Mckenna sleeps most of the day, and is up most of the night, when she does sleep at night and then gets up, shes wide awake and stays up for over 2hrs, its driving me nuts. I was actually getting frustrated with her last night I made Dh get up, cause I was upset. :cry:

With dd and ds they would wake for a feeding and a bum change and go right back to sleep, so I am not use to trying to stay awake for like 2 hrs with mckenna. I get frustrated, cause I know i cant rest in the day cause i have 2 toddlers and dh is back to work. I use to be able to get dd and ds to bed by 9pm, but Mckenna wont go till like 10-11pm, then she only sleeps for a few hrs and then is up for a few..
So pray for me to be patience would be great!!! and any advice...thanks

Prayers for you, I certainly understand what the lack up sleep can do to a busy mom with toddlers. My 3rd baby was colicy and up all the time at night, I remember one morning locking myself in his room with him sat on the floor and just cried and cried, I was so exhausted and like you had no help. My hubby worked crazy hours or was gone on business it was crazy. And the other children always keep you hopping, its exhausting!

I found a loud fan though worked wonders at night, he and my babies after him were soothed by noise, and the quiet of the night woke them up. He liked the white noise kind of thing. He loved noise and hated when things were quiet. I also put a radio on by his basinette with a talk radio station I kept on. It helped some, but he was never a great baby as far as sleep. But till this day my kids all have to have a fan on in their room to go to sleep no matter how cold it may get, they can't sleep without it.

Hugs and prayers

I think it's fairly normal for newborns to sleep a lot during the day and be awake at night. Their body clocks are all stuffed up and they have to adjust. Hopefully it won't take long for your little one to adjust and start sleeping at night more.
The only suggestions I have are to stimulate her a lot during the day... make her tired for night. I know you can't keep them awake during the day but just keep the room she's in light and make sure there is some kind of background noise all day. Well, you have two toddlers so I'm sure they make plenty of noise :lol:
Then at night turn every light out and make the room nice and quiet for her.

Both my babies used to fall asleep after 5 seconds of drinking their bottles and it was really hard for me to keep them awake to drink a whole bottle. I always wished (when Sophie was waking every 2-3 hours) that Sophie would stay awake. But not for 2 hours! :lol:

Ok, I may be an evil mommy for doing this one, but it worked pretty well for me:

Dainyah was sleeping pretty decently at night. We'd get up every two hours to eat and normally would go back to sleep very well. That changed earlier this week. We were up to three a.m. a few times. Needless to say, I was really upset, frustrated and tired (the other half of our duplex was moving out and we live on a pretty busy street so it was rather noisy around here so no napping during the day for me when she was sleeping). So, on Wednesday night (Thursday morning by this point, it was way past midnight) I decided that I would get up in the morning and have a cup of hot tea or coffee for some caffiene. Believe it or not, it helped. She stayed awake (not wired, I didn't drink that much, just a cup of spiced chai) and played all day (when she's up, she's up for hours. Something she shouldn't be doing yet!!!!!!) and then we were asleep before midnight! And then she slept very well that night. Might be worth a shot if things don't straighten out for you. We also have a cd of wooden flute music that helps put her out and we keep a fan running at night (she is currently in our room and I can't sleep without the fan myself). Last night, we took a nice warm bath about an hour before I started to put her down and I put lavender scented stuff in it and we splashed around and have fun and then I put lavender scented lotion on her. That calmed her down and she had this look of bliss on her face. I guess she's like her mom and loves that scent. Might want to try that one too.

I hope you get some sleep. I know what it is like to go without. It sure isn't fun.

LOL Crissyanna ... that's one advantage of bfing! :lol: Man if I was bfing Sophie would be hyper all day. I drink 2-3 cups of coffee a day.

Yeah Renee, I was DESPERATE by the point I tried the caffiene. Haven't had any today (woke up with enough time to get dressed for church while Hubby dressed the baby) and so she is sleeping right now. I figure I could use a quiet day though. I can not nap if she's awake. She makes too much noise for me to sleep. And I don't think she's feeling too well today either. She isn't displaying symptoms, per se, but call it a mother's intuition. And if sleep fixes it, great. And maybe this way, I can get a Sunday afternoon nap! :)

I hope she isn't sick. It's horrible for them because they don't understand and they can't tell us :( Sophie had a cold when she was 3 weeks old. I felt so bad for her.
:(

Hopefully you'll get an afternoon nap today!

i'm currently in your shoes, but we are making progress slowly. adrienne was 3 weeks old yesterday, and for the past two nights she has gone 4 hours between feedings. it's that one feeding that falls anytime between 1-3am, that is really hard to get her to go to sleep, but i find that the more awake you can keep them after each feeding during the day, the better the night goes. i know it's hard when you have other kids (we also have a 3 year-old daughter) to spend so much time 'training,' but it does work. i feel like i've forgotten everything from when we had our first, so we're all sort of learning again. i think i'm rambling here more than giving advice, so i apologize.. blame it on the sleep deprivation! :wink:

I guess the only advice I have is try to keep her awake duing the day, maybe up in her carseat, bouncer, etc. so shes not laying down and can see what is going on. Also baths before bed can work wonders. Jonhson's has some sleepytime baby wash that has lavender and several other things that are soothing. Hang in there. Every thing seems twice as hard when you're sleep deprived. Our 6 mo. old still wakes up at least once a night to eat. I think it's more habit than hunger, since she always has cereal right before bed! :D

I do scheduled feeds with Matilda - at the moment 3-4hrly without fail (which doesnt mean if she becomes hungry before this that I don't feed her). When she was really new I never let her go past 2-3hrs (mind the midwives also told me to do this).

Yesterday she would have slept through a couple of feeds if I hadn't have done this for instance and she would have been up in the night playing.

I had to do this with the twins and I found this kept them on the same schedule so I wasn;t feeding ALL DAY long or up with each one at different times of the night so applied it to Matilda as it worked so well.

Have no idea if it will work or even if you like the idea (different strokes for different folks y'know?)

Some people also swear by radio static - even a small transistor placed near her cot (that she could hear at close range but doesn't disurb others) could help soothe her at night.

A few times in the night I have heard Matilda wake up and begin making sounds and I find with nothing to stimulate her she will just go back to sleep (however she is 8 weeks old and this statement probably wouldn't be true of a newer baby)

Not sure if any of this is useful... ??

I agree with Jen it helps to try and keep the baby up at night and like Emily said it also helps to keep them on a feeding schedule. I did this with both of my babies and it worked wonders!

One ritual that I do virtually every morning is I lay down and nurse Hannah to sleep. That generally puts me to sleep too and we lay down snuggled together on the bed. I usually get about 2 hours of nap that way! :)