This post is a Mom blog type post whereby I will be soliciting advice from those who have gone before me...I am sorry for those still in the IF trenches. I wish it weren't so.
Sleep. Night feedings. Please help.
Our babies are over ten months old. We brought them home over three months ago. Somewhere along the way some friends of ours who also adopted "psuedo twins" told us they did the bedtime routine and fed their babies a bottle, but then also woke them right before they (the parents) went to sleep and gave them another bottle, and then they slept through the night.
We tried that! Basically, it meant that at 6:45 pm or 7 pm ish we fed them their last bottle and then woke them at 10 pm and fed them again. Guess what? They always sucked down about 6-8 oz of formula at that 10 pm feeding. Guess what again? They didn't sleep through the night, still waking for another bottle at around 2 am. Hmph.
Our pedi told us the other day to STOP the waking up forced feeding at 10 pm. She said that it was teaching them to need that feeding.
We happily obliged. Quite honestly most nights we are falling asleep at 9:15 pm so we were happy to go to bed earlier. The first few nights--EUREKA!--they slept longer, sometimes going until 3:30 am before waking once to be fed. So we were still waking once but getting to go sleep earlier so getting a longer stretch of solid sleep and it seemed like a decent plan.
But lately, here's the thing: they are waking TWICE per night to eat. They eat solids three times a day and take two small bottles daily and are starting (though they are not good at it at all) to take liquids from a sippy cup. We feed them dinner at 5:30 (it takes them about 45 minutes to eat because of the self feeding) and they seem to eat quite a bit. Then at 6:30 they have a bath, at 6:50 it's books, bottle, rocking and then to bed. They usually goof off in their cribs (despite nearly falling asleep drinking their bottles, so this, too, perplexes me) for a while and then drift off to sleep anywhere from 7:15 to 7:30 pm. But now they are waking at 11 pm and 4 am consistently for bottles. They usually drink about 6 ounces, sometimes the full 8. Last night our son woke at 10 pm crying...we let him cry for about five minutes, he did fall back asleep but then woke SCREAMING at 11 pm and there was no going back.
I guess I always thought 10+ month olds would sleep longer, could go longer at night. I'm not complaining really--at least it's pretty easy to just get up and feed them, change them, and they go back to sleep, but really I'm just wondering if anyone has any advice. I feel like sometimes we're doing something wrong.
Well, this is rambling. Just hoping someone can tell me the magic cure :) Ha.
EDITED TO ADD:
I think they get enough to eat during the day...they get about 28 to 30 oz of formula total daily plus three meals of solid foods and they seem to really chow down at those meals! They eat vegetables, fruits, soy *meat*, grilled cheese sandwiches, bagels, waffles, etc. Our daughter is 90th percentile for weight and our son is 50th percentile for weight. I guess I just thought waking every four hours to eat at night seemed frequent, but maybe not....
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Too much.
I know I've been away. I'm sorry I'm not always commenting. I'm trying to read and keep up. But some days it's all I can do to keep up with the most basic of tasks. Hmph.
Warning, the following is a little tongue-in-cheek, and I don't want to be flamed in comments, BUT this past week our normally 'easy' 9.5 month old daughter has 1) started crawling (yay!) 2) started completely refusing to be fed ANY baby food on the spoon (argh) 3) finally sprouted one lonely tooth and 4) decided that naps are for babies, and so is going to bed at night at the normal hour too, since you asked. Our son was teething and also had an ear infection. They also got their last set of 'catch up' vaccines plus a flu shot...
So it's been stressful. Tiring. Agonizing. See--there are books on raising twins, there are books on parenting internationally adopted infants, but there are not a lot of expert opinions about parenting internationally adopted psuedo-twins. One expert says let her cry it out on the naps, but what about her brother, sleeping ten feet away? On the feeding--just let her self feed whatever she wants, but do NOTHING to make mealtime stressful (international adoption book) but the pedi says "make sure she gets her several servings of fruits and vegetables per day." How? She won't feed herself fruits OR vegetables. But yet she went from the 50th percentile to the 90th percentile for weight...so clearly she's not starving....
