Our little girl is a beautiful blessing, but she is fussy around the clock. She doesn’t meet the traditional definition of colicky (cries intensely more than three days a week, for more than three hours, for more than three weeks in a month), but she rarely sleeps for more than an hour and cries and fusses throughout the night. It has made life challenging for my wife and I.
We have tried putting her to sleep in a bassinet, a Pack N Play, a bouncy chair, and other sleeping arrangements. So far we aren’t having much luck. Sleep has become a rare and treasured commodity in our household.
Thankfully, all else is well with her as she is gaining weight and growing. So in the mean time, my wife and I will continue reading books and websites for more ideas on how to help her be calm and happy.
Gather Little By Little has been sold. My good friend Larry (also know as Glblguy) sold his website Gather Little By Little. You can read about his decision in his farewell article: A time for everything – A time to move on.
Larry started Gather Little By Little as a way to share his journey to get out of debt, and he shared his progress and tips for debt reduction for the two years that he ran his site. He recently received an offer for his website that gave him enough money to pay off his remaining credit card debt and still have a little left over to buy himself a new computer to use on his blog consulting and website design business, Empty Cabin Media. Congrats to Larry for realizing his goals! (Note: Larry designed the theme for my website and he is a pleasure to work with if you need help with your website).
Recommended Articles:
- Meet The Young Entrepreneur–Alex Frais. The Dough Roller interviews a 15 year entrepreneur and web designer.
- Ten Ways To Improve Financial Intimacy In Marriage. One of the biggest struggles couples face is dealing with finances. THis article can certainly help many people.
- 10 Tips on How to Graduate College Debt Free. Graduating college debt free is a huge head start.
- Ask the M-Network – Questions from college and on housing. Larry at Gather Little by Little answers several reader questions about education and housing.
- Debit card charge: $23 quadrillion. Imagine opening your bill and seeing a charge higher than the world’s GDP… and a $15 overdraft fee. It was an error of course, but good enough to make the front page of CNN.
- Nine Ways I Use Google Calendar to Keep My Money Straight. I love Google Calendar and use it for managing my blog business and other tasks.
This week’s carnivals:
- Carnival of Money Stories #10 – Tribute to Billy Mays Edition @ Suburban Dollar.
- Festival of Frugality – Frugal For the Win @ M is for Money.
- Carnival of Twenty Something Finances for July 13, 2009 @ Money under 30.
- Money Hacks Carnival #73: Working For The Weekend Edition @ Money Beagle.
- Economy and your Finances Carnival – July 18 2009 @ One Mint.
- 98th Carnival of Financial Planning @ Living Almost Large.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice to know that she is doing well and growing steadily Patrick
My sympathies! It’s amazing what sleep deprivation can do to your mental state. I hope you all can get a decent rest soon.
In his early days, my son wouldn’t sleep anywhere unless he was in my arms. Fine for when I’m awake, but what about when I need to sleep too? Ugh.
After a few weeks of trying the pack n play and crib and me deliriously holding him in our rocker, I brought him into bed with me and sent my husband to the guest room. (My husband returned to our bed when our baby was a few months old).
Johnny slept perpendicular to me and I got rid of all covers and made sure he couldn’t wiggle off the bed.
He and I both slept much better!
Tomorrow, Johnny will be 7 months old. We’re trying to transition him to his crib, but he still won’t sleep for more than an hour or two by himself. I think it’s a developmental thing and he’ll just have to grow into being able to sleep independently.
At night, he’ll reach out and touch me without fully waking to make sure I’m nearby. I’ll be able to nurse him lying down and neither of us will completely wake.
Your little one is too young to be sleeping for more than 4-5 hours at a time just yet, but she’ll get there soon!
Hang in there.
Kacie, Thanks for sharing your tips – we might try them out. As for out little one, right now it is a stretch to get her to sleep for more than an hour at a time. She has reflux and gas problems, and we are working with medication to try and calm her down. Hopefully we can find a way to get her to sleep for a couple hours at a time!
Oh, and sleep deprivation has been used as a form of torture for centuries…
Our little one has been spending nights in the bed too. Sleeps real well next to my wife. Still makes me a bit nervous but it worked for our son too. Of course our bassinet is somewhat useless at night….
Hope your daughter gets over the reflux and gas problems soon (and you guys can all get some sleep too)!
Patrick, welcome to the world of being a parent . . .
My daughter starts high school in a matter of weeks– you think you got problems . . .
Patrick, I don’t know what method you’re using to feed your new little one. If you’re bottle feeding, have you checked with the pediatrician about changing formula or the type of bottle you’re using? One of my best friends just had her first baby and he had colic (in addition to an RSV infection when he was 4 weeks old). They ended up trying a lot of different formulas and bottles. Also, they make a sleep positioner that has a bit of an incline to help with acid reflux if that’s a problem. Good luck!
To follow up to Kristen- if your wife is breastfeeding, changing her diet might help too. Dairy and eggs are the first things to try, it helped with my son’s fussiness when he was tiny.
The bicycle move also helps get rid of gas- I’d take my son’s feet and cycle his knees up to his chest like he was riding a bike. He thought it was funny, and it helped get some gas out. The football hold (baby face down on your forearm with head near the crook of your elbow) pushes on the tummy and relieves some gas too.
The best advice I got was to never turn on a light between bedtime and time to get up. If you need light in the middle of the night, get a cool light nightlight, like a taplight, for beside the bed. It helps get the baby’s day/night pattern set. It took 6 weeks for my son to sleep more than 2 hours at a time (and at 11 months we’re still at 4-5 hour stretches, tops) but those are a few things that helped in the early days.
Think of it as an initiation into the parent club. The hazing is brutal…. good luck!!
Kristen & Cat, She is breast fed, and we have tried the incline sleep. We have also tried changing Mom’s diet, helping her expel gas by moving her feet, different holds, etc.
She’s just fussy.
Sorry to hear about the lack of sleep – both of our babies were a handful but 1 hour of sleep at a time is very inconsiderate of her!
Most people I know who had a colicky baby just endured….hopefully it won’t last long.
Both of my sons had colic. I remember my oldest cried for a whole Saturday. I could only imagine what my wife went through during the week. A friend suggested that we make a tape of the vacuum cleaner and play it when we wanted to put him to sleep (I kid you not). It worked like a charm! I’m sure there’s some white-noise generating device out there that would do the same thing. Give the vacuum a try, what do you have to lose?
Thanks, Enrique. We run a loud fan at night, but we’ll try the vacuum cleaner – it should be a little louder.