Sleep deprived couple seeking sleep dust
You know the boob faerie? The one I was feeling neglected by? Yeah, we’re totally squared away there.
It’s the sleep faerie that we’re having issue with these days.
G is now two weeks old (man, does time fly!) and in those two weeks I think he and the sleep faerie have had some falling out. Most likely it happened on the ride home from the hospital. He slept like a log for the first two days. While in the hospital in general we got pretty decent sleep (even in 2 hour intervals), but over the last week he’s taken to waking up in the middle of his nap, about 4-5 times a day and wailing up to an hour an a half to exhaustion… both his and ours. It seems like little we do comforts him, and there are only two things that work: 1) wrapping him up in a tiny ball and carrying him around in the Moby wrap; and 2) having him sleep in a vertical orientation… typically over our shoulder.
We’re diligently tracking his wailing periods, being careful to distinguish between the occasional baby whimper and the heart-breaking, full-on wailing spell. We write down when it starts and how long it goes for. S and I are data people. We like numbers, charts and pretty graphs. However, so far we see no pattern to G’s crying. Hopefully, our pediatrician, however, will. All our pretty data along with our daily feeding/diaper tracking will all be presented at our next appointment. Hopefully he’ll have some wise words of wisdom that go beyond “It’s probably just colic!”.
S’ sister gave us some sage words of advice a few months ago: “If it seems easy, you’re probably doing it wrong!”. Well, with all this crying, I admit, I AM looking for the easy fix. Colic can take months to resolve, and the idea of weeks and months of this exhausts me just thinking about it. I’ve caved and we started trying the Mylicon drops. If it’s gas (one of my suspicions), hopefully this will resolve it.
However, even despite the daily crying sessions, G is growing very well. At 2 weeks, he’s not only reclaimed his birth-weight (6lb 6oz), but now surpassed it, weighing in at 6lb 11.5oz. He’s also now 19.5 inches long. Our little boy is growing, which is awesome. His cord stump fell off earlier this week too, which is giving us a wide range of adorable onsie clothing options. Pics of fasion show to come soon. Promise!
PS. Oh, and as a personal note, I have now lost exactly half of my pregnancy weight gain. I have a pudgy belly, but I think I look pretty good for a mom of a 2-week old. I haven’t needed to take any pain meds in half a week, and I was only taking the Motrin anyway. Even before I left the hospital I had my full range of motion, and next week I’m going to start some light cardio work on our elliptical.
awww… sending sleep dust for little G. I’m guessing once he’s out, you guys won’t have any trouble falling asleep!
Caught your blog from your siggy! Hang in there – I know hearing this doesn’t help that much when you’re totally sleep deprived – but it will totally get better. I read Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child during this time period. Although I don’t really agree with all of his “methods”, it really helped me to understand the science and the biology behind baby sleep patterns. My MIL was driving me nuts giving me advice, almost suggesting that the baby wasn’t sleeping because of what I did – until I read the book and started explaining to her.
Anyway, I’ll send over lots of sleep dust!
I’m sorry G is keeping you sleep deprived and you have to deal with him wailing – that’s no fun. Sabrina isn’t too big on the wailing (unless it’s cry o’clock, aka 5pm-7pm), but the girl just doesn’t sleep at all during the day. We spend a lot of time staring at each other. Ha!
Hope the mylicon helps, we did see some improvement with Sabrina once we started using them.
You might try reading “happiest baby on the block”.. it’s a quick read if you can get it from your library or something.. but it gives a combination of swaddling, sucking, rocking and shushing (loud though, like to match the intensity of his cries “shhhhhhhh!”) that’s supposed to sort of replicate the womb and be comforting to a newborn, especially a colicy one. James wasn’t inconsolable very often, but when he was this always worked to calm him down…
Good luck guys, I hope you get more sleep soon. You’re starting to make me worry about when the baby comes…
My best tips:
“The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems” by Tracey Hogg,
and Hylands Homeopathic Colic Tablets (I think you can get them at any drugstore, or on Amazon.com or Ebay). They are a natural remedy, so you don’t have to go the drug route if its something that makes you uneasy. They also have teething tablets which work really well.
We found just regular baby gripe water often helped too. That stuff is pretty natural.
Good luck.
Oh, and the “Happiest Baby on the Block” is good for newborns too, quick and basic. It was based on 5 S’s… swaddling, shusshing, side position, sucking, swinging. Baby Whisperer is good for more long term solutions but incorporates the same ideas, but in more detail.
(I’m a mom of a 2 yr old who didn’t sleep more then 5 hours at a time till we finally tried Baby Whisperer at 11 months of age!! Then started sleeping through the night 13 hours a night within a week, and has kept it up ever since)
hey, you should try that happiest baby on block book. The “shhhhh” sound and rocking the baby back and forth on the glider do wonders to cure those cries. Adjust the rocking speed to see how it calms G. When my son was born, I gave myself a mental note that I will give 3 months to adjust to the different elements on planet earth. This is first year as a parent blog for my son. http://damon.ptrieu.com/.
Yep, we’re all over the readings. Thus far we’ve gotten through “Happiest Baby on the Block”, “Becoming Baby Wise”, and S is wrapping up “Secrets of the Baby Whisperer”. They’re all great books, and we’ve learned a lot through them — we’re implementing a LOT of each, but we don’t have the solution just yet.
Keep the suggestions coming though. We can certainly use them!
I hope he gets some rest soon. Here’s a web site that you might find helpful….
http://trixietracker.com/
It’s a tool my friend build for tracking sleeping patterns for his kid.