier than 11, because that then pushes the next feed earlier and we end up with a three feed night, which I know he simply does not need. And he’s not hungry when he first pops up at 10- just utterly inconsolable. The one thing we’ve always said about E. is he goes right back down again at night, whether we feed him or not, so this has just come out of nowhere, and I’m not sure what to do. It is a truly awful sound- he just sounds so desperate when he cries- it’s not at all like he normally sounds when he wakes up hungry.
Any and all assvice appreciated. I honestly feel like we have a changeling- the baby we’re dealing with from 10 pm until 11:30 bears absolutely ZERO resemblance to the baby we have at all other points in the day. He’s happy when he wakes up, cheerful throughout the day (if biting us frequently because his gums are bugging him), spending lots of time wriggling around trying to crawl, eating like a champ (he had risotto cakes for lunch yesterday and loved the field mushrooms, chicken and vegetable tagine for lunch today, and he ate an entire slice of toast with hummus and an entire poached pear for breakfast), taking ok naps generally, going down easily at bedtime, and behaving as he normally does during the night, except for this one point.
I was literally next week going to start some form of sleep training to try to end these random pop ups (was going to shift to just comforting in the crib without picking up), but now I don’t know if I can face it. He just sounds so sad.
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We’re having so much sleep drama here, too. And she’s doing the same thing… she used to go to bed at 7 and sleep fine until 10:30-11 for her late feeding and then sleep until 3 and then until 6:30-7. But the past week has been something like down at 7, awake at 9:00, awake at 10:30, awake at 1:00, awake at 2:45, awake at 3:30, awake at 5:30, awake at 7:00.
I’m not exaggerating.
Then she is relatively well behaved most of the day. I think it is teething, but she is always lying on her side, back arched and fists curled when I get up to fetch her. I don’t understand this. In the past back arching was usually a sign of a digestion issue (primarily reflux) but she’s on the max dose of prevacid and I KNOW that I’m not eating anything that falls in the “intolerance” category, or that has been a problem for her in the past. I would say, in your case, since it is an isolated hour and a half time frame, I would think teething. Have you tried ibuprofen on him yet? It is fine after 6 months and it is my experience that it is VASTLY more effective for teething pain than tylenol. I’ve also heard of the hyland teething tablets and seen them at the store. I’m reluctant to try them but so many people I know SWEAR by them. Something worth considering. They seem pretty natural.
I hope this resolves soon and you get some much needed consistency. I know I can’t take much more of my situation.
xoxo
We’ve had some rough nights the last couple nights (after having almost a week of great sleep). I finally realized that Isaac waking up crying (as opposed to just grunting and squeaking and needing to be resettled) meant he was in pain, and sure enough spotted a couple teeth on their way! Last night we used the Hyland’s teething tablets (a couple times before bed and at each wakeup) and we had a great night. Whew! Of course, our great nights would probably not seem great to you
. Isaac didn’t go down until late because of a late nap (again, probably the teething pain interfering, duh me) but he slept 8:30 to 9:30 (quickly patted back to sleep) then woke up at 11:30 to nurse (1/2 hour) and slept from 12-5 (we nursed again). Then he only slept until 7 in his crib, but ’til 8:30 in our bed.
Sleep disruptions are so hard, especially when you feel like you’ve got it all worked out. I will say, before Isaac started crawling was the worst two week period of sleep EVER, hands-down. Once he figured out how to sit from on his tummy, crawling was just a couple days later and things vastly improved. So maybe E. is just thinking about crawling more intensely and it’s keeping him from sleeping? We had a couple nights where I just brought Isaac downstairs and let him practice crawling for an hour or two instead of spending an hour trying to bounce him back to sleep. He was happier, I was less stressed out, and it ended up being the same amount of sleep for us both anyway and much less work for me.
Hope you can figure out what’s happening!
Couple of things could be at play here: milestone, yes. That was certainly our issue – even now whenever O is reaching some developmental spurt his sleeping changes; he sleeps lighter and is up more/earlier in the day. So that could be at play too. Teething pain, maybe. It’s not uncommon, just never anything that seemed to really bother O.
We found that the majority of O’s overnight waking was related to his egg allergy. We unknowingly gave him with most meals a pasta that was fortified with egg protein He would do the same thing, cry and cry. Feeding him calmed him down when he was a baby, though I KNEW he couldn’t be hungry. Turns out that he gets a stomachache when he has eggs, and we figure he either thought he was hungry or nursing/milk settled his stomach.
E might be too young for night terrors, I think, though I did read when O had them that they can start as young as 9 months. If it’s happening at the same time every night to the same reaction, it could be related to the patterns of his sleep.
Man, I hope it stops soon though. That must be so hard to hear.
xoxo