However since 7 he’s on his third nappy and also his second bottle and then as he has reflux have to rest him for 30 mins at least sat up! So I basically lose 2.5 hours of my night getting him to sleep
It comes and goes. Thankfully our 6 yr old sleeps like the dead now (and has done since she was 5 i guess.
the 2 yr old is up and down several times a night
and this idiot now has a 5 month old like a FOOL
It will break you. But it does get better- but it’s a new normal. No one ever tells you how horrifically hard it can be. Or that one child differs completely from another. Or that most guidance you read is total BS in retrospect.
Our saviour was drive thru coffee places. Child would fall asleep rocked by the motion of the car, you could get peace/caffienated for a hour or so before the next round of chaos.
I'd forgotten potty training, and TBH don't remember it being that difficult....but they're all different.
It did however remind me with our second; they didn't seem to have any issue doing it (this was in nappies) but for some reason didn't want to be watched. So they'd disappear into the corner of the room or behind the door (if i can't see you you aren't there was still kind of a thing) and do it there.
Except there was almost always the most terrific grunting and straining sounds, and of course we knew what they were doing and had to try to not laugh at the emanations from behind the door.
I might remind him of that when i get home......
There are some soft lads on here 😉
For those that think it's hard try having one and 20 months later having twins - it changes your outlook on life!!
(I'm sure the others with multiples will agree)
My wife and I started to introduce a routine to our newborn baby at about 8 weeks old. From then on he has been a dream with only the occasional bad night. I count him up the stairs at about 18.20 then we bath him, get him dressed ready for bed (always used white baby grows), give him a bottle and put him down. He then sleeps until anywhere between 6.30 to 8.30.
We had a few rough nights when he learn't how to sit up and thats about all. Even when we moved him into his own room and big cot he took it all in his stride. It was harder for us then him!
^ you won't be making yourself popular with that. Are you planning a second, because statements like yours are the equivalent of saying 'I haven't had a crash for ages' when out riding!
If it’s any consolation, it’s impossible for anyone to explain to you quite what it’ll be like once you having a baby blessing your life.
Somehow having two is more than twice the “fun”.
My eldest is almost nine and still doesn’t always sleep through or occasionally climbs in bed with us. Youngest is five and still wakes most nights too. Can be tiring but on the other hand they won’t be cuddly forever so as long as they’re okay it’s all good.
There can be too much pressure nowadays to have them doing certain things by X age. Just roll with it, each one is different.
We do a similar bedtime routine but it’s pretty standard and hard to see that every night without fail he’ll cry either that I’m not quick enough to feed him or stream because I’ve fed him and he wants more, refuses the bottle. Asks for it, give him it, spits it out and cries like crazy…. Just drink and sleep baby! Life is much easier that way!
The reflux seems to have gone though, I just miss doing yoga and cycling now. Used to do most mornings and need it to keep my back in check, so I end up if I can doing a half arsed session at 9:30 at night…
In all fairness he’s sleeping 5 hours about now, so is a godsend in that regard it’s just so hard to get him to sleep and there’s no telling a baby “you’re tired and go to sleep it’ll help you” 😂
There's no telling a 3 year + that either sometimes, you just get a worded reply back instead of baby noise 😂
My son did really well today on the potty in the end, got home and held it in again and wanted all the potties and toilets "thrown in the bin"
We do not pressure him or get angry at him if we are lucky that it gets to a point he has an accident rather than him causing great pain to himself.
Truly upsetting and infuriating in equal measure. It's these points you doubt your ability at being a good parent and that you've let down your child that they are so angry and scared of just doing a wee in something a bit different. I know he's scared but he trusts the childminder more than us is all that goes through your head.
However since 7 he’s on his third nappy and also his second bottle and then as he has reflux have to rest him for 30 mins at least sat up!
I mean, I don't have kids, but if I did I would expect that at aged 7 they could at least brush their teeth and dress themselves..... And be eating solids.
he trusts the childminder more than us is all that goes through your head.
That doesn't change. There's some stuff I just can't discuss with my son because I'm his dad and 'you just don't understand!'
Live with it and find a different way to get the message through.
The number of times we've come back from parents evening and thought they were speaking about a different child - polite, engaged, helpful..... compared to the sullen door slamming monster that lives upstairs. I've said it so many times it's boring but 'would you speak to a teacher like that?' = 'no but you're not a teacher you're my dad!'
My daughter who's only 2 years older can say stuff to him that the exact same words from my mouth would cause a riot. Which since she went off to Uni has created some friction because i can't easily drop a hint to have a word. Sometimes I think it's unfair to ask an 18yo to do the job for you - but parenting isn't about following the rules and playing fair, it's about getting the job done with any means at your disposal.
