No, they did not.
Asleep, maybe an hour tops.
And then...sweet mother of god... the crying started. But not crying as we know it. Whining moaning crying with eyes firmly shut. The kind of crying that cannot be shushed or cuddled or comforted in any way.
What is the matter little boy? I would ask him and he just cried and cried and seemed to be trying to say something important but was impossible to decipher. Is it your ear? Is it your tummy? Do you have a sore tummy?
Sore tummy he mumbled back but then he also mumbled sore ear...
Should we go to the hospital? C and I looked at each other, worried, tired and then... Tricky seemed to settle.
For about ten minutes.
And repeat until 4am.
There were slight variations on the theme. At one point he really did need to poo and this was done (in his nappy) standing up, clinging to my head and crying in my ear. When C changed him Tricky shouted THE LIGHTS ARE TOO BRIGHT. There was slight relief here, I understood this kind of shouting/crying.
DOONA ON... TAKE DOONA OFF...I WANT A SHEET...SHEET OFF... eventually I was too slow to respond and he just lay in his bed shouting DOONA ON DOONA OFF. For the sake of the rest of the house I tried to calm him and quiet him and interestingly, despite the horror, I never lost my cool. Yay me.
Around 4 he was crying for milk and saying he was cold. I put him into our bed and told him to stay there while I got his milk and when I came back in he was asleep. Asleep and outstretched over my side of the bed. So then, the constant gentle shove routine so I could claim a few inches for myself and...we all slept. Till 7 when C and I woke because my car had to be taken to the garage (massive 4 wheel drive ute backed up on my bonnet, all ok but man that was some crap day yesterday.)
This morning, I stumbled downstairs to talk about the night with my sister in law. She said that Naughty Nephew 2 displayed similar strange sleeping-crying behavior that could go on for hour. What worked for them was taking him into the bathroom with the lights on and giving him drinks of water until he woke, often with a start and the grumpy demand: "Bed!"
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6 comments:
Oh you must be exhausted. I guess THIS is not something you'll look back on fondly. Hope his night problems don't last TOO much longer. My grandson kept his daddy and mommy up MANY nights I'm afraid with night terrors and tears. Good Luck, I'll keep you my prayers and good thoughts!
Same here. Our son (17 months) does the crying-in-his-sleep thing too. It started about two weeks ago. Comforting doesn't work, because he seems to be asleep. So we kind of just stay with him (sitting next to his crib) and put a hand on his back untill he settles. Takes about 20 minutes.
If we are stupid enough to wake him up though, he's desoriented and ANGRY and crying and won't go back to sleep for at least two hours. Feeding him doesn't work (still breastfeeding, and in other situations feeding him back to sleep usually is the easiest solution).
I'm told it's because now that he's starting to learn how to walk his world suddenly became a lot bigger and there's more for him to wrap his mind around. I'm also told it will pass.
With our luck, his twin sister will start the same thing just when he's about to grow out of it, though... ;-)
Has anything big changed in Tricky's routine/life lately?
I think that the biggest change may be potty stuff. Otherwise things are fairly much the same. Also, on the worst night, i had treated him for headlice before his bath and that's a fairly long process...
Getting his first "bad" dreams, maybe??
Everyone's bad dreams, but yes, maybe... I thought this sleep thing was meant to get easier?
Yeah, we're going through a weird sleep period at the moment as well. Ava in particular keeps waking up screaming but the boys are also having turns. I think they may be starting to have bad dreams and that we are approaching the next stage of disturbed sleep - nightmares. Certainly the boys have developed a, hitherto absent, fear of the dark but this could have more to do with Breda inadvertently locking them in the car, inside the dark garage than with any 'normal' phobia. Chalk up one to bad parenting...
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