A young relative a mine cried, I swear, for the first year of his life. Every time I see a baby picture of him smiling, I am startled. I don’t remember him ever smiling.
He didn’t eat well, so he didn’t sleep well, so he didn’t eat well …
But he would sleep in motion, in the car or in his stroller. Not a workable solution for a single parent, though.
I have heard that the sound of a dishwasher or washing machine can put some babies to sleep; that’s a cheaper alternative that the car ride.
(Quietly puts sticks away)
Kidding, kidding!
I had a nice long reply and then the board crashed. It’s a little better. Last night we rearranged everything in the bedroom and sidecar-ed the mattresses for cosleeping permanently. Nat’s on lots of solids (well, sort of) but that doesn’t seem to help. We’re still nursing to sleep, and had a brilliant illustration of motion doesn’t make him sleepy last weekend, on a long car ride.
He just gets tired, then frantic, then screams, and after an hour or two falls asleep. Not fun. White noise, strollers, cars, bouncing don’t work. Only nursing. He’s almost the size of a one-year old now, according to our doctor. I can’t carry him for long.
His awake times seem to have stretched, and he’s had several quite long naps in the last week or two, but the nights are still pretty bad. We’ve got The No-Cry Sleep Solution, and we’re working on some of the steps, but if we’re making any progress it’s going with glacial slowness.
We (actually, my wife) tried lots of different books to get our son to sleep. Nothing, including the Ferber method, worked. He cried when we put him to bed, he woke up and cried some more every few hours, and he made everyone miserable. One night I put him in his crib, took a few steps away, and turned my back to him. At no point was I going to pick him up again or even touch him. This really pissed him off until (I think) he realized that going to sleep didn’t mean that he was being abandoned. The first night took 45 minutes (I stood there until he had stopped crying for five minutes). The next night took 25 minutes (and he even said “bye-bye” when I left). After five or six days he started going to bed quietly.
I know that some people think this approach is cruel, but a healthy baby who is well fed has to learn how to deal, and has to learn quickly.
This baby, however, is six months old by now. Far past the age where tummy needs to be filled during the night. The diaper isn’t wet - he just likes Mommy right there and doesn’t want to go to sleep. You know, I have nights like that. I just stopped screaming through them at some point in time.
You can’t spoil a newborn, but a smart baby figures out how to manipulate his parents pretty fast and has often figured it out by six months. The trick is to know the difference between “I’m going to be psychologically damaged if you don’t pick me up” and “I’m going to be psychologically damaged if you DO.” Fortunately, babies tend to be pretty resilient - you can pick them up a certain amount without risking Borderline Personality Disorder, and you can let them cry a certain amount without risking Attachment Disorder.
I tried posting this when the Board went down–good thing I’ve learned to copy and paste! (Occasionally…)
This has been a fascinating and informative thread. I love you Dopers, man! sniff
Lissa, RuffLlama has never been a great sleeper or an exceptionally bad one. But when it’s bad, oh dear Lord. I feel for you so. 
RL was (is) also a big baby; he’s always been in the 90+ percentile in height and usually weight as well. I honestly believe some of his roughest nights were due to growth spurts. He would just be miserable, and would kickkickkick. (That’s his thing in bed–he lies belly-down and bends his knees, slapping the mattress with his lower legs. He’s done this for-EVER.) DeathLlama would massage RL’s legs to try and help things out.
That could be part of it. Hubby and I, both tall types (though he’s really tall, I’m just above average) remember how much growing HURT, especially in the legs. The ibuprofen you’ve been giving him might be helping with that, who knows. I’m sorry I don’t have much more to offer; the Dopers have really done their part. Keep checking in with the doctor, keep trying things, and listen to your motherly instincts and go with what YOU believe is best. You know your baby better than anyone.
Right now, RuffLlama (now 2 and change) is going through a phase where he wakes up SCREAMING in terror once or twice a night. We go in, and half the time his eyes are closed (nightmares?). We comfort him and he goes back to sleep on his own, usually. We have to be careful, though, at this age as he also will play the, “Oh, my tummy hurts” card to get me to stay with him. I genuinely think he had some “owie” going on, but considering he would sleep when Mommy was lying next to him or holding him in the rocker, it wasn’t THAT bad. I’d leave, and less than a minute later you’d hear, “SCREECH Mommy I got owie SCREECH WAAAAAAHHH!” Dude’s already pulling the fake illness and he’s not even 2 1/2!
Right now, I don’t think that’s the case with RL’s midnight fussing (seems tied to days when schedules get thrown off, like spending the day at grandma’s house), but I have to keep a close vigil. Genuine distress quickly morphs into something else. Inspired by this thread, I called RL’s pediatrician just to be sure; the nures said it sounds like night terrors. He doesn’t get them during his naps as he doesn’t reach the same level of deep REM sleep…makes sense, I suppose, as his naps are two-ish hours, and his nightmares seem to start after he’s been asleep at least four.
I think you know this, but everything I read (even from philosophically opposite camps) said babies under 6 months cannot manipulate, so your little one’s crying has some reason.
Oy, girl, I so feel for you. Hang in there and keep us updated.
Well, he’s just over six months now, and he’d love to maipulate me into letting him play with the scissors, but beside that I don’t think there’s a whole lot of devious going on. Maybe some.
Our daughter was sleeping through the night at 6 weeks, and she was on a typical 2hr nurse schedule during the day. Yes we let her cry, but the cries were different. There was a definite difference between the ‘I want mommy cry, and HELP I’m scared/starving/wet cry.’ Once we were able to figure those out it made the nights a bit better.
I took it with a lil grain of salt, but there was a woman on Oprah and some of the other shows that was describing how to decode your baby’s cry. She was making the circuit in late 2006 just before we gave birth, but it did seem to help me out in figuring out our little one.
Now, we’ll see what happens with #2 whom is due in Feb 09!
Yes, that’s why I made sure to mention that I knew the baby in the OP was older, but I was talking about younger babies, as that’s what was mentioned in the post I was responding to. Although I disagree that a 6-month-old never needs a midnight feeding. Generally speaking, no, but when they hit a growth spurt, they might very well need a 2am snack to get them through.
Mine have all nursed to sleep until they were way older than 6 months. I never saw it as being a problem. Whatsit Jr. is 6 now, and MiniWhatsit is 4, and they’ve been falling asleep on their own with no problems for years now. It was just something they needed as infants.
Lissa, yeah…I realized your son’s age was right at the cusp, but figured by your description he wasn’t manipulating, and kind of threw that statistic in there to maybe reassure you it wasn’t that (my mom tried telling me RuffLlama’s crying was manipulation waaaaaaaaay early on because, you see, he’s a SMART baby).
RuffLlama was nursed to sleep until about age 8 months or so, maybe a hair younger. It stopped when I realized he would wake up in the middle of the night, fuss to be fed, then fall asleep within minutes of being on the boob. That’s when I realized he wasn’t hungry; he was boob-sleep-dependent. We did a sort of Ferber thing not long after that just so we all could sleep better.