Anyway. My head. It explodes with the what ifs. What if I'm doing it all wrong? I feel like I am, about 75% of the time. Why don't I have more patience? When will the sleep deprivation get better (ha!)...although we are getting better at nighttime, we still don't get through the night without being woken up twice...once for a full feeding and the other time because one of them starts to make noise and we have to wake up to determine if it's for real or not. And did I mention that on top of everything, I go back to work parttime in one week? And the nanny is wonderful--truly wonderful (experience with multiples twice, mature, hardworking, very loving) but I'm all at once jealous of her and looking forward with such glee and delight to our two full mock days this week, where I will be out of the house but not at work. I will get to have lunch with a friend, I will get my hair cut, I will do some shopping. I will feel guilty.
OK, so the blog title post.
On a particularly trying evening, the Mr. looked at me and said, "Was it too much fun we were having before they got here?"
I answered back, "No, I think it was too much free time we had."
"No, he said, too much going out to eat!"
"No, too much hanging out with friends!"
And back and forth it went.
Too much money.
Too much sleep--glorious sleep!
Too much running on trails.
Too much watching TV.
Too much eating food while it's still hot.
Too much reading for pleasure.
Too much staying up late because we knew we could sleep in.
Too much going anywhere at a moment's notice.
Too much vacations.
Too much, too much, too much.
We had too much of all of these things, and so we gave them all up.
Ha.
Warning, the following is a little tongue-in-cheek, and I don't want to be flamed in comments, BUT this past week our normally 'easy' 9.5 month old daughter has 1) started crawling (yay!) 2) started completely refusing to be fed ANY baby food on the spoon (argh) 3) finally sprouted one lonely tooth and 4) decided that naps are for babies, and so is going to bed at night at the normal hour too, since you asked. Our son was teething and also had an ear infection. They also got their last set of 'catch up' vaccines plus a flu shot...
So it's been stressful. Tiring. Agonizing. See--there are books on raising twins, there are books on parenting internationally adopted infants, but there are not a lot of expert opinions about parenting internationally adopted psuedo-twins. One expert says let her cry it out on the naps, but what about her brother, sleeping ten feet away? On the feeding--just let her self feed whatever she wants, but do NOTHING to make mealtime stressful (international adoption book) but the pedi says "make sure she gets her several servings of fruits and vegetables per day." How? She won't feed herself fruits OR vegetables. But yet she went from the 50th percentile to the 90th percentile for weight...so clearly she's not starving....
Anyway. My head. It explodes with the what ifs. What if I'm doing it all wrong? I feel like I am, about 75% of the time. Why don't I have more patience? When will the sleep deprivation get better (ha!)...although we are getting better at nighttime, we still don't get through the night without being woken up twice...once for a full feeding and the other time because one of them starts to make noise and we have to wake up to determine if it's for real or not. And did I mention that on top of everything, I go back to work parttime in one week? And the nanny is wonderful--truly wonderful (experience with multiples twice, mature, hardworking, very loving) but I'm all at once jealous of her and looking forward with such glee and delight to our two full mock days this week, where I will be out of the house but not at work. I will get to have lunch with a friend, I will get my hair cut, I will do some shopping. I will feel guilty.
OK, so the blog title post.
On a particularly trying evening, the Mr. looked at me and said, "Was it too much fun we were having before they got here?"
I answered back, "No, I think it was too much free time we had."
"No, he said, too much going out to eat!"
"No, too much hanging out with friends!"
And back and forth it went.
Too much money.
Too much sleep--glorious sleep!
Too much running on trails.
Too much watching TV.
Too much eating food while it's still hot.
Too much reading for pleasure.
Too much staying up late because we knew we could sleep in.
Too much going anywhere at a moment's notice.
Too much vacations.
Too much, too much, too much.
We had too much of all of these things, and so we gave them all up.
Ha.
From the Mr.'s birthday.
Too much cuteness, indeed!
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