They say that you can’t compare your kids to eachother. And yet on the other hand, part of me things, “Well, I had one kid, I know what is going on here…” I think each of those statements is correct… in its own sort of way. There is something to be said for already having had a baby, you know that you as their mom can figure it out, you know you will survive the sleep deprived state, you know that all those hard lined rules you had the first time… well, your kid will probably turn out ok with or without a passifyer. But now having two kids, I’m realizing how much is different as well. Belle has always been shy and taken so long to warm up to people. But Johnny, well, he might be shy when someone walks into the room, but he is our little social butterfly. He loves people, starts yelling when someone is at the door and will walk up to a complete stranger just to say hi. With sleeping, we let Belle cry it out… hard core when she was a baby. It was rough for several months, but then when she was six months old…. for like a year and half the kid slept 12 hours straight a night. Wonderful! Then with Johnny, we decided to do some different things a night with feedings. Waiting until he was 6 months old to even try to cry it out and then when he did, we comforted him some. Well, now we have a 13 month old son who still does not sleep through the night. Last week we just cut out his 5am feeding so he is not nursing anymore… but man… will this kid ever sleep? And my newest “difference” between the two? Teething. I never understood what moms would talk/complain about with teething and their kids. Belle was never even all that cranky when she was teething. Sure she was fussy and I was guessing what was going on… but overall, not a bad experience. John Boy has been an entire different story all together. The kids will cry, keep his fingers in his mouth, tug at his ears and have a fever for like a month before a tooth will even pop through. And then, the “pair or second” tooth that usually comes right along is another two weeks out. I remember a nurse who warned me of “teething poop” (explosive stools) again- I thought people just made this stuff up. But my child has so many dirty diapers during the day. They are all over the place and he is living with almost constant diaper rash. My friend calls it “teething poop that burns your butt” and I’m convinced the little guys is in that boat right now. We’ve been going at it a good 3 weeks now and still no sign of any more teeth. The child only has 6 teeth popped through…. I have a feeling this is going to be a long year ahead of us as he gets the rest of them. Until then, cheers to IB profen, lots of baths, no diaper time, Destatin and Oragel. 
Mommahood with two.
July 7, 2009 by amommaonamission
And then you may have a third kid, and just when you think you have figured out, “If I do x, then y will happen.”…your third kid will do react in a totally different way than either of the other two.
I really thought I had the “sleep thing” sort of figured out after the first two….my story was similar to yours with the first two. Madeline got to “cry it out” at an early age, mostly because she was crying anyway and it was for our sanity that we had to lay her down and let her cry. And eventually she did learn to cry herself to sleep — which she did almost every night even until she a bit past 2 yrs old.
Erik would fall asleep nursing so much more often than Madeline did, and woke up seemingly hungry in the middle of the night for so much longer than she did…and then when we tried to let him cry it out, it was hard to let him go for as long because we were concerned for waking up Madeline and bothering our duplex neighbors.
Then along came Kai — who started sleeping through the night at six weeks with no sleep training, and is still very good at putting himself to sleep without even crying most of the time. We only occasionally have to let him cry it out, and he falls asleep pretty fast when we do. Huh? It is still so surprising to me that he has turned out this way because I didn’t really do anything too different with him than with Erik at the same age, yet he is a much better sleeper.
Erik is definitely the worst sleeper of the three, and is still apt to wake up in the middle of the night (light sleeper) or have a hard time falling asleep at night (like tonight, where he has been disciplined multiple time for getting out of bed or crawling in his sister’s loft).
I think there must be some personality/physical component of this whole sleep thing, because I feel like while what we did with them as infants was each slightly different, they are all such different sleepers that there has to be more than just our actions shaping how they sleep!
I know that with Ben crying and waking me up in the middle of the night I have made many good and bad decisions to fix the situation. Occasionally just so that I could sleep I would bring him to bed with me so that I did not have to figure out how to get him to go to sleep. Bad idea, btw, I then had to let him cry it out for awhile to break him of that habit.
I also spent lots of time fetching his pacifier and putting it back in his mouth so he would go back to sleep, it quickly worked, but then I had to get out of bed so many times to give it to him I woke up more at that point than when I was feeding him in the middle of the night. I figured it soothed his mouth because of the teething.
The better idea that I was afraid of trying was to take that thing away. Now that he doesn’t have it anymore when he wakes up he usually figures out how to go to sleep without my help, unless something is wrong.
I think teething had a lot to do with our sleep woes, hopefully Johnny will sleep better after they come in.
You should try Hyland’s teething tablets, they are about $6 for 120 tablets, all natural and WONDERFUL!!! Since they are all natural they don’t have any meds in them they just calm and sooth the gums. You can find them at whole food stores (or at least they have them at here in Des Moines) or I got ours at Walgreens. I love them!
A tad late on reading this but…
I’ve no clue on any sleep ideas. If I did, I’d have a daughter that sleeps.
However, already I can tell there are major differences between my two girls and have a feeling that what did/didn’t work with Julia will/will not work with Hannah. Here’s to constantly learning and growing with the kiddos!