Very much recognise the above. I’d also add YouTube as another rival source of information less loserish than parental utterings.
Oh yes. How did i forget. Of particular note, despite having spent my life in science, lectures on validity and reliability of sources fall on stony ground. If it's on Youtube, and particularly if it suits his narrative, then it is 100.000% correct.
(I don't think this is restricted to teenagers, TBH)
Echo all of the above 😁
I have 4... the oldest is 8 1/2. Number 5 coming soon. Must be mad.
Like many are saying, it's probably just a phase... but then pretty much everything is "just a phase". At this point yes you have to work around them, once they're a little older they get into habits which can be tweaked.
For example my 2yo tends to wake up at around 4.30 every morning at the moment. This could be stopped if I took the time to settle him back into his own bed straight back to sleep... a week or 2 and he'd get used to it and sleep through the night again. However I'm too lazy/sleepy to mess around for half an hour at that time and just let him crawl into our bed instead 🙂
I would like to say you are inspiring in your understanding & caring for your mrs. It seems to me that this time with all its stresses is, sadly, a common time for breaks in the relationship between the parents. It often needs a lot of extra work & understanding from both sides and due to the heavier physical & emotional burden on the mother, a lot of this falls on the father to keep it all together.
As for your immediate situation in the OP, all I can say is that as you have this period of forced (semi) rest while you are settling him, might as well make the most of it and treat it as some timeout, partly to relax as much as possible and enjoy your bike vids (which you might not otherwise normally have time for) and partly to spend time on your own with baby.
It's IME extremely easy to fall into frustration & resentment here. Resist the urge to fling him out the window! Have a look at the Ogmios zen driving videos and incorporate the same attitude 🙂
Routines will develop eventually and they do go through phases. Found these were more impactful when younger, e.g. sleeping through at 4 months, but up all night again at 5 months vs not liking Broccoli anymore aged 3 years.
There is the inevitable comparison chat with other parents, e.g. Bedtimes. Seems our children go to bed later than others. Ours are 2 and 4 years and go to bed around at 8 pm. The look of horror on other parents faces when they hear this usually fades when, unlike their child who is up at 5.30 am, I point out ours sleep "in" to 8 am, sometimes 9 at the weekend. The takeaway being comparisons aren't always useful!
He’s woken up after feeding tonight, now flinging his head left and right violently! Won’t eat, won’t try to just nod off…I want him to be old enough to tell me what’s the problem, sorry to say it but these dumb baby days I’ll be happy when I get something back in return….the constant guessing game of wtf do you need is time consuming! We started bedtime routine at 7:30 and still have an awake baby now, he may be drifting off though fingers crossed
Just wait till they hit late teens. 19 and 22 year old, **** me, a sickly baby is easier to deal with. Good luck folks. It gets easier for a while, then boom, teens/young adults.
You are doomed ! 🙂
Good luck with that. My youngest is five and will tell you utterly mad stories rather than what’s actually wrong with her. Woke me up last night at 12:30 to ask me “why we have to wash plates”. Put her back to bed and was woken again about 02:00 and asked “how did great Gran get to be so old”
Easier said than done but just try and chill out a bit. They are utterly time consuming and cry or freak out for lots of reasons in the first couple of years. If he’s suffered with reflux he could have silent reflux. May explain the head shaking and waking soon after eating.
our first was a terrible sleeper, very difficult to settle, but one thing that calmed him was the noise of the cooker extractor fan, so many many evenings were spent holding him in the kitchen next to the fan, once he'd nodded off it was into the cot, where almost immediately he'd wake up and start crying again, so back down to the kitchen, repeat... that was fifteen years ago!
the constant guessing game of wtf do you need is time consuming!
They have very limited needs at that point..... too hot / too cold / hungry / windy / nappy / too tired. Just cross them off one by one.
Longer term, have you heard of baby sign language. Before they can speak they can learn to sign and that helped us greatly, both from the understanding and being able to address the needs effectively but also in dealing with the frustration of 'I KEEP TELLING YOU I'M COLD, WHY DO YOU KEEP TRYING TO WIND ME YOU F***WITS!'
+1 on signing. We did sing and sign.
By the time he went to nursery at 14mo (pandemic got in the way) he had 60+ signs. He could sign for milk/drink/food/more etc before he was 1 and well before he was speaking.
He still does it occasionally, when he says and signs thankyou you know he really means it 🙂
Also I had some really enjoyable dad time with him when he was under 1 watching a sing and sign video for 20 mins together most days.
