Night waking experiment - thanks fellow mn's!

[grumblingirl]

Hi all. If you're looking on the sleep forum then you're either a sleep deprived desperate parent or have an experienced interest in the subject so I wanted to tell you about my experiment last night with my insomniac night waking terror ds2! I've posted (from the edge) a few times about his nightwaking (his record is over 30 times) but mostly I've trawled through the posts over the past 2 months and came up with a plan that I instigated last night after trying lots of combinations of solutions. It's the first time in about 6 months I've had hope. This is what I did:

1. Gave him a quilt (he's nearly 1yr) good suggestion from a post here
2. Cold turkied his dummy (loads of MN's suggested this)
3. Put him to bed at 7.30pm (earlier)
4. Kept the landing light on and door open slightly.
5. FORCED myself to remain calm when helping him to self settle.

He only woke 3 TIMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I feel like a new woman after at least 6 hours sleep. About 4 of that unbroken. Just want to say a huge thank you to effieperine, the poster suggested giving a quilt and 2point4kids for her post about taking away the dummy which galvanised me into not giving in last night! Middle of the night I was thanking the world for mumsnet. Hmmm...hope I'm not counting my chickens now!

[Becky77]

You did it all in one go? Wow you're a brave woman! Good on you.... Glad you got a great result!

[grumblingirl]

Yup. I could bear it no longer and even though I was expecting hysterics he actually made only a medium amount of fuss about it actually. I did have to wrestle his bottle of him though - he obviously thought 'no dummy, I'll be having that teat!'

[Becky77]

It's funny how we expect the whole world to fall apart but actually there pretty chilled about it all!

[Pinkjenny]

grumblingirl - you're an inspiration to me. I am still taking the easy option of bringing dd in with me when she wakes. Although I have been encouraged lately as she is going longer and longer in her own bed.

[grumblingirl]

How old is your DD Pinkjenny? I think it's a great sign that she is going for longer stretches in her own bed. Means she's getting more comfortable with sleeping alone.

I really was expecting the whole night to be a nightmare but I also was trying to be confident about it all and doing the whole 'It will work' mantra in my head. I hope my mil doesn't give in today and give him his dummy - she's looking after him whilst I'm at work. She looked a bit worried when I told her we weren't giving him it anymore!

[Pinkjenny]

She's 17mo grumblingirl. I'm going with the flow at the moment, until the next time I 'decide' to tackle it!