My 22mo dd has seriously increased her nursing frequency this week. She is up every hour or two all night and asking for the "Booby" often throughout the day. She also doesn't want to have me out of her sight. I am exhausted! Could this be a late-manifesting separation anxiety? Maybe just her molars? I know every child is different but have any of you with older ones had a similar experience?
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- Current Mood
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drained
Eva (8.5 years old) has had trouble sleeping for forever, literally, since she was a baby. Since Christmas, she and I been working together more aggressively to get her on a more reasonable schedule and into a bedtime routine and it's helped a lot. Instead of falling asleep between 1 and 4AM, she's now falling asleep between 9PM and midnight. Unfortunately, it requires a long time unwinding in bed (sometimes two hours or more!!!) with mom and progressive relaxation books on mp3. By the time she is asleep, I'm wound up (I HATE THE MP3!!!) and it takes ME another hour to two hours to be able to fall asleep!!! I'd love to stick her in her room with dh's laptop to play her mp3's but she insists her room is full of scary dragons and won't sleep in there unless there's an adult with her. Even if one of us wanted to, it's no longer an option, since we put her loft bed in there, which has a weight limit of 100 or 150 lbs.
The tryptophan helped a little, for a few days, but not after that, and she complained about the pills being too big. Benadryl works, if I'm desperate, for a couple of days, but I don't like to give her that for too long at a time. Lots and lots of physical exercise seems to make it HARDER to sleep, not easier. Chiropractic care hasn't made a difference, though in the past it helped with the wetting. Oh, and before it comes up, we already talked to our doctor about it. Our doctor said her tonsils are enlarged, so it may be apnea complicating matters, so we're scheduling an appointment with an ENT and sleep study place to rule out medical reasons for her sleep problems. They do seem to be connected to the heavy wetting at night and trouble getting up in the morning.
This pregnancy, the stress of my husband being laid off from work, the heat and various other things are wiping me out... not sleeping enough on top of that isn't helping any. I'm looking for an answer that's a little more humane than locking her in her room and letting her scream herself to sleep, which is what I'm sure I'd get elsewhere.
We like our pediatrician. But now that my son is 9 months old (breastfed exclusively; he declines to eat anything else), the ped is telling us his iron levels are low and we need to start supplementing.
I don't want to believe this. I want to believe that when his body tells him it's time to start eating food, he will. Then he'll get the iron that isn't in breast milk, and his levels will rise.
And yet ... what if that doesn't happen? Something really could be wrong, and low iron leads to anemia, which can do serious harm to cognitive development.
Any good, authoritative sources of info you might have on this subject would be greatly appreciated.
xposted to attached parents
I am a mom in Bellevue and belong to an AP Yahoo group that is just dead! I have a 14-mo girl and would love to meet more like-minded parents to hang out with!
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frustrated
I just realized tonight that in a very telling way, we unconsiously stored the formula samples we got in the mail and never used, of course, on the top shelf in the kitchen between bottles of hard liquor. I almost died laughing when I noticed.
My son was ill yesterday and wanted to be held constantly. To make cup cakes and start dinner I put him in a sling. It's been awhile since he's used the sling but he saw it and got excited. And I think he really liked getting to stay close to mommy while he was feeling bad. I don't see how people can just strap their child into a stroller, prop a bottle and not pay attention to him. Everyone tells me how well behaved and what a great little boy my son is. he's 2 1/2 and I don't really have any behavior issues with him at all. And I think it's in part from breastfeeding and the general closeness we always had. He doesn't have a reason to act out.
Second thing was I was at a little carnival that a nearby town sets up now and then when the fair trucks pass through. I was in line for high rollar. For those who don't know this is a ride that has you on a rectangular shaped track, so you're upside down and all over....the track also spins in a constant fast circle...leaving you bumping every which way. The girl behind my date and I was five months pregnant. she was somewhere between 16 and 18 and was joking about how the baby would be fine cause she always pounds on her belly anyway. This poor excuse for a soon to be mother ended up in the seats right behind us and her friend was joking "suck it in!" cause it's an extremely tight squeeze even for me (I'm roughly a size 8-6) and while we're getting jostled around I'd hear "ahhh, you're squishing me!" After the ride she told the guy working there that she was pregnant and he was a bit upset and was like, "Don't tell me that!" and she just went on her merry way laughing about it. I just wanted to slap her in the face. You stupid idiot, do you want to miscarry? Cause that's what could happen. Those jostles are enough to seperate the placenta from your uterus, do you even know what a placenta and uterus is? Something you don't deserve to have. I spent a good twenty minutes extremely fustrated. I was pregnant during full fair season, I was 4 months and I asked why they say no pregnant women and I was like, okay, I won't go on any rides even though I didn't look pregnant and barely had a belly at all.
God, really, some people should not breed. Sounds terrible, yes, but, damn. Why not bungee jump as well. Maybe if it was the scrambler or something a little softer but this was like riding the kazmakazee or the zipper. Ugh.
Lizzie is three months old. I wear her in her carrier a lot, carry her around without it, and sit her on my lap a lot. I think she might need more floor time to practice rolling, do her baby pushups, and generally use different muscles. I get down on the floor with her, so she has company. The doctors say she should have some belly time, but she doesn't like being on her belly very much. I put her that way only for short periods. She rolled over from belly to back three times all on her own a whole month ago- that was young- but she hasn't done it since.
What ages did your babies roll? Did they/do they like being on their bellies? When were they able to grasp objects? I like to play ball with Lizzie, but she doesn't have the motor skills for it yet. She likes to watch while I bounce the ball, and I praise her when she accidentally hits it. Is she too young for ball?
My apologies if this is an oh-so-covered topic, I checked the memories and couldn't find anything. If someone can direct to the right info, please feel free to ignore this post after! I just found out yesterday that I'm due with my second in March, and I'm wondering how to manage co-sleeping, since my 11 month-old still spends part of the night with me. This is goind to sound weird, but my husband has slept in the living room since before my son was born because of his snoring, so when Oscar was tiny we just shared my bed without any worries. My husband is in the process of having his snoring treated and will be moving back in with me soon, and I think my son is old enough to sleep between us safely. Currently, he starts the night in his crib and comes into my bed about 5:00 am to nurse and go back to sleep. What I'm wondering is, I know you can't safely have two babies in the same bed, so what do I do if Oscar still wants to spend part of the night with me when #2 gets here? I realize it's a ways off, but I'm just "that" kind of person.
What I've considered:
a) Getting an Arm's Reach Co-Sleeper. That way, Oscar could go between my husband and me, and #2 would be safely in the co-sleeper on the other side of me. But I was looking at them online, and it looks like the side doesn't quite go down all the way so it would be hard to nurse lying down, though I've heard people manage anyway. Does anyone have any experience with this? The other problem would be once #2 reaches the weight limit or starts crawling. What do you do at that point, if you still have an older baby in the family bed? I'm really not keen on shoving Oscar out before he's completely ready.
b) Taking the side of a crib and putting that next to my side of the bed. That would eliminate both the problems with the co-sleeper, but I'd be worried about my mattress shifting (which it does frequently), and leaving a gap that the baby could fall through or get an arm stuck in or something. Perhaps I could order the straps the co-sleeper comes with to secure it to the mattress?
Of course, none if this will really be an issue if Oscar decides to leave my bed before then, but I'd like to have a plan, just in case. Thanks so much!