We started bedtime routine at 7:30 and still have an awake baby now
In the first few months, we found putting them to "bed" at that time almost pointless because they'd be up again before we went to bed ourselves. They're really just having an evening nap. We had a moses basket or baby box in the lounge and they slept in that while we ate dinner, watched a bit of TV or caught up on general house work.
I remember as my son got older when we could transfer him to our room without waking, it was a clear sign they were ready for a proper early evening bedtime.
yoshimi
Yep first few months can be divorce tackle:)
Ours is now 10months old and its only really in the last 1/2 months that her character is really coming out
Dinner 5:30pm; Bath 6pm; last bottle, 2 teeth brushed, nappy changed and story 6:15pm, asleep at 6:30pm
We know how lucky we are with her sleeping through till 7am unless shes poorly with a blocked nose
We’ve never tried to keep quiet and always had lots of noise
For the fist 4months she was in a crib next to our bed and woke every couple of hours – put her in her own room at 4 months and she started sleeping through instantly
I mean you no ill will, but to me that doesn't even count as parenting. 😄
Here's our little bundle of joy's routine at 9 months.
Dinner 5:30pm; Bath 6pm; last bottle, 2 teeth brushed, nappy changed and story 6:15pm, asleep at 6:30pm
Awake at random time between 9 and 12, feed and then refuse to settle for approx 1 hour.
Awake at random time between 1 and 3, feed and then refuse to settle for approx 1 hour.
Awake at random time between 4 and 6, feed and then she's up for the day.
We are so effing tired!
The worst bit is that we had a "false summit" of sleeping through for about 10 days around the 6 month mark where we thought we'd cracked it (LMAO!)
Mine was always a very late sleeper and slept in our bed, still does mostly to my annoyance.
Bedtime for him was 10pm and then up late. Even now he's in bed at 9 and up at 8ish.
After my massive worry about potty training further up in this thread, it is now going much better after he'd realised that forcing it out still counted as enough for a surprise toy. 9 surprise toys yesterday. Today we had to limit it to 1 after lunch and 1 around dinner. We will see if this has a detrimental effect, he's been yelling about it and upset but still using the potty, sorry toilet as we are not allowed to say potty now according to him.
The worst bit is that we had a “false summit” of sleeping through for about 10 days around the 6 month mark where we thought we’d cracked it (LMAO!)
Oh yes, classic SF training tactic. It's a horrible 40 mile hack with gear over mountains in Wales in winter. But you know that's what you signed up for and can predict when it'll be over. Then as you come over the last rise and see the wagons, with the tea urns out and ready..... they load them in the back and **** off. Sorry lads, another 5 miles.
It breaks far stronger people than you and me, and the wagons might actually only be round the next corner, but at this point you just don't know.
We know how lucky we are with her sleeping through till 7am unless shes poorly with a blocked nose
another blase older parent story. We were just the same with our first, with the second you're now immune to that shit. We were out doing kiddy swimming and overheard the new parents discussing the troubles with snuffly kids: "I use Karvol drops under the cot; I've heard if you put a damp towel on the radiator to stop the air being too dry; we've heard that tilting the head end up a bit helps.....etc.
As we got in the car I said to my wife, 'what will we do this time if they get all snuffly?'
'Turn the baby monitor down so they don't disturb us'
theotherjonv
Full MemberAs we got in the car I said to my wife, ‘what will we do this time if they get all snuffly?’
‘Turn the baby monitor down so they don’t disturb us’
Cheers we laughed out loud at this, chapeau!
So after the health visitor came for the routine appointment she confirmed that he does seem incredibly difficult.
She tried many things and at one point he was on her stretched out screaming in what looked like pain so we have decided to cut milk out of Mum’s diet completely so that’s been done.
Weirdly today he has been incredibly placid and seemed a lot better as has had a rotten cold so it may account for current mood but he’s been difficult for months pretty much since he was born. With the health visitor even telling us this isn’t normal it was a bit reassuring that at least she was taking it seriously. We all know babies cry for what they want, but they also have lots of time they sit or lay playing or looking whereas he would spend likely 70% of his day crying.
So hopefully should see some difference around 2 weeks or sooner if it’s milk, poor bugger I just got him to sleep on me too… go to put him down and wakes up and the tired crying starts…
Never nice hearing them cry like that but know really it’s just them talking to you, likely saying “I’m really tired, I need to sleep but I can’t really do that so will just keep telling you I’m tired then maybe I’ll nod off!”
