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Hand up, who's exhausted?

Hi ladies,
Is anyone else finding night feeds difficult?
Night feeding was awful for the first 8 days with Kayleigh-Mae, she kept waking up every hour, but after a suggestion from my mw about leaving a radio on for noise things got better. That was until the last week or so. We've gone from 2 or 3 feeds a night back to nearly every hour or in the case of last night, last feed at 10.30, woke around 12ish and fed for 5 mins til she feel back to sleep, then woke at 1.44 (precisley) (sp?) fed for 20 mins winded her, fed her from the other side, winded her again, changed her nappy as she was still wide awake, had to feed her again as she was still hungry. Winded her again, still awake and wanting feeding, fed her winded her and put her down in her moses basket awake only for her to start crying. This went on for over 2hrs and by 4 I was in floods of tears and woke DH up as I couldn't take it anymore. Silly thing is within 5 mins of being with DH she was fast asleep (Probably just couldn't resist the smell of milk when she was with me) I didn't wake him up earlier as I didn't want to admit defeat and I never had to wake him up with any of the other 3 when they were babies.
Anyway back to my point as I seem to have strayed a little. I can't really catch up on sleep in the day as for the last 2 weeks I've had the other 3 at home and even when the older 2 go back to school I've got a 2yr old who will destroy the house if left unsupervised for more than 5 mins :lol: so I at times I feel like I'm running on empty. It also means I'm really grumpy from the lack of sleep and then I feel guilty when I shout at the kids as all my frustration comes tumbling out at them.
Oh well it can't last like this forever.
Karen + Kayleigh x

Replies

  • Absolutely.
    Lara is exaclty the same, during the day she is brilliant but as soon as 9pm comes shes awake and when shes awake all she wants to do is feed. She doesnt fall back to sleep until at least 2am, which ive got into the habit of giving her lots of milk, regardless of how tired i am, i make sure i keep waking her up, so she keeps feeding until she cant wake anymore and doesnt even wake for a nappy change.lol This then (sometimes) takes her right through until 9am.
    last night she fell asleep at 1am, woke at 3, then again at 6, when i fed her lots. She is still asleep now.
    Im lucky though in that my children are 6 and 9, so i can leave them with something to do and go back to bed for an hour or two.
    i dont have a partner, so dont know about the milk thing but definitely sounds worth experimenting with. get him to wake up when she wakes maybe the second time, she might just purely be tired and want cuddling back to sleep.
    Hope some kind of routine hits in soon or my temper is going to fray and they can all leave home.lol
    hugs
    claire and lara
    xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • So tired can barely type lol!!!

    Rhea has been through spells of this. Awake from 12-4/5am constantly wanting fed. & then not going down. My health visitor suggested keeping mars bars for quick energy. The way she put it was it milk supply is crap in evening as u have been feeding all day & a good supply hasn't had a chance to build up, so come evening/night is y u get so many feeds, so mars bars release energy quick to get some good milk. She also suggested to me to use a bottle of EBM or formula at night as it'll be rich & baby will settle better. Don't no if u ladies have tried these? I have, sometimes it does work!

    Rhea also has colic so the odd night we've been up from 6pm till half 2 with her screaming but nothing we can do she ends up that exhausted she sleeps for 8 hours without stirring!

    I'm so tired though as have not been catching up during day when we've had a bad night! Hope this routine thing kicks in soon!!

    Jayne & rhea xx
  • Amelia is also a light nightime sleeper (and day sleeper). She goes for 90mins - 2 hours between feeds (at 3 weeks) and can also stay awake for 4-5 hours without sleeping. This morning she's been awake since 3.30am...not pleasant. I am hoping as she gets bigger it'll get better. She certainly can't be hungry - she drank 900mls of formula in 24 hours yesterday which is the equivalent of a 16 week old. Heaven forbid!
  • Me!!! Grace is really hard to settle in her crib and only sleeps well if being held or is in bed with us which means I can't really sleep. She'll go down in a swaddle blanket from about 11pm-2am but then after a feed (which takes 1-1.5 hours) she just won't resettle for longer than 20 mins or so and so by about 4 or 5 am, after at least 1 or 2 more small feeds, I inevitably cave and take her into our bed. I'm shattered and also have a 3 year old so no chance for daytime naps. I just wish grace would slee on her own between feeds as I could cope with the broken sleep if I could properly relax in between feeds.
  • It's so reassuring to know I'm not the only one. Apart from one 90 min spell on the 2nd night, Daisy hasn't slept for longer than 30 mins between 10pm and 6.30am. Last night she didn't really sleep at all, she was feeding quite a bit, we had to change her 4 times and every time we put her in her basket, she'd start bawling.

    We took it in turns to cuddle her to sleep but she'd wake again as soon as she went down. Of course, she's now been asleep the whole time since 6.30am, apart from a feed and change at about 10.30! I hope this does start to get better quickly.
  • I'm thinking we need to start sleeping in the car as everytime grace goes in her car seat she's out like a light until we get her out again! She even stayed asleep while we were at a very noisy wacky warehouse with dd1 today!!!
  • Feebs - this may round like a silly question, but do you keep the room quiet at night and does Grace sleep better in the day when it's noisy? For the 1st 8 days I had trouble with Kayleigh-Mae, she wouldn't settle in her moses basket and was waking every hour to be fed, though some of it was just comfort. The midwife asked me that question and suggested the Kayleigh-Mae found it comforting to hear noise, after all she spent all that time in the womb listening to your heart and other internal noises. So now I have a radio on with earphones plugged in and draped over the moses basket, out of reach. It's by no means perfect but it has helped quite a lot and most of the time Kayleigh-Mae sleeps better for it.
    Hope you find something that works and soon, that will let you both sleep even if only for a few hours at a time.
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