Hello - I'm still here too. Not much improvement here either. A couple of nights where Baby Sospan slept through (with a dream feed at 10) until 5 - but I find starting the day that early sooo hard! Would rather 1 waking and sleeping through until past 6.

Anyway, it's all gone wrong now. Poor DS picked up conjunctivitis from some grubby play group we went to this week (that's my theory anyway ) and is also - finally (at almost 10 months) - teething. So I am trying to put eye drops 4 times a day into the world's' wriggliest baby who is also very grumpy due to Teeth. He's also bitten his lip (now swollen and bleeding) with his new fangs twice today when plonking down from a standing position. So he's had a rough couple of days and is currently asleep (for now) in his buggy after waking up after a grand total of 30 mins in his cot and having to be jiggled back to sleep. We are not in for a good night.

IsItMeOr - yay for the 7 hour stretch and good luck for Operation TL.

Sorry everyone else is still suffering.

(Waves)

jollygreenmama I felt so much better for that sleep! First time in 81/2months that I slept for more than about 31/2 consecutive hours (and has obviously been a lot less than that recently). Didn't happen again last night, although he still only had a couple of periods of wakefulness (so two feeds), but again the first was earlier than we'd usually feed him and seemed to be upset by his cold.
PS IsItMeGranny would suggest you should try giving DD a more substantial solid tea - i.e. more than fruit, so including carbs and protein. Hasn't made any difference here mind!

dycey that lasting less time on bedtime FF thing is weird, isn't it? How do you feel about stretching him by 15-30mins per night (or even every two or three nights)? It is tough, but at least you feel as if you're helping them change gradually... I was quite persuaded by the idea that they will have learned to be hungry in the night now.

DH is feeling very down that we haven't been able to launch Operation Tough Love yet. Not because he looks forward to hearing DS crying, obviously, but in his words, he's run out of himself. I know you will all know what he means.

Hello all

things changing here.... not for the much better tho. DS (9months) seems to have dropped to one day sleep and so have to put him to bed an hour earlier with subsequent 5am starts - ugh.

starShineTiger - I also think DS is hungry at his 4 hour wakes for milk (and he eats incredibly well during the day often and that makes no difference). ANd he is 9 months and that is when I told myself I would get tough - enough is enough. But I hate to hear him / see him upset so will find it difficult to do anything.

Formula at bedtime (a whole bottle) used to make him do 6 hours. Now only 4. WHy?

Soon I will need to do something and I suspect it will have to be a cold turkey approach, water and DH. But not yet.....

But he will stand there screaming for ages, I just know...... O O O

Hope your Friday nights were better than usual.

Hi sleepless friends, we're still here ATM.!
So pleased for IsItBaby, it is great when you find out that they are capable of sleeping for long stretches isn't it? Hooray! Good luck with the continuued tough love plan, I'll be reading your progress.
We have taken the advice of HV and as I now FF we have started to dilute the night feeds with the aim of getting it to water then supposedly DD will no longer wake?! This is of course as long as she has enough in the day, again the aim for now is as follows, breakfast of fruit, yoghurt, toast followed by 6 fl oz milk, lunch of whatever ( yesterday was chicken strips, sweet potatoe, followed by pear) and another bottle of 6 fl oz, tea fruit and another bottle then bottle to settle at bed time. We acheived all that and I fed her a watered down bottle last night at 2 ( just thought that perhaps I should be posting on a weaning thread too! :-/) She woke at 5 today so tried another watery bottle and she's just thrown the whole lot up again! Oh well guess my day starts here! IsItMeOr and StarShineTiger . as you BF thought you might be interested in the volumes.

Hee hee - technically I haven't read Ferber's book, DH tells me this is what it says .

Honestly, your DD sounds quite like my DS and it has only been the past few weeks that he has been feeding less at night - actually taking longer but it is because he's so sleepy, I'm pretty confident less is actually going in. Does your DD feed at the same times every night? DS didn't, which I thought might make the stretching harder, and it was pretty difficult (it was only my being scareder of DH being cross with me than I was of not giving into DS that stopped me feeding him sometimes lol), but it was only a few nights in the big scheme of things. You would need your DH to help imo.

