i'm tired

[kimpy]

nothing has worked very well today.  i realize that a lot of my issues today stem from the fact that I don't really get to sleep anymore*.  it turns out, memorization skills are probably the reason I could never be a doctor, not the whole lack of sleep thing.  I apparently do OK on lack of sleep.  i suspect even doctors in training get more sleep

Comments

[evilmagnus]

Oh man, that sucks. ;-(

Denyse read a bunch of books on sleep, and what we settled on seems to work very well. Caveat: we didn't do attachment parenting, which makes everything harder, apparently.

An early bedtime is key. Really, really key. Can't stress that enough. Bean goes down at 7:30pm, after dinner and a bath, and he stays down 'til 6am most nights.

Second to that is enough naps during the day. At least one decent (1+ hour) mid-morning nap and a big one in the afternoon (90mins+), but up and awake before 5:30pm (otherwise that torpedoes bedtime).

Apparently the biggest cause of sleep disruption (waking every few hours, unable to stay asleep) is not getting enough sleep. Fucked up, eh?

I admit, though, that we were very lucky with getting him to sleep in his own room and without being rocked down. One day, around 4 months, we just stopped swaddling him, put him down in the crib and left the room. Ten minutes of Grief, then zzzzzz.

But you do have to steel yourself to letting the little one cry. Even now, Bean will protest the imminent arrival of Wolves and declare that we no longer love him for a good 5 - 10 minutes after being put down for the night. Then he'll go to sleep. This is normal.

[kimpy]

clara has never napped consistently or at least until in the last week, without being on my body somewhere. the girl just doesn't believe she needs sleep. her dr said if we fix the nighttime the daytime will follow, so we'll be able to get some more naps in. but with my work schedule and the fact that she comes to work with me makes it harder to time them well.

oddly enough she just slept for 2 hours which is nearly unprecedented for daytime. so who knows, maybe she's starting to realize that sleeping is kinda nice. i dunno. 10 minutes of crying i can handle, 4 hours, that seems really extreme, and sadly i think our dr is right about how much she would cry if we left her. she has a really long attention span for that kind of thing.

but at least i got an hour and a half of sleep this afternoon, it will make tonight much easier to bear.

[denyse]

I don't think Owen has ever cried for 4 hours. I know this because I turn into a quivering mass of goo if he cries longer than 30 minutes. Or sometimes 15 minutes. Heck, even 5 minutes feels really long sometimes, then I look at my watch and go...dood, was it really only 5 minutes?
It's not like we didn't do some attachment parenting - he gets carried lots, got breastfed on demand, dragged around in a baby carrier and kissed and cuddled lots. The only big thing is that we moved him out to his own room earlier and got him used to falling asleep without being in physical contact with me before I had to go back to work (since sometimes I have to come back at 2am, and sometimes I have to leave for work at 5am - if he needed to touch me to sleep, it would never have worked).

I have my fingers crossed for you and I'm sure it will get better as Clara gets older and naps better.

[denyse]

Incidentally, *hugs*.