Thursday, January 22, 2009

No rest for the weary!

Every night, I pray "Lord, please let my baby sleep well tonight." Secretly I pray, "Lord, please let my baby sleep well tonight so that I can get some rest!" I am exhausted! Every morning, I lay in bed and wonder what I can do that morning to be able to get some extra sleep! It usually involves finishing my hair and make up at work and already knowing and having it ironed what I am wearing to work.
Mason is a wonderful baby and such a blessing in our lives and we love him dearly, but when I wake up to a crying baby at 2 and he doesn't go back to sleep until around 3:30 or possibly 4, I many nights find my self frustrated and crying. I feel terrible because he's healthy and here I am complaining. My parents try to give us as much relief as possible, but sometimes, I feel like I am a bad mom when I leave him there just so I can get some sleep. Kind of selfish huh?
Mason hasn't slept good the past three nights. We have tried everything! Last night we tried feeding him, putting him in the bed with us, letting him cry it out, turning on Baby Einstein, playing with toys, the ever faithful Tylenol and gas drops, changing his diaper, and nothing helped. He just cried and got mad at both of us. We know he's not hungry because he eats oatmeal and has a bottle before he goes to sleep and half the time, he doesn't want to finish the bottle. So we blame it on bad dreams and try to call it a night.
So if you have any suggestions on how to calm our sweet Mason, please let me know!

3 comments:

Josh Courtney Jacob Caden said...

Poor baby Mason! I bet it is more teeth and he is probably just going through a stage... not what you want to hear, but it will pass. Is he still in the same room as you? Maybe it is time to move him to his own room and get a monitor, that way he can cry it out one night and then sleep all night from then on. That is what it took for my two.

V-n-J said...

No sleep sucks - plain and simple. Is he still sleeping in your room? If he is I think you might need to move him to his own room. I'm not sure if you do a night time routine with him but babies do great with one so if you do the same thing every night before his bedtime he'll get the cues. I know crying it out might not work for everyone, but it did for us (it took about 2 nights I think) - its worth a try. Good Luck:)

Anonymous said...

Oh this is hard! I'm certainly not the expert on this subject. Ansley would do the same thing. She would go weeks sleeping thru the night and then go through a phase of waking up thru out the night. Its so frustrating. In fact she still has nights where she wakes up and finds her way to our bed. But I do feel like we didn't exactly do things right with her. We didn't establish a night-time routine that we did every single night. I do think that helps. And we rocked her to sleep (and still do... she's almost 3 yrs old) and would lay her down, tip-toe out of the room and pray she wouldn't wake up. With Cooper its been really different... live and learn. We lay him down before he is asleep right after his last feeding. He goes to sleep on his own. Sometimes he fusses a little and I'll go in to give him his pacifier but that's it. He doesn't get picked up unless he's been crying for a while. Anyway, it probably is just teeth but he is learning that when he cries you will come and get him. Sorry, I'm probably no help.