48 hours of sleeplessness

Hi Everyone,

Sophie and I suffered from horrible sleep deprivation on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Actually...to be perfectly honest, it started last Sunday night when she just would not go to sleep.

Andrew and I have developed these sleep techniques where we go through the various arsenals at our disposal:

Shushing, Natures Sway sling (Andrew's preferred method) with steps, ring sling, tummy to tummy, swaddling, bath, hair drier, skin to skin, bouncy/rocking bassinet...etc

Well, by Tuesday day, she did not sleep much between 7pm till 2 am.  It may be a delayed reaction to being fawned over by multiple colleagues at Andrew's work.

Then Wednesday, apart from a solid block between 2am to 11am, she did not have any decent sleep till 10pm that night!

This was what happened:

Feed, nappy change, burp, put to sleep, sleep for 5 minutes (max), wake from something small ie: nappy issue, hunger, her own hands, imaginary god-knows-what!  Then she's awake and we had to start again.

It just got really depressing since its kind of like a torture sequence for me.  I had to do this 5 times (!!!) on Tuesday night.  The weird thing was, she was really easy to put to sleep!  It only takes 5 minutes of swinging on my legs and she's out like a light...so I thought!

As soon as I move her off my legs, boom! she's awake again.

I tried with swaddling her before the leg swing - didn't work, still woke up, tried with her swaddling mattress - still woke up.  In the end she fell asleep on my chest.

Looking back, I should have been a bit more clued in, but by Wednesday when she put me through a repeat of Tuesday night during the day, I was on my last legs.

Andrew came home early to help.  He tried the sling, didn't work, he tried the buggy - worked for 20 minutes.  In the end we called Plunket for help.  The nurse was puzzled and couldn't advise us except to go seek medical advice at the local A&E.

As we were walking dejectedly to the A&E, Andrew and I reviewed her symptoms:  nothing out of the ordinary except her refusal to stay asleep!  She had no temperature (36 degrees), had no weird rash or discolouration, no colicky crying.  In fact she's down right placid when we set her down and leave her.

So we turned around half way and went back home.  She had a feed, we changed her nappy, I resigned myself to forget everything the sleep nurse and the helpline nurse from Plunket taught me and let her sleep cuddled on my chest and voila!  She's out cold and stayed that way.

So today all we did was cuddle sleep koala style.

I don't care what Plunket says...I just want to sleep!