We had a MUCH better night last night, Muski and I so I can blog this now without sounding too whiney, I hope!
So the other night I fed and wrapped a very tired Muski and lay him down in his cot and I decided to try out the power of positive thinking on him and so I said to him..
“Have a big sleep. A big 6 hour sleep like when we were on holiday…ok?”
He looked up at me with his big blue eyes (they are my eyes so it is just a tad freaky seeing them looking back at me!) and he smiled and said…
“Nn-gu” “giggle giggle giggle”
I was sure that meant “Ok Mum I love you” because he looked so sweet and peaceful….
So I lay down next to him and patted his bum till he fell asleep sure in the knowledge that tonight we’d both get some decent sleep. Then he work two hours later, then an hour after that, then 45 minutes after that, then two hours after that, then an hour after that…. The only time he slept more than two hours the whole night was at about 7am in the morning… right when his sisters woke up! ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
Ok so now I know “Nn-gu” “giggle giggle giggle” doesn’t mean “Ok” after all it really means…
“a big sleep? ha you are such a silly bugger mum!”
Disclaimer –
Now see I can write this today because last night Muski slept in nice 3-4 hour stretches…. which might not sound like long to those of you with babies who sleep for hours and hours over night (and you all know who you are, taunting me with your blog posts!!!!), but for us, at the moment it was heaven! And really I can’t ask, nor do I want for much more than that…. well ok yeah I’d like to sleep for 12 hours every night without interruption but I gave up that idea years ago! I knew when I signed up for this parenting gig that sleep was going to be a tad scarce for a little while, and I fully accept that babies, especially breastfed babies are often not designed to sleep for huge long periods without a top up, or even without some resettling… I am good with that. No really I am…
In the early days Muski slept pretty well – 3-5 hours stretched over night. When we were in hospital with Zoe three nights in a row he slept more than 6 hours.. probably would have slept even longer except I woke him up to check he wasn’t dead and because I HAD to feed him. But after that, nights turned into a bit of a bugger with him not sleeping more than two hours and often waking every hour or so.
The thing is I can accept that this is just how he is and what he needs right now, I am not even dying of sleep deprivation most of the time, I feel like we cope pretty well… except that I need to know WHY!?!???????
Why did he sleep so well in the hospital, when Zoe and I were woken every 2-4 hours to give her meds, with her O2 alarm going off a lot, othe noise and stuffed in his little pram at the foot of my bed… why did he sleep so well then and not at home?? And why did he taunt me by suddenly sleeping 6 hours when we were at Lakes Entrance??????? What is with that?? It’s not our house because he doesn’t sleep well at my parents place either!
Most of the time when he wakes I don’t think he is hungry… he’ll have a quick feed and then fuss around or cry at the boob or fall back to sleep and sometimes he doesn’t want milk at all. Sometimes he wakes crying, sometimes he just grunts at me. He often rolls around, shakes/rubs his head about. I’ve tried keeping him wrapped like a spring roll (both in the hospital and on our holiday he was wrapped) as well as various states of unwrap. Maybe he is cold? or hot? Maybe it is reflux? or teeth? I just want to know why….
And yes yes I know that I don’t actually NEED to know why, that I just need to accept that he is a baby and that in the not to distant future this will all be a memory. But I WANT to know why… Heck I am still desperate to know WHY I had twins…. you know, ‘why me?’. Not in the ‘oh my god why did I get cursed with twins’ sense (though sometimes it is like that) but in the ‘I am dead curious if there is some reason why my zygote decided to split into two and someone else’s didn’t’ kind of sense… it is the same with the sleep….
I just have to know… I am like that.
maybe he gets stressed about being in unfamiliar surroundings which totally zonks him out?? just a thought…
sounds to me like a game :)
our baby will sleep 7-9hrs a night, perfectly
(or we will send it to the mines at 3 weeks)
Oh dear…… stay away from my blog yeah! Hey – if it is any consolation – it is taking me AGES to get Murphy to go to sleep – heaps of screaming etc etc. Have you tried badger Balm (google it) – there is a ‘sleep balm’ – it works wonders!!!!
Take it easy though – if there is one thing I learnt after 4 sleep schools with Mackenzie – is that you can’t program a child to sleep (bugger) – we just had to relax and try and deal with it the best way we could. Once we started leaving a bottle of water in the cot with her – she instantly slept the entire night through. She still goes through a sippy cup full of water EVERY night – and she has just turned three!!!
GOOD LUCK
Ok, so I’m one of the guilty ones taunting with blog posts… (Did I mention she’s slept from 8pm thru til at least 7:30am the last three nights?)
I think that’s one of those things with being a parent, or at least it is with me. Brodie will have a few rough days and I “need” to consider every possible thing – lactose? no milk? teeth? not enough attention? infections? Sick? etc etc… I know deep within that it’s just a baby phase she is having and that when I look back on it, it really won’t have lasted long even if it is feeling like forever, but all the same…I MUST go searching for a reason!
And despite all Brodie’s “good” sleeping at night, and she almost never needs resettling at night, she is completely incapable of resettling at all during the day and only ever sleeps for 40-60 minutes then, even though she is still tired. I know the house is “lighter” and more noisy during the day, but really, is it that big a difference? LOL
Oh i feel your pain, anya is slightly better thab lauren was but sleep is still an isue, the gettin t o sleeep and al;so staying asleep thing.. i wonder if its me??
gawd one handed typing anya currenrlt asleep on my chest so excuse the millions of typos please
I get where you are coming from, I need to understand things too!
Gotta say though that 3-4 hours sounds pretty decent at his age, way more than what my little man managed for a very (very!)long time.
I think Bin is probably onto something with her comment. I also thought, not sure if you co-sleep but if you do maybe he slept longer in the hospital in the pram without the smell of the milk next to him?
But yeah one day he will sleep (says Mel posting at this hour because her 4.5yo been waking all night! LOL)
And he is cute, that makes up for it yeah. Loved the photo in your post the other day!
just choose a reason and decide it’s right, that’s what faith is mate LOL A sense of faith is very comforting so they reckon LOL
Each time he wakes up you can think, aaah, it’s his immature neural connections, he is making such a beautifully dense and interconnected brain waking me up every 3.4 seconds, and smile knowing you’ll have the smartest little muski possible feeding thru the school gate in a few years time ;)
I know why…because he’s gearing up to give you nice, loooooong stretches really, really soon. He’s just not quite ready yet, but he’ll get there!
And oops, I confess to not reading your blog before I blogged last night, so perhaps I am one of the guilty ones too! If it helps any, I too have a restless daytime sleeper, but I guess it is all the more easy to deal with restlessness during the day than at night.