Ask your Qs of Pampers baby sleep expert Jo Tantum: chance to win £150 NOW CLOSED

[AnnMumsnet]

To celebrate the launch of New Pampers Baby-Dry, baby sleep expert Jo Tantum is here to answer your questions. Whether your DCs are interrupting each other’s all-important 12 hours, they’re not sleeping through the night, or you can’t seem to establish a routine, Jo is here to help.

Post your questions to Jo by 12th September and we will pick 20 for her to respond to. Everyone who posts a question will be entered into a prize draw where one lucky Mumsnetter will win a £150 Love2Shop voucher. A link to Jo’s responses will be posted by the end of September latest.

More about Jo: Jo Tantum is a baby sleep expert with 25 years’ experience. She is a member of the Pampers Love, Sleep & Play panel and the author of bestselling book ‘Baby Secrets’ which has helped hundreds of families to achieve a peaceful night’s sleep! Jo is working with Pampers to support the launch of New Pampers Baby-Dry, which feature a revolutionary nappy design with 3 Absorbing Channels - for up to 12 hours of dryness and less wet bulk in the morning!

Thanks,
MNHQ

This Q&A is sponsored by Pampers

[muddypuddled]

I have a 10.5 month old daughter who I breastfeed with solid foods. She has never taken a dummy or a bottle. She still wakes to feed two to three times a night and feeds to sleep. I am going back to work next month and work 13 hour shifts and my daughter will be going to nursery or will be cared for by my husband in those days or nights. I need to find a quick way to stop feeding her to sleep so that my husband and other carers can get her to sleep. I have tried pick up put down but after the first night she became ill so I stopped until she was well enough to try again. When we did to pick up put down it was more like her falling asleep in my arms. I also have a 3 year old son and I find it difficult to do pick up put down when I am trying to get him to sleep at the same time. Please tell me what I should do to help her settle herself to sleep rather than feeding her to sleep? She also barely naps in the day unless we're out I the car or pram. Thank you

[FashionistaGurl]

At the moment, my baby ( 4 months) sleeps from 11pm to 6am. Sometimes, she wakes up around 3am for breastfeeding, other times she sleeps throughout. Is it alright to not wake her up for breastfeeding? I am worried that she will loose weight.

Also, is it alright to not change her diaper when she is sleeping throughout the night?

[Lovewatchingrainfall]

My 3 year old will not go to sleep without me sitting with her and holding her hand, how do I get her to stop this? She also wakes every 2hours. What can I do to stop this. I'm due baby number 2 in December and can't keep sitting with her for anything up to 2 hours to get her to sleep. Please Help!

[ButterflyOfFreedom]

How do I get my 2 year old daughter to settle herself to sleep?
At the moment she relies on me or my husband to either be in her room with her or at least sat outside her door 'shh-ing' her (!).
We just want to be able to put her in bed, say goodnight and leave her...

[DaisyDando]

My 18m DS naps like clockwork at nursery, but whatever I do to try and replicate the routine at home, he fights sleep as hard as he can in the day. He sleeps in his buggy and in the car quite happily.
Any times for daytime cot napping?

[crogers13]

Hello Jo
I would like to ask a question about my 6 month old little boy please. He's great at going to sleep at night and sleeps straight though however, every hour or so he screams but he's still sleeping? Are these night terrors and if so can I do anything? Every time he screams it scares me and I pat his chest for a few minutes and he stops. He never wakes up during these screams?
Thank you so much :)

[Bubblebloodypop]

Hi, I'd like to ask when should I expect my DS 18 months to drop his afternoon nap? He still doesn't sleep through the night and I'm hoping that will be when it happens.

[Butterflies88]

My little one is early 17 weeks and up until 4 weeks ago would go to sleep quite easily after a feed (breastfeed) and sleep a 4-6 hour stretch so up only twice to feed at night. Now it's taking up to 40 mins to get her to sleep each time (feeding, rocking,carrying around) and once finally asleep she is only sleeping at the most 2 hour stretches therefore walking up 3-5 times a night. I'm exhausted, why the sudden change in sleep pattern and what I do X

[KnottedAnchorChief]

My DC have both gone through phases of settling themselves to sleep and then phases of needing us to sit with them. At the moment my DD (4yrs) who has been fairly good at being left alone promptly after a story and a cuddle, is now demanding we sit with her until she drops off. I know my DD is slightly older now, but my question is how much should we expect children to revert back to settling themselves? If they have shown they are capable of settling themselves for a period, should we not revert back? Or will children's settling needs change and fluctuate as they grow, and so may need us more from time to time?

[SmileyShazza]

Our 2 year old daughter is going through a stage where when she wakes in the night she gets out of bed and comes up to our room (we are on the next floor). I keep taking her back to bed, tucking her in and leaving her but she's started crying and will only settle if one of us sleeps in the spare bedroom on the same floor as her. We don't have to be in her room just on the same floor. If we go back up to our bedroom she just keeps getting out of bed repeatedly until one of us goes and gets in the spare bed.

I'm not sure how we can break her out of this behaviour. Any tips greatly welcomed.