Thanks IsItMeOr. Haven't read Ferber's book (have several others). DD is exclusively bf (refuses a bottle ) and is a mixture of BLW and puree - she likes the finger food, but gets very frustrated by not getting satisfied quickly enough IYKWIM. Having heard from others what their babies are eating, I can see she is not eating great amounts of solid food by any great swathes, but she won't take more. So, we are trying slow progress. She is taking more of an interest in food. I have decided that she is genuinely hungry at night - on the two occasions I have tried to settle her without a feed, I have give in after 1.45-2 hours and she has fed both times. Last night at each feed she fed for ca. 15 mins, so a really good food. So, as I say, have decided to run with it for next couple of weeks, try to increase amount of solid food in day, try to get her to take a bottle too (for purely selfish reasons - i.e. so I can have an evening out ), keep getting her down for naps without a feed and in evening if she doesn't pretty much doze off with bedtime feed. Then we'll see where she is at 9 months.
I will keep posting, even if it is just the two of us - I guess that should be reassuring to us - if everyone else has disappeared because they are now getting sleep?!
Is very interesting about the stretching - will bear that in mind too.
Wishing you a good night

Hey Starshinetiger - know EXACTLY what you mean about feeling teary. This sleep deprivation is a killer and I have had lots of very low days.

DS is coming about 81/2 months, so sounds like he may be similar age to your DD?

Do keep posting, even if it is just you and me!

Did I mention that Ferber says in his book that if your dc is taking a significant amount of food at the nightfeeds, he will be hungry at night? If only nibbling, then it will be for comfort. He says it would be inhumane to go cold turkey on them if they're genuinely hungry, and suggests stretching the gaps by half an hour a night. This made sense to me, and is what we are gradually doing.

On the food - are you BLW or puree? And BF or FF? Although, I think it shouldn't really matter that much to them sleeping through (although, you know why my Mum says lol!).

I will post updates so you can take our experience into account when planning your own Tough Love!

Hi IsItMe - Yay for DS' good sleep last night - 7 hours straight is fantastic!!! Your strategy sounds good and I will be watching with interest to see how you go. How old is your DS again?
I have come to the concensus that DD really is still hungry for food at the 4 hourly interrvals (i.e. twice in night) she is waking. She is still mostly eating fruit and veg during day, because she won't take anything else, but did have some pasta yesterday. We have a few disrupted weeks with things going on - going to Mum's and then up to Scotland, so am going to let her go for next couple of weeks and then come the 9 month mark, will be getting tough with her re. feeding and sleeping.
Am feeling like it's just me and you left here IsItMe?! I just spend every day wishing I had let DD self-settle when she was a lot younger, but as she has never made any great progress on the growth charts - just stabilised at her line, or occasionally dropped below it, so have never had the confidence not to feed her
Am feeling very teary today, so had better not post any more!

'lo all.

Just wanted to report on our journey towards (hopefully) better sleep.

DH and I have agreed on a Plan. Operation Tough Love involves the use of Controlled Crying to give DS the opportunity to learn to settle himself to sleep and to stretch the gaps between night feeds so that we only have one between bedtime and morning feeds.

My terms were that we got DS checked out to reassure ourselves that there was nothing actually wrong with him. Very nice GP checked him out on Weds and said she couldn't find anything at all (she recommended stretching and CC, coincidentally). Osteopath had a look at him yesterday and could only find a few small areas of compression/tension, which they can apparently help with, but nothing that they would expect to cause major sleep disruption (she thought there would be a large degree of habit involved).

So, satisfied that he's basically okay we're ready to start, just as soon as he gets over the cold that is bothering him. But - courtesy of said cold - after a couple of really unsettled hours, water, calpol and an early nightfeed, DS SLEPT FOR 7 HOURS STRAIGHT last night from 11-6, and so did we! Am not expecting a repeat performance tonight, but still, it was welcome.

I've also noticed that DS is doing much better during the days this week - less whingey. I think this might be that he is at last able to move around a bit on his own, so he's less frustrated than he has been. It's the first time I can remember enjoying his company for a long while which makes me both and at the same time.

Apologies for the essay ! Hope everybody else is doing okay.

Haha Rycie my Mum did tell me that the HV told her to put us in our prams in the garden so that she couldn't hear us crying. But I'm assured prams were very much more substantial in those days. My fellow new mums seem to be concerned about urban foxes carrying off their little ones if they left them to sleep in the garden. I guess there's more of them around than there used to be too.