In all fairness once asleep he seems brilliant and last night slept for 7 hours, it’s not even the nights that tire Mum out it’s the days tbh…
Will update in due course
We have a 3 year old and a 7 year old and both were pretty good sleepers(sorry) and slept through from a pretty young age. They both had an “Ewan the Dream Sheep” which seemed to massively calm them down. The 3 year old still takes hers to bed.
Don't be too hard on yourself mate, It’s easily been the hardest thing that I’ve ever done.
Immediately googled Ewan the dream sheep…definitely going to keep that in mind thank you.
So strangely though he was like a different baby today, I went down at 10:30am and she looked fresh faced did the missus and he was calm just watching her doing the washing and he’s been chilled all day with no real crankyness until it was 6pm and he was clearly tired.
Literally like a different child! Will see how he is tomorrow as daddy will be out the front knocking ten bells out of the porch making a whoooole lot of noise!
Fyi - if your Ewan the dream sheep breaks, get in touch with them and they'll likely replace it. We've had three replacements free of charge. (The buttons in the feet break.)
Ewan the dream sheep is ace. Before we got one we had recording of the vac and washing machine on our phones to help Funk Jr sleep.
Ewan the dream sheep
LOL I vaguely remember that thing. Didn't help one bit. Maybe it was the budget version we had.
@chrisyork could be early teething? That can be very unsettled then suddenly calm behaviour.
My wife also did the milk exclusion for our daughter. Whatever caused the issue, it resolved itself without further intervention. Seemed quite drastic at the time, but we subsequently heard from other parents they'd been advised to try it too.
V interesting thank you!
Oh also and this might make some laugh, her breast pump noise sends him to sleep so a few times I’ve played him over an hours sound of breast pump from YouTube 😂
Just wanted to update as we seem to have had a switch and thought I’d update on what’s changed!
So yes Mum has been dairy free for 1.5 weeks but also it appears we don’t have a baby that will fall asleep by themselves! We have always been told “be baby led” so although this wake windows are meant to be quite short before another nap he’d go four hours sometimes without a nap, be cranky constantly and be extremely hard to manage.
Well now when he gives tired cues we give him a dummy, lay him down and he’s asleep after rocking for a minute! We never wanted to rely a dummy but if he won’t go to sleep on his own then it’s our best option. He’s really good though as will spit it out when he has done with it and keep sleeping!
That and the bedtime routine where when he’s asleep I now turn off the nightlight fully, three nights on the trot he’s gone 8-9 hours after that final big feed and half hour resting him, then sleeps until about 5am which is incredible!
It seems that when he stirred during the night if the light was on it was enough to make him active, turn that off and although he does wake around 2 and grumble briefly we just let him drift back to sleep.
Anyway much more positive, we don’t think it’s the dairy free but in less than a week she’ll be back on dairy and will see if same routine gives the same results!
If not then he’s going onto formula, she really misses chocolate!! 🤣
Good news. Not wanting to piss on your chips; all the good phases are just phases as well so don't be despondent if it turns again. Just know it'll then turn again again.
Nothing wrong with a dummy - in fact, they can be advantageous as you can just take them away from the kid when the time's right, but if they've learnt to suck their thumb...
Our little boy doesn't nap in the day at all and never has. My wife was worried at first as looking on the internet when he was first born everything said he should feed and then nap but he never ever has. The only time he will nap is if his has had a cold or he is in the car.
Ha I have also read all over that phases constantly change so we’re just making the most of it at the moment! The real challenge is being SO quiet when we both come upto bed like now in a weekend when I’ve fed him to sleep around 8:30…. Can’t risk him waking up as you know it’s then a cycle to get him back off to sleep again!
I'm amazed ours was never woken by their own farts 😄
Baby groups for us were a nightmare though as you can't say that your baby regularly sleeps for 12 hours without being ostracized 😂
True !
So I just wanted to share a further update in the hope it may help other new mothers and fathers in future.
So we were noticing that he was still being very high maintenance and it was really taking its toll on us, also his ecszema was getting out of control on his legs and tummy and arms so we knew something wasn’t right. Finally at 7 months Mum decided that it was time to go dairy free after an appointment with the hospital dietician for him.
So finally has stopped expressing for him, and we have now been prescribed dairy and soy free formula and have seen such a big change!
When he just wouldn’t before, now enjoys tummy time etc…, ecszema nearly all gone (they said it’ll take around 3 weeks ) and he’s just so much more placid.
So so far the cure, off mums milk and on prescribed dairy and soy free formula!
We already tried making her go dairy free for her for 1 month which was hell for her, so when the dietician said you need to do it again AND cut out soy that’s in a huge amount of things it forced her hand to go formula but wouldn’t look back now!!
