I honestly think I'm more sleep deprived now than when Sam and Anna were newborns. Back then, I could take a nap with them during the day, even if it was a short catnap. I could lay around in my pjs all day and accomplish nothing except care for babies if I had no energy.
Now, sleep or no sleep, I still have to drag my butt out of bed at 5 am and get ready to spend the day with kindergartners. Kindergartners who probably did get enough sleep the night before and have lots of energy to expend. We don't have naptime in our all day kindergarten classrooms anymore and whenever my class is gone (like at recess or lunch or art/music, etc.) I run around like a madwoman trying to get stuff done as efficiently as possible so I can leave the earliest second possible to get home to my babies (um... or hop on the internet and check recent blog posts). I used to leave 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours later than I do now and I used to bring work home to do, so I've had to get a LOT more efficient in my day to day prep for teaching and all the other little things teachers do.
Once I get home there's no down time either. We go straight into dinner for babies, dinner for ourselves, bedtime for babies, prep for the next day (wash/make bottles etc.) then to bed ourselves. It's go go go until I can finally reunite with my bed.
Lately Sam and Anna have been having some nightime sleep issues. What happened to my stellar nighttime sleepers??? We very randomly have some good nights, but most are disastrous. Sam still gets one MOTN feeding. We just can't drop it because he's hungry and I don't have the heart to make him cry in hunger to "teach" him to stop drinking at night if he's hungry. (let's face it- as adults, if we wake hungry in the middle of the night, we go get something to eat. I don't think it's fair to expect a baby to not eat if they are hungry.) But that's not a problem for us really, because he'll go right back to sleep usually.
The problem is that on top of the MOTN feeding for Sam, Anna's been waking randomly several times most nights lately. She is not hungry and will not take a bottle then. She does not like to be held to be soothed back to sleep. She's been pooping pretty often at night lately, which is part of the cause but not always. It is very difficult to get her back to sleep if she does not want to be held, but needs to go back to sleep. She will CIO (sometimes for 30 min, sometimes up to an hour) and fall back to sleep on her own. Part of our problem is that having her CIO often wakes up Sam because she's a shrieker- and then we've doubled our problem.
So lately (even with the two of us tackling all the night wakings), our sleep has been very disjointed around here. There have been a few nights where, on 3 hours total of sleep split up all night long, I drag myself out of bed at 5 am and get ready to teach all day. (Why does it seem that our babies sleep well typically at 5 am-6:30 am? It's added insult to injury that they sleep crappy all night and then just when I have to be awake they sleep a good 1 1/2 hour stretch when I CAN'T be curled up in my bed.) Last Friday I don't think we had a stretch over 45 minutes when both babies were asleep at the same time. Once day this week, I never got back to sleep after 3 am and only made it through the workday thanks to an emergency stop for a pumpkin spice latte.
Besides Anna's pooping at night problem, I am hoping she's finally telling us she wants to graduate from her swaddle (her brother has been sleeping without a swaddle for a while now). We're commencing our next attempt to deswaddle her tonight. I also think both babies are on the verge of crawling because they are making the right movements and can make a little bit of forward progress. I've read that when babies are reaching a new developmental milestone, they don't sleep well, because they are rehearsing it in their mind and want to keep practicing. It's probably a combination of all of that. I just hope, soon, very soon, I can get a 5-6 hour stretch of sleep again.
4 comments:
I hope the deswaddling goes well! It took our girls two days to be used to not being swaddled. The first night was NOT fun. It got much, much better after that. And--they can find their own bink to put themselves back to sleep if they wake up--woohoo! I hope it gets easier for you. I can't imagine.
Sleep deprivation is torture, absolutely. I'm so sorry you have to get up at 5am and then go teach a bunch of energetic kindergarteners on so little sleep. That just sounds like a nightmare combination. Hopefully de-swaddling is the answer to Anna's nighttime issues. Or maybe they'll both start crawling very soon & then sleep like babies (HA! isn't that saying sooo ironic to you now?! it is to me!) once they've mastered that skill. Hang in there, momma. I read this somewhere: "the days are long, but the years are short". And yes- some days are much, much longer than others, but you get the point. This will pass.
Do they sleep in the same bed? My B/G twins are now 5 years old. I had to seperate my two the second night we came home from hospital and then to their own rooms at 10months old. I hated to do it, but my daughter would crawl out of her crib and climb in my son's crib.
I never really had trouble with sleeping, I have been very blessed with great sleepers. My friend however, her little ones remind me of yours. She was told by her pedi, to give them their bottle warmer then normal at nighttime and then right affter give them mlycon (sp) she started it 3 nights ago and so far so good. Not sure if this would work in your case. Do you use a cd player at all? I played a cd that had lullibies it worked good to. Sorry I dont have a real answer for you. Good Luck dear!
Katie, that sounds like it hasn't been fun at all. I really hope that it is a developmental milestone that will soon correct itself.
I also wanted to respond to your post on my blog - I hope you do know that children in the plural wasn't meant to single you out - it was meant to imply several online friends who have moved on. I just wanted to make sure that you knew it wasn't pointed at you. I know you are extremely busy with 2 babies and working full time. Love to you too.
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