January 8, 2009

Why I haven't been posting much

I have been too tired to post. I have been having a real rough time right now with Pookie at night. This is a post I made on MDC.. I am too lazy to rewrite it for my blog.

Two months ago my DD was getting up once or twice to nurse, and many times I could barely remember nursing her as it was so uneventful.Then she started getting 6 teeth at once. Since then it has been horrible. I keep blaming it on the teething but now I am wondering if it is something else. She just has one more tooth to finish coming through and other than the nightwaking it doesn't seem to be bothering her.

Some nights I have been up with her from 1-4am. She cries and cries until I take her down to the basement, and then she will just quietly doing a puzzle, watch TV with me and then fall back asleep eventually. Last night she woke up screaming and would absolutely not stay in our room. So today we have been up since 4am. I work two days a week (today being one of them) and leave at 6am.

In the last week she is also wanting to keep my nipple in her mouth while she sleeps, which has made a back/ shoulder injury I have (from co-sleeping with her), even worse. I am a ballet teacher so it is making teaching very difficult.Last night I thought I was going to lose it. I had all these horrible thoughts and just had no patience left.

We can't keep going like this. I have no energy during the day to be a good mom, my back is getting worse which makes teaching and carrying her harder and harder. Before this all started I had begun trying to get her to stop nursing to sleep (which could be another thread). It was going OK before all this started. I feel angry that perhaps I wouldn't be in this situation if I hadn't chosen to co-sleep. No one I know has these types of problems with their toddlers. Has anyone else been through something like this?

Do you think it really is teething or something else? A year ago I posted about some sleep problems we were having and of couse I go the "this too shall pass"... but it hasn't! It has only gotten worse. Before all this I has hoping to TTC in the spring and now I can't imagine being pregnant in the near future... which makes me really depressed.

3 comments:

Rebekah Gonzalez said...

oooh mama, this is tough. Definatly sleep deprivation compounds any problems you are having. Perhaps you're right, it could be teething...but I will say that My oldest son Max went through this "night terrors" phase..where he would wake up screaming...even after I was sure that he was awake...he would still scream and cry for at least another hour. It took some time for him to ease out of the phase...there wasn't anything that I could do, I think it was part of brain development because nothing really changed in his enviornment that I could see.

You can talk to your pediatrician or herbalist to see what they suggest. But I think that this too shall pass :) best of luck!

Motherhood for the Weak said...

Oh hugs momma. It is so hard to mother without sleep. And co-sleeping can be so very painful (they don't tell you that)--have you tried massage for the kinks?

Nothing in particular jumps out at me from your post. I mean, teeth hurt like hell, so maybe even that last one is a problem.

Maybe it's time to try something completely new. It sounds like it's time for a change, but you have to decide what you want to do.

My DD got 6 teeth all at once and it caused her to wean. The pain was excruciating for her. But she was so young we didn't feel comfortable doing anything beyond traditional AP on the parenting front. Now that she is older, we are okay with letting her sort out her fussiness on her own for a bit--I feel it's important to have some self-coping skills, but it's a fine line between allowing DD to comfort herself vs. CIO (which we want to avoid).

Anyway, it's hard. I'm sorry. I wish there was an easy fix. Just try something new and repeat until you find a solution.

Sigh. I'm dealing with a pissed off non-napping DD today myself. Urgh. Wanna trade babies? Mine sleeps through the night (usually), but napping is another issue.

M

Shannon said...

Thank you so much for your kind words. It is hard when you don't have friends IRL that understand this parenting style. Luckily it appears Pookie is on her way back to her normal sleeping patterns. :) I will keep my fingers crossed.