"And then on the 3rd night he just slept through" <hollow laugh> <rocks> <weeps>

[YunoYurbubson]

It would seem that everyone else in the world had to do sleep training for three, or at the most four, nights and then their children miraculously slept through for twelvty-ten hours every night thereafter and there were rainbows and cherubs and fluffy bunnies and everyone lived happily every after. I KNOW this is true because I have been trawling the MN archives.

WHAT AM I DOING WRONG???

I am not even a sleep training type but have had to do something for fear of dying from lack of sleep.

Details:
Ds is 2 1/2. He spends every night lolling about on the boob sort of feeding and dozing and occasionally I manage to roll him off me and I grab 20 minutes sleep before he realises and howls in indignation and we begin with the rolling, lolling, dozing, feeding thing again.

History:
We have tried various sleep solutions before (NCSS, Baby Whisperer and another one, I forget which) but have unfortunately not had the balls to see them through, thus neatly teaching ds that if things are not going his way he just has to keep screaming at us and eventually we will capitulate.

And Now:
We've done 8 nights.
The rule is 'No Milk Until Morning'.
If he wakes up I fix whatever has woken him (thirsty / sore feet / leaked nappy etc) and settle him back into bed.
I give him cuddles if he is sad.
He clings pitifully to my neck for hours, erupting into hysterical sobbing if I gently encourage him back into his bed.
He is still begging for milk every night.

If I ever manage to get him camly in to his bed and lying down he dozes off pretty easily, it's getting him there that is so painful.

Last night I got about 2 hours sleep total, and those were on the floor of his bedroom.

Do I continue with this?
Do I do things differently?
What do I do?
SERIOUSLY, what do I do?

Would you be better to post this in 'sleep'?

And I sympathise. I gave birth to an owl 16m ago.

At 2 1/2 I would think its time to wean him completely? Maybe its part habit that keeps him asking during the night (or part hunger?)

Oh Yuno, having been through every sleep nightmare going with my two, all I can tell you with absolute certainty, is IT WILL END.

I absolutely promise that this isn't going to be your life forever - you will actually get a nights sleep.

I know sleep deprivation can feel like you are in some sort of living hell, but it doesn't last forever - at some point his natural need for sleep will overtake his need for milk.

It does seem like you may need to get a bit 'tougher' with his waking, but even if you leave it, it will end naturally on it's own - almost all baby phases do pass on their own.

And all those people talking about how their babies have slept through from day 3 - they are telling big fibs! (or possibly manipulating their idea of time - i.e anything before midnight is still 'evening' and anything after 4.30am is 'morning' etc etc - they do it to maintain a modicum of sanity...

Repeat after me - 'This is a phase and IT WILL END'

Well, it didn't miraculously happen on the third night for us. It took about 6 weeks (with disruption in the middle as DD got a bad stomach bug). We did gradual withdrawal rather than CC, and DD was much younger, so we didn't go cold turkey on the breastfeeding straight away, just reduced it bit by bit.

Our experience is probably not much use to you as it's a very different situation, but I know I found the sleep books useless. What helped was having someone come and give advice about our specific situation, and who we saw regularly for those few weeks. Having that continuity really helped with the times when we were sure it was never going to work, and may have given in if it was just us.

You may not like to hear this but with ds2 it took complete weaning (he was 2) and then moving into his own bed for me to finally get a full night's rest.

Soz, but you need to ignore him more, you're still pandering to his night crying, so he is not learning anything new. If it gets the result he wants, he's going to keep doing it. I know well how hard it is to stick to the long term goal when you are so tired, best of luck. How long are you letting him cry for before you go to him?

I think you might have to combine with the rapid-return to bed thing like St Tanya of Byran did with the house of tiny tearaways children

So cut out the hours of patting/cuddling and put back to bed again and again

Oh and do you have a DH/DP to do the night returning?

Are you on your own or do you have a DH or DP? If you do can he help? It sounds like you're trying to do it all by yourself. My DP took over the settling completely at night because as soon as DD smelt me and my milk there was no settling her but as soon as she realised she was always going to get Daddy she started to fight it less and very quickly after that learnt it wasn't worth trying to stay awake.

Also I just couldn't bear leaving her crying at all and when she would start I would physically react so much with with my boobs filling with milk it was impossible, the only way we got it sorted was for me to stay out of the equation and DP to take over.

Good luck hang in there IT WILL get better.

If you have been co sleeping and feeding all night then of course it us going to take more than 3 nights to get a 2.5 year old to sleep all night in his own bed. I don't think you are doing anything 'wrong' but the method you have chosen is not going to be a quick fix, because you are still cuddling him and letting him cling to you for hours. I think if you want a quick fix you are going to have to be quite firm and put him in bed quickly, then go as quick as you can.

But that is easier said than done and I wouldn't fancy doing it myself.

Does he react well to bribes rewards eg sticker charts? That is what worked for my DS1 who was very reluctant to sleep by himself. He was a little bit older than your son, maybe a couple of months, but we had very few tears because the reward was always mentioned and he would lie down and go to sleep! We also left a story CD he liked running all night and a night light on, both of which he still likes at nearly 4 if he is sleeping in a strange room.

Personally I would not completely wean him now because it would be traumatic in addition to the night time upsets. But you do need to be absolutely clear that there is no milk forthcoming at night, ever, or you will send confusing messages.

THe more you ignore them, the quicker it works. The more you comfort, the slower it works.

Personally it's more imprtant to me that my children feel comfort is available at night (AND that I get some kip), so I do slow nightweaning. (no need to wean during day, imo) I get DH to do the cuddling, though, or at least share it.

We're getting a modicum of success after 3 weeks-DS2 is 20 months, though. Stick with it . Caveat; if behaviour during the day is showing evidence of anxiety, it's going to quick for him. Maybe cut back to a few key milk-free hours, say 10-4. You'd do better off with this in
sleep, though. In AIBU it'll be full of people thinking its an outrageous indulgence to be breastfeeding a 2.6 year old, let alone at night

Yes, everyone who posts in AIBU is evil, clearly.

No question that this is the wrong place to be posting, but the flaming that you all seem to expect hasn't happened yet...

Eh Trillian?

Notexciting said what I was going to - the only thing that really worked for us was controlled crying. That didn't work in 3 days, but it did work within a week. The more we tried the softly softly approach where we went in and cuddled, comforted, etc, the worