We had visitor in the bed again last night, and i’m not just talking about Mr Bunny (more original name yet to be assigned).
That’s right, little miss Grace woke up at 1am, wriggled (for the first time I might add) to the other end of the cot and then finally decided she wanted us to wake up too! We try not to let her in the bed with us as much as possible, but when you’ve been up and down 4 or 5 times within an hour sometimes you are left with no other choice!
We still haven’t got the sleeping through the night down yet at 8 months. We thought we made a breakthrough about a month ago where Grace slept for 7 consecutive nights from 7.30-6.30+, but since then those wonderful nights have been few and far between. We’ve got a solid routine down, which we only stray from on special occasions or if we’ve been out for the evening, but other than that she’s more or less like clockwork.
Grace still hasn’t cut a tooth yet, but her gums are really bumpy and swollen. We affectionately call her “gummy bear”. So no doubt teething is one factor in some of her wake up calls.
I weaned her off the breast a couple of months ago in preparation for returning to work as I wanted her to be comfortable with drinking formula from a bottle and with being fed by other people when I’m not there. She now doesn’t wake for night feeds, so I know that those times where she does randomly awaken in the middle of the night, its no longer because she’s hungry.
Grace’s waking times are really sporadic, and range from any time between 1am and 5am. We do the standard checks- nappy, teeth, temperature, but i’d say about 80% of the time at the moment, she just wants to play! And how difficult is it to try and get a baby back to sleep when all they want to do is play? The answer: very! Will she take her dummy? No. Will she be rocked? No. In fact, any kind of tilt toward the lying down position and all hell breaks loose. I’d be interested to know how many other babies do this and what parents do to try and get them back to sleep? At the moment we just try to persevere with not “socialising” with her and gently try and tempt her back to sleep, but it can take up to 2 hours sometimes.
Sleep deprivation comes in all sorts of forms and intensities. Even if the baby only wakes once in the night, if they are awake for a prolonged period of time it does mess with your sleep pattern. When it’s several nights in a row, each at a different time and for a different duration, it just throws our body clocks out completely, making for a very tired mummy and daddy.
Fingers crossed it’s just a phase and eventually we will get back to sleeping through the night again. But if anyone has any advice to share that would be great, would be interesting to see how many other babies do the same thing!
Mothering with grace 