Jayna has begun sleeping for approximately 7 hours at night. She eats at around 7:45 or 8pm, puts herself to sleep by around 9pm and doesn't wake up until around 4am. That is wonderful, right? A 7-week-old sleeping 7 hours through the night is a miracle, right?? Oh dear...no.
First of all, let me tell you how frustrating it is to feed the kid at 4am when I would have to get up at 5 or 5:30am anyway. By the time I get her back to sleep, it's time for me to get up. That was just fine and dandy when I didn't have to work...I could just take a nap. Not now! If I get up at 4am to feed her, I'm pretty much up for the day. It sucks, but luckily I've been going to bed at about 9:30pm so that I can function the next day.
The problem is that when she sleeps that long, she wakes up frantic to eat. And all you moms who've breastfed know that trying to get a MANIAC latched on is more than difficult. I know how hard it is to get her to take a bottle when she's that way, so multiply that by a jillion and you have how difficult it is for me to deal with her maniacal ways. After she's latched, she eats like she's never eaten before which causes additional problems: she gulps milk causing her to either choke, spit out milk, or suck in LOTS of air. No amount of burping will help when this happens. She then ends up with a bellyache and is almost impossible to deal with once I have to wake her up at 6am...not to mention the fact that she's still dead tired because she just fell back to sleep at 5am.
I've been pondering a solution to this problem. I have a few options, but I'm unsure of where to begin. Here are a few options:
* Wake her up at between 11pm and midnight to feed her. YUCK!! I'm now used to the uninterrupted sleep!
* Wait for her to do her light slumber thing she does most nights at around 2am and wake her up to feed her then. This would give her enough time to get sleep after she goes back down after eating and I'd be able to go back to bed.
* Put her to bed earlier or later hoping she'll wake up at a different time so I could feed her closer to the middle of the night instead of late early morning. I'm afraid a later bedtime will deprive her of much needed and liked sleep. The child LOVES to sleep.
* Leave it all alone and put up with the 4am feeding until she either changes things on her own or just sleeps longer (like until 6am) instead of wanting to eat at all at night.
What do I do?? I'm lost. I'm exhausted. I'm frustrated...and I know she is too. She let us know that last night. She sort of woke up at 10:30pm, so I fed her thinking she'd sleep later. Well, about 20 minutes after eating, she threw the biggest hissy fit I've ever seen. Chris tried to hold her to comfort her, but she kept kicking and wiggling and flailing her arms around and hitting him. He had to put her down, but we think that was what she wanted anyway. She continued to throw the fit in her crib for an additional 10 or 15 minutes. I'm not sure if she was just overtired or if she just wanted to throw a fit. She wasn't hungry, her diaper was changed and she wasn't hurt. She didn't even really act like she had a bellyache or anything. Just throwing a huge fit. I don't want anymore fits, so I don't want to wake her all the way to feed her if that will happen all the time.
So, moms. What do I do? What did you do about nighttime feedings and sleep? Is getting uninterrupted sleep worth having a maniac in the morning? HELP ME!!!
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