Mumsnet Talk

So our DS is 6mo and is bf and we started weaning about a month ago. Generally he is a happy contented baby but night times are starting to drive me insane. We have quite a good night time routine, dinner at 5ish bath at 6ish bf between 7-8 in bed by 8. The trouble is that I usually have to cuddle him to sleep and although it doesn't usually take long it is a bit of a pain. He is waking every 2ish hours through the night although not because he is hungry. I've read up on CIO/CC and other more gentle methods but I just can't seem to find something that's easy to follow. I appreciate it might not be an easy task but I really need some advice about how to start and some reassurance that even if he doesn't start settling himself for a while that all will not be lost and he will become a functional toddler!

Sorry this is such an essay, any advice would be great, thank you!

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Just wanted to express solidarity. My 6 mo can self-settle on occasion but still wakes up loads and not always for milk. No idea what to do!

Thank you! It's so frustrating! Today is 3 weeks since he went into his room in his cot and that actually improved things! Right now (4.50am) is the third time tonight and there was on only one small feed in that. I'm lucky that I had the foresight not to ever let him settle purely on the boob, so in a lot of ways I'm sure I'm better of that some but some days I feel like, because we weren't Gina Ford strict from the beginning, that somehow we've given him a bad start to sleeping. I know it's late (early?) but it's how I really some days.
Hopefully soon both our babies will change their sleep routines and we'll be wondering what the fuss was about!

Hi
Have you thought about trying The Baby Whisperer pick up put down method? My baby would only feed to sleep, ended up co-sleeping and at about 6mo decided she really needed to go into her cot as it just wasn't working out for us.

We didn't really want to do CIO/CCand this seemed the gentlest method as although you still need to be pretty determined, and there is still a fair amount of crying you are with them and able to pick up and comfort them.

Anyway - end of story is that I now feed, read story, put in cot, she wriggles around - gets herself comfy, and falls asleep, no assistance from me needed. Before she started getting 4 top teeth through at the same time she was managing 5-6 hour stretches (unheard of for my daughter) :-)

Thanks, I'll give it a go. These last few days particularly have been awful because he's started teething again I think but all this messing around at night is leading to all 3 of us feeling like we're losing it. DP is. as we speak, sitting downstairs with DS because I've he's been crying/wingeing for an hour and nothing will settle him, although I suspect calpol may be on the horizon.

If it's teeth then I am fully committed to the calpol! I truly understand, it can be just exhausting, frustrating, and at times make you wonder if they'll ever sleep again!!
The amount of times I've burst into tears in the middle of the night - sounds like you have a supportive hubby though (they are invaluable huh!).

Teeth can throw everything out unfortunately (my 7mo has fired out 6 in 6 weeks!) and we're having a rough patch with it - but I'm hoping when this lot of pain passes to use pick up put down again to limit the amount of times I am feeding to sleep at night (which I've resorted to purely because of teeth).

They don't tell you that this bit can be worse than newborn sleep... when you have a baby in your head they'll be sorted by 4-5 months old and sleeping blissfully through the night lol!

When I'm not too tired, I try giving mine five to ten minutes of crying to see if he settle again, which he sometimes does, if not I often take him int our bed then we usually get a bit more sleep! Mine isn't hungry, and he can self settle, he just rarely will in the middle of the night.

Don't beat yourself up over not being strict! Who can be strict with a little new baby? I think it is just luck of the draw to be honest. I had a friend who did all the 'wrong' things ie feeding to sleep, co sleeping etc. Her baby is sleeping through at seven months. I did the same, mine's not. Thems the breaks!

I know how hard it is though. Good luck.

That's good advice - never beat yourself up about not being strict with a newborn... you only get one chance for all those cuddles!!

As my friend said to me - with babies the only constant is change. Things will be better eventually :-)

Thank you for the advice, to be honest it's at 4am when he's crying and we can't fix it that I start beating myself up. I wish I could tell tired me that it'll all be alright!
In the end we brought him into our bed and with in 10 seconds (no exaggeration) he was asleep. Bloody mad as a box of frogs.
Well once they're over this bit and are toddlers, it'll be easy...