Re: [ozmidwifery] sleep issues

[Tania Smallwood]

Title: Message

Hi Cas,   Sounds like there are a lot of us out here who really relate to what you are going through at the moment...   We had a very similar situation with son #2, just wouldn't settle in his cot, or would go down fast asleep from a breastfeed and wake soon after, unable to settle again.  It took me a while to acknowledge that what I thought would work, just didn't for this baby.  Each night I would persist until about 4am, when I would deem it an acceptable time for him to come into our bed, and then of course he'd sleep beautifully, and so would we!  After about 4 months of this, we both realised that keeping him out of the bed until then was just destructive, and very disruptive.  We put our mattress onto the floor, and paired it with a futon next to it.  Just a sea of mattresses in our room!  But what it meant was that we all had heaps of space, once Jake was asleep I could crawl over onto the futon with hubby, or he could slide over there if we were hogging the mattress.  We all got sleep, quite comfortably, and once we just accepted that this was how it had to be for a while, (not forever, as we've just found out, 2 years later!) it became so much more ok, enjoyable in fact!   I had a real problem with having my own space, but by getting my head around the fact that I wasn't doing anything wrong, or setting myself up for a lifetime of misery by having my baby in bed with us, it became a much better way to go.  I really feel for you, sleep deprivation just pervades your life, taking it one night at a time, and seeing what works for YOU is the only way to go!   Good luck!   Tania ----- Original Message ----- From: Wayne and Cas To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2004 10:36 PM Subject: [ozmidwifery] sleep issues Hi all,   I am hoping someone on this list can offer me some advice about sleep. For some time now our baby boy (who is now 10 months old) refuses to go down in the cot. Everytime I lean over the cot, no matter how I do it, he wakes up. I only have to bend over and he wakes up. We've tried settling him with a hand on his back, with massage, with singing, and he just cries and cries sometimes for more than an hour. One night I got him to sleep after a marathon 1.5 hours crying session, never leaving his side, arm through the cot bars killing me and he woke up 15 minutes later. I was exhausted. In the end he ends up in bed with us all night where he sleeps fine but hubby ends up on the floor and I end up not sleeping so great because he thrashes around or wakes up for feeds all hours of the night (and ofcourse cause it is easy to settle him that way and I am exhausted I just end up feeding him to sleep). The other issue with him crying in his cot is that it wakes up his older brother or conversely, the cat goes in there tinkling her bell and scratching at the carpet and wakes the baby up. Argh!   I am getting more weary of not getting enough sleep and my hubby is getting weary of not getting to sleep in our bed! I really don't know what else to do but I feel we need to reclaim our bed and get him to sleep in his cot. Any suggestions?   Cheers,   Cas McCullough     Cas, Wayne, Liam and Daniel McCullough info@casmccullough.com www.casmccullough.com