Following the advice I got last week from the Plunket nurse on what to do about Baby's daytime hunger strike and insomnia, I tried not feeding her the following morning at 4am. This was meant to get her extra hungry during the day.
It's not the easiest thing in the world to ignore a hunger cry, especially if she's in the same room.
It's downright impossible to re-settle a baby when she's hungry and you smell like the infant's version of a 12 course meal. (This is where it would be useful to have the boy do the dirty deed, except he's sleeping in the spare room and needs to be rested for work the next day).
The next two days were almost back to normal though. While it was still hard to get Baby down for her naps, she did at least feed properly during the day - like she was had the munchies but not as though she were starving. Then it reverted back to hunger strike levels.
Last night I tried to feed her only from one boob if she cried between mignight and 7am. Well, it didn't work. After feeding her at 2am and 6am, each time from one boob only, she wasn't in the least bit interested in any more food until 5 1/2 hours later; even then, she didn't exactly seem ravenous.
What a miracle it would be if her hunger was like this at night instead of during the day; I'd be getting 5-6 hours of unbroken sleep then.
2 comments:
I don't know if this is helpful at all and just ignore it if not but maybe you could consider paying a Karitane nurse to come in and give you a bit of break for a few hours.
http://www.karitanebureau.co.nz/index.htm
Just looking at their website it looks like it is even possible to get someone to do a night shift. Just a thought anyway.
And I really think you are doing incredibly well to be coping on that level of sleep deprivation and to still be managing to write articulate blog posts is superhuman.
eb: yep.
mtnw: I didn't know they would do that. Anyway, probably what I need is for someone to hang around and tell me if I'm missing any tiredness/hunger cues, that sort of thing. The sort of thing that probably only Baby's parents can know...
Thanks for the comment about my "articulate" blog posts; the blog is the only thing keeping me sane these days.
Post a Comment