[xcxcsophiexcxc]

Have a problem with my three year old who keeps getting up minutes after he is put to bed. He will keep coming downstairs and getting out of bed everytime i put him back, telling him off just leads in him crying.
Eventually he will just play with his toys then fall asleep but it makes him really tired the next day, until bedtime again when hes suddenly no longer tired at all.
What can i do to encourage him to go to sleep without acting up?

[BowiesJumper]

My 10 month old has always fed (bf) to sleep. I need to find other ways of getting him to sleep so that other people can put him down to nap or to bed when I go back to work!
He gets very cross if I try and rock him to sleep.
Thanks

[AprilLoveJ]

Thankfully the majority of our sleep issues with our 20 month old daughter are either a thing of the past, or easily dealt with now. The only thing I'm really struggling with is weaning her off her bedtime milk bottle. She just will not settle until she's had it.

My hv told us she should be off the bottle by 1 year old but in all honesty it took us some time after that to slowly wean her off both her night and day feeds. (She was a terrible sleeper from birth and did not begin to sleep through the night until a few months ago, so she still had a bottle or two in the night up until then!)

I have tried milk in a cup just before bed, or just putting her down without the bottle with the hopes that she would adjust to the new change over time, but that just resulted in numerous late nights full of screaming/crying and an overtired toddler the next day, not to mention the loss of my sanity.

Any tips on what we can do to wean her off the bedtime bottle?

[somefarawaydream]

I would like to ask for the likelihood of my little boy dropping his night feeds on his own? Is it common to have to nightwean or sleep train? He is 6 months and settles to sleep on his own, but still wakes for food. I would like to take his lead and do it as gently as possible but in the end am I just going to end up having to nightwean him?

[hungryhungryhippos]

How can I wean a dummy off my one year old? I feel like it's starting to have a negative impact on his sleep pattern.

[victria]

When is the best time to establish a sleep routine and how long should a baby sleep exact day? My 12 week old usually sleeps through the night but doesn't nap much during the day.

[fairybells]

My 3 year old daughter suffers from night terrors, she's been having them from a very early age. In the beginning they were quite frequent and on and off throughout every month but for the past year they have started coming every few months only. So typically every two to three months and they last for about a week. The problem is that for that one week no one in our household sleeps! The episodes can last for couple of hours and once it's over she'll go back to sleep for an hour until she's screaming again. Most of the time when she's having these episodes she doesn't recognise anyone and is hysterical but sometimes she does and it almost resembles having a really bad tantrum! She screams and kicks, doesn't want to be comforted but doesn't want to be left alone, the only thing we can do is let her "play it out" and sit and wait. In the morning she can't remember any of it!
My question is: how long can this continue? Surely she'll grow out of it at some point? And what can be the cause of these night terrors/sleep episodes she gets? And is there anything at all we could do to help her? Thank you!

[Sleepysausage]

How can I stop my daughter needing to breastfeed to sleep ? She's 11months old and for a while would let her daddy give her a bottle then be rocked to sleep. Now she screams untill I feed her to sleep.

[TheDuchessOfKidderminster]

Do you have any advice for establishing a routine for two children - aged 1 and 4 yrs - who share a room? As an added difficulty, I often have to do bedtime on my own because their dad works shifts.

[CopperPan]

DD is 4 and was sleeping in her own room from age 2. In the past six months she has been getting up and coming to join us in our bed and it has become a bad habit. She has a good bedtime routine and will initially go to bed in her own room but then wakes up and wants to sleep in our bed later in the night. How can I break this pattern.

[StillNoFuckingEyeDeer]

DS is 3 months old and naps in the sling in the daytime and feeds to sleep at night. Sleeping in the sling is often easiest for us as we can get out of the house, but sometimes it would be easier if he slept in his bed in the daytime. Is he likely to be able to learn to self settle in his bed for a nap if he's only doing it once a week?

[Elliepurpleflower]

I have a 10 week old. I was wondering if there was any advice on what age babies recognise routine? So when 'bath book bottle' type thing is worth implementing? Thanks.

[TheHubblesWindscreenWipers]

Our son is 11months old and wakes constantly. He's not having issues getting through sleep cycles as if he does sleep he can connect them. He wakes after about twenty mins or so so he's not even doing a full cycle. He will not go to sleep and he will not stay asleep. He's rarely in that 'zonked out' stage I see other babies in. He snaps awake instantly at any noise or disturbance
We have read every treatise of child sleep we can find. We understand object permanence, sleep cycles, blah blah....

We've had sleep consultants. All have just suggested variations on pupd/shh pat/gradual retreat/cc. Nothing worked. We've tried:
Routines
Being baby led
Co sleeping
Pupd
Shh pat
Various takes on the gradual retreat method
Controlled crying.
Naps in the pram (nope.)

He will not be put down awake. Will not be left alone. Will not sleep. Will not nap. He's a chronically tired baby. He's not intolerant to any foods. Both parents on the brink of collapse.

Any ideas?

[Hopezibah]

Whatever methods we used for our son to get to sleep, it just didn't work however consistently we tried and for however long we tried. We have since found out he is autistic and my question is whether there needs to be a different sleep technique to the most common ones for children with ASD (obviously in the early days it would be hard to know but for toddler age some children do have a diagnosis by then. thanks