Read the rather heated thread about CC the other week and don't think CC is for me. Also baby is 5.5 months so probably too small.
But she is very set in her ways. Feeds to sleep or gets walked round and jiggled, up and down stairs is best, until she is asleep. I am now struggling to carry her for long enough, sometimes it can be 1.5 hours walking for a 30 mins nap. But any deviation from this and she screams and screams. Purple in the face, real tears screaming. I've never lasted morecthan a few mins but i just know she would go for hours if i left it.
Just got the Millpond book and don't get why everyone reccomends it. Diagnosis is fine but the solution is CC or gradual withdrawal. Basically every story / case study starts with "on day 1 baby cried for 2 hours / 1 hour / too long and mum backed out....." i am trying to avoid this.
So far i have tried:
pantley put down. DD wakes up fully as soon as she hits the cot and starts screaming
Pick up put down. Tgis really drives DD mad, it's like i'm teasing her by picking her up but then not rocking her and walking round. The screams are piercing.
Gradual withdrawal. Tried this in conjunction with pantley and all that happens is i lie cuddling her while she screams. Then i give up.
I know the commin factor here is me giving up so i guess i just need to know if there is a genuine no cry sleep solution. Given the one in the book of that name didn't really work.
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Ok, so without crying what are my options?
ThinkAboutItTomorrow · 04/11/2012 22:30
Thank you!
Sounds crazy but it's just nice to hear that i'm not majorily missing a trick or doing something wrong!
So, basically the answer is that there isn't really a cry free way. Loved the point about whoever figures one out getting very rich! So true.
My objective is to get 6-7 hours in a stretch by the time i am back at work early Feb. i don't do the sort of job you can do whilst sleep deprived and have already put back my return to work because i couldn't see it working with the current situation.
My sleep audit: i have 2 main problems, naps and nightfeeds
She gets about 2 30 minute naps a day and is climbing the walls by bed. Bedtime is quite easy but feeding her to sleep. Thing is we started trying to get her down at 8.30am for a 9am nap. Finally got her down at 11! She'll be awake in a minute. I'm going to hover by her got to try to soothe her into another cycle.
The consequence of her not settling for naps is that any routine goes out of the window. Vicious circle. And pushchair or car don't work. Guess what? Yup, she screams in both of them.
Nightfeeds - 10pm, 12.30am, 3/4am and then a firm belief it's time to get up at 5am. I bring her in to co-sleep at 5am just to prolong my sleep a bit, but the quality of sleep is rubbish and it squashes DP out (we are all 3 quite small and it's a kingsize bed but still, made for 2!)
So, i guess the question is what is the likelihood of her self settling naturally at 9 months?
should I see what impact weaning, moving into her own room etc have before i try anything else?
She is little, 25th percentile so i think she may really need nightfeeds, or at least one, because her stomach is small.
Thanks for the support.
Our babies are about the same age and we're going back to work at the same time, so I guess I'm pretty well placed to comment on this 
Firstly, I'm happy to feed to sleep. I try and use that to my advantage. How come you're concerned about it? If it's the old 'rod for your own back'...well, I don't see it that way. I figure for a good few years I'll be giving him a cuddle before bedtime and I kind of think of a BF as fitting into that category for now. Are you worried about how she'd sleep at nursery/childminder's? Don't be - the professionals know how to deal with these things. We've started DS at nursery a few half days this past week and he sleeps brilliantly there. No idea how. Can only assume it's the Dark Arts because I don't recall don't recall detaching my boobs and leaving them there.
Secondly, two half hour naps, as you're obviously aware, is not enough so she's probably overtired which is probably why it takes ages for her to go to sleep, and is a ticking time bomb of grump. The way I cracked naps was by realising that DS really can't stay awake for longer than two hours. He has no daytime routine (not for lack of trying, I hasten to point out) but what I do do, is take note of what time he wakes up (usually ungodly, although, this is a current project as well), count 1.5ish hours, then start looking for sleepy cues (yawning, eye rubbing, grizzly). The second I see even the tiniest one, I wrap him in a blanket - the same one, every time in the hope that it will develop a portable sleep association and so he knows what's expected when The Blanket appears. Then I feed him to sleep and stick him, blanket and all, into his pram or cot. He also only sleeps for half an hour at a time, but I'll get a minimum of three, but usually four, naps into him this way. This is how I use feeding to sleep to my advantage, because, once I started doing this, getting him down at night actually improved and his day time fretfulness disappeared almost overnight.
Thirdly - I'm with you on night feedings. I think they're still needed at this age. Mine's a monster, so I figure he needs the fuel to keep outgrowing clothes at the rate he is and to learn the new tricks he's acquiring on a daily basis. I don't intend to do anything about night-weaning until he's over six months, and see if anything like solids or time at nursery does anything to change this (this is me not holding my breath). If it's still an issue in January, say, I'll crack out the gradual withdrawal/camping out again, since that's worked before and I'm happy(ish..well not really but you know what I mean) with it.
Fourthly - if you gaze into your crystal ball, that should tell you if it will all be sorted by 9 months. 
Honestly - look at the sleep forum. There's ages of kids up to around five years with won't-go-to-sleep-itis. It might sort itself out, but it might not, and unfortunately you're just going to have to make the extremely tough decision as to whether you risk playing wait and see, or whether you do something about it before then. In my case, I had to do something about it, and will continue to do something about it as the alternative is utterly, utterly intolerable for me.
Hope there's something of use in all that
Fairylea I think you've had some very lucky lightening strike twice there - easy settlers and sleeping through the night? Never even come remotely close to either. You may remove yourself from this thread.
Fairylea If you can cuddle your crying babies, they stop crying and then you can carry on with whatever you were doing, either playing with them or they sit quietly in a bouncer, they're not the same creatures that OP and I have been blessed with. A baby who has had 12 hours unbroken sleep is going to cope a great deal better on only a 20 minute nap during the day as that probably is all they need. Our little darlings are up multiple times a night and mine, at least, goes into a rabid, inconsolable fury if he doesn't nap regularly, which cuddles and head stroking cannot touch (nor anything else for that matter - one of these episodes once lasted two hours until he passed out despite every conceivable attempt at soothing on our parts). As he can't get himself to nap, I have to help him to do that, and do it at regular intervals or it's horribly, horribly distressing for all of us. Seriously, what are you even doing on this forum - your life sounds amazing! 
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OP - not knowing a great deal about these things but, again drawing on my own experience, if your DD is feeding for half an hour during night wakings, that sounds to me like a genuine feed rather than a comfort suck to resettle. When DS used to sleep on my lap, he'd do a comfort suck occasionally which was literally suck, suck, suck, drop off heavily asleep. His night wakings are definitely full feeds, as he'll often drain both sides, which he doesn't even do during the day, being a one-side-man usually. I've also had some instances where the feeding to sleep hasn't worked, but it has generally resolved itself, especially once I got the feed into his 'right, you are going to sleep now' nap 'routines' (for want of a better word). A walk around or a quiet sit on my lap for twenty minutes (or even less) I've also found helpful i.e. feed both sides, oh crap, still awake, have a bit of a cuddle or carry around to keep crying at bay for 10-15 mins, put back on the boob, out like a light. As a stab in the dark, maybe it's a temporary glitch due to the teething? Haven't had the joys of that yet - still got a toothless wonder here. I'm not urging you to keep feeding to sleep by any means, just throwing you some different ideas about it, as I believe that's a particularly difficult issue to address (hence I'm trying to get everything else sorted before I tackle it myself!)
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