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Sunday, January 16, 2011

Sleep Exhaustion

I am losing the battle...in a bad, bad way.  My body is starting to revolt, and I am seriously afraid that my immune system will soon be starting a picket line.  Jenna is a great sleeper.  She will sleep 6-10 hours at a pop with one or two brief waking periods to eat, but she is on Daddy's schedule and doesn't want to go to bed until between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. every night.  She's not fussy when she's awake...she's just awake and wants to hang out.  This would not be problematic except that 2-4 nights out of the week my husband works until between midnight and 3 a.m., which leaves me on my own to hang out with Jenna.  Not a problem except that I need to get up for work at 6 a.m. and I generally work 10 hour days Monday through Thursday and 7 hours on Fridays. 

I discovered a few years ago (accidentally) that I am generally a 9-10 hour sleeper.  I certainly don't expect to get nearly that much sleep now!!!  But I do need more than 3 hours a night.  We have tried everything to realign her sleep patterns, and we are slowly working backwards.  We are now getting her down between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. some nights. 

So...I must ask those of you with experience...any suggestions for getting her down and keeping her down earlier than she has become accustomed? 

3 comments:

Dawn Brown said...

Gosh, that's a hard one...
We're a little behind you age-wise, but those swaddling blankets you send are amazing! We had the same trouble with Mads, and swaddling him took us from up every 2 hours to a solid 5-6 average hours each night with no waking. I do not swaddle him during the day, which makes him wake more frequently since it's not as cozy.

Can you keep her awake more in the day or shorten her naps? Is she old enough for a little cereal at night? A bath will usually knock a baby out (works REALLY well for us, anyway). Try giving a nice warm bath an hour or so before bedtime - or enough time for her to get some food in after. A full belly and a warm bath would knock anyone out!

Either way you cut it, Jeff has to help out in getting her a solid schedule for going down at night. If he's with her during the day, she needs to be awake more then (sounds like she may be catching her zzzz's at that time).

Other than that...I wish you luck. HTH

Holly said...

It's good she's such a great sleeper but I'm sure it's hard that she's on that schedule. Maybe just work on it a little at a time. Maybe like a hour at a time.

Anonymous said...

What about finding some good music to play for while trying to make her sleep? Joshua loves Jewel's "lullaby." I downloaded it to my iPod and play it while I am rocking him and then restate it when I put him down. We don't swaddle but use the sleep sacks.