is my daughter broken ?

my beautiful Belle xx

well as anyone who knows me and as I have mentioned before my beautiful daughter Isabelle will be 2 next month, and while I am slowly getting my head around the fact that she is no longer a baby there are two baby like things she needs to lose.  First is being in a nappy, to be very blunt I am fed up with having to change her bottom and no-longer baby poos are yuk!.  second is her not sleeping through the night, now I don't mean the odd waking I mean several (the worst night was last week and I lost count at 14 yes 14) times!!!.  While I adore spending my waking hours with her, every twenty minutes throughout the night is not the one and to say I am tired is an understatement, try delirious!!! poor mummy :(  

So the night time shenanigans need to stop if not for my sanity but those I love, because after almost two years I am quite frankly a walking zombie mummy. And I will start potty training soon :/

 me and Sean have been tearing our hair out as to why she wakes up so many times and for so many reasons, the list so far is:

• empty bottle
• lost bottle (this can include like last night, bottle is actually right next to my head but I will wake mummy anyway!)
• duvet has fallen off
• pillow is wet/slightly wonky/just annoying
• bottle has milk in it ( don't ask I was baffled at this one ??)
• one/all of her numerous mow mow's (any teddy she has that remotely looks like a cat with bug eyes see pic below of original mow mow) are missing

Mow Mow

• her leg/head/hair ? hurts

as you can imagine we have been truly clueless and at a loss as to stop the night time waking from her.

we have tried so many things and we know that the following does not work

CONTROLLED CRYING!!!! why am I shouting? well that's Isabelle's reaction to any attempt at it.  I know that controlled crying can be very effective and that it involves a few nights of crying and even less sleep but after establishing that my daughter can cry for a very long time and never stop no matter how many times we settle her we have given up trying.

Reducing the amount of milk she has in each bottle through the night - now this does not work as mentioned above as she will wake with or without anything in her bottle, and this also applies to just giving her water she still wakes but just more often!

super snuggling - or as most people will know it, the super thing older relations did when you slept at their house tucking you in to tight you could not move hehe :D my daughter is well known for being a cheeky escape artist type monkey

night light on/off - makes no difference to Isabelle 

So after having spoken to numerous mummy and daddy friends and now resorting to Dr Google for help, I think I may have finally just had an epiphany :) yay

Over the past four or five days Isabelle has not been interested in meals or snacks apart from maybe dinner, I keep offering various foods but I just get "no" and she hasn't asked for food either.  Now I know her well enough to know she isn't poorly so what the heck is going on..........?

While I was looking up 'how to get a toddler to stop waking for bottles in the night' I found an article that mentioned the more milk your child is having at night the less they will want to eat, AH HA!! that makes total sense......?

I have also discovered that toddlers will naturally wake 4-6 times during the night, and if they are able to, will self settle themselves and will not cry/shout MUMMY!!!!!! like my Belle.  So can you see the pattern here?

Isabelle is waking at night for a bottle to settle herself and because she is getting what she wants she keeps waking for more, and as a result is no longer really hungry during the day.

So that's it NO MORE BOTTLES IN BED FOR YOU YOUNG LADY!!!!  

and bedtimes are now going to be as follows........

Dinner

Shower (no bath in the house)

A story with a bottle sat on mummy/daddy's lap

Clean teeth

Another story in bed laying down without a bottle

and hopefully sleep :)

now I know that she is not going to be happy about this at all and I will probably need to settle her like a millions times but I'm hoping my clever daughter will cotton on quite quickly that mummy means business!

Wish me luck I am going to need it

Emma x

a little update after our first night........

Isabelle had several( I think maybe 7?) stories while sitting on my lap drinking her milk.  She cleaned her teeth and then had another story before snuggling into bed.  This was the first night she hasn't had a bottle to go to bed with, and will normally be fast asleep in about 10 minutes,  so she understandably was a little miffed when I took her bottle with me downstairs. As Belle has never before had her bottle removed at sleep time I was prepared for a long noisy sleepless night and was ready ! :) She moaned for a few seconds and then proceeded to play for a while.  After half an hour her joyful singing started to change into very shouty "mumeeeeeee"'s 
I left her for 5 minutes and then went and got her into bed and told her "It's time for sleep Mummy will see you in the morning" this really didn't go down well and she showed her displeasure by pushing me away and saying no.  So I left the room and sat downstairs with the tv on mute wondering what to do for the next few hours while she protested to her new routine.  
I am very pleased to say that my beautiful clever little girl settled after just 42 minutes (yes I was timing it) and slept after self settling,  peacefully for two and a half hours.  "This is far to good to be true" I told Sean when he got home and was waiting for the horrible screaming nightmare to begin, but the rest of the night was pretty good, in fact I think I had more sleep than I have in a long while.........

so Belle managed:

8:00 - bedtime
8:42 - sleep
11:15 - brief five minute wake up and straight back to sleep
1:15 - wake up again only four minutes
1:25 - wake up
2:15 - back to sleep
6:45 - awake for the day!!!!!! :)

that is a great result for her first night and she woke up very happy and asking for breakfast, to the point we almost had to wake Josh to hurry it up a little.

So I have a very positive frame of mind for tonight, I have done it once I will do it again

Emma x

2nd night update.......and one very happy sleep filled mummy :)

Daddy was on bedtime duty tonight, so armed with the 'bottle ban at bedtime' guidelines I sent him off to get Belle to bed while I 'put my feet up' (this involved sorting the rabbit out, picking up the hundred scattered toys around the garden and bringing the washing in).
Now my wonderful husband is not one to shy away from all things girly (not in a jumping around wearing a Frankie says relax t-shirt while dancing to fame type way) but in the very happy to rub feet, apply nail varnish to my very pregnant toes and giving a lovely facial, so our lovely daughter is also involved in Daddy's pamper sessions.  Belle had a lovely shower followed by a mini pamper, eight stories and then to bed and was fast asleep in twenty minutes!!!!!!! She woke up once during the night, I popped her back into bed and she then slept again until 6:45 yay!

Now while last night and the night before may have just been lucky, tonight again she has settled almost immediately after a half hearted protest.  Apart from feeling so happy she is finally no longer terrorising me several times through the night and has successfully learnt to self settle, I can't help wonder why I didn't attempt this before?

Emma x

tough mummy.......sleeping Isabelle?

Okay I will admit it after one year and ten months of mostly broken sleep, add another nine months to that if you include being pregnant (which means not being able to get comfy or needing a wee every two or so hours)                           I am broken :(  

When I was expecting Isabelle I already knew my battle plan for a sleeping baby, after all I had perfected it on Josh, who was an absolute superstar at the sleeping thing.  I started a routine with him at two weeks and by six weeks old he was sleeping from 7pm to around 6:30am, and is still a solid sleeper(excluding being poorly which is fine).  

So when Isabelle arrived the routine of bottle bath and bed started and I was very proud that at twelve weeks old she started skipping her 3am feed and sleeping through.  Fantastic I thought now everyone can sleep and feel refreshed for the next day........sadly our peaceful nights were not to last and a few weeks later she started terrorising me and everyone else in the house several times a night.  Now Isabelle is how should I put it........strong willed? she will not do something she doesn't want to, and will certainly let everyone within screaming distance know it!!!  So I imediatley thought I had missed something vital in the routine and consulted my mummy bible Secrets of the baby whisperer, but I hadn't ?  could it be that my mummy bible had

failed me? or even worse that my mummy skills were broken?

You see the problem with a nocturnal child is that no matter how hard you want to break them of the night time habit they have got themselves into, at 2am when you are awake for possibly the third time since getting in bed yourself, you simply have no energy to be tough mummy!  or usually in my case I am so tired auto pilot kicks and in my semi-awake sleep deprived state I forget I'm not meant to be giving and .....well give in! Vicious circle much ?

So the things I have discovered about Isabelle's night time antics is that 

• she doesn't care wether or not her bottle is full/empty/on the floor or in her mouth she will scream!
• night light on/off, bedroom door open/closed, fifteen assorted toy rabbits, cats or teddies or none she is going to wake up anyway.
• if she is able to escape from her bedroom she will firstly bring the contents of her bed with her and get into bed with us, then after realising Mummy and Daddy are actually asleep will then go off to find fun things to do........flooded bathroom and painting everything with Mummy's mascara are her two favourites.

I have tried pretty much every tip /bit of advice I have been given on getting her to sleep through and nothing is working so now I need to put mean mummy/controlled crying into action.

If you are not aware of controlled crying it is not as hideous as the name suggests and is in no way harmful to your baby!  The idea is that when your baby wakes, you leave them for a controlled amount of time (from 3-5 mins) then go into them, settle them (without giving them milk or whatever it is they are demanding)and leave the room and with every subsequent waking you add a couple of extra minutes onto the time you leave them.  So your child should eventually(I have been told that in about three nights) realise that waking up will not get them anything so sleep through.

So tonight I am going to do this, me my family and probably most of my neighbours need Isabelle to stay asleep at night and there is only one way....

Wish me luck

Emma x

there is nothing quite like hearing your little girl belly giggle....

it’s true….there is nothing  in this world that makes me smile wider than listening to my husband Sean making our little Isabelle giggle.

However this is not what we have been hearing the most over the past few days….instead we have been blessed with the ‘terrible two’s’ slightly early instead of hearing Isabelle’s sweet voice proclaiming she loves us “la loo” or indeed being her usual agreeable self, we are at every given opportunity told “NO!”.

I would like to think that Isabelle has learnt to have an opinion which indeed is a great skill and something I would encourage, but she is saying no to everything   a typical example is when she wants something and will go something like this…

Isabelle – “mummeeeeeeee?”

Mummy – “yes Isabelle?”

Isabelle – “bic bic peeeeeeese”

Mummy – “okay mummy will get you a biscuit”

(mummy hands Isabelle the asked for biscuit, only for Isabelle to shout “NO!” throw the biscuit across the room fold her arms around herself and pout!

now while this is very amusing and somewhat cute coming from such a little person it is getting rather annoying.

So now I have to feed and water my daughter like a lion at the zoo………very quietly creep up to the baby gate on the lounge door without being seen, place biscuit or whatever has been asked for over the gate onto the floor and back away.

All I can hope for now is that as this wonderful developmental stage has started early it will disappear early too………Please ?

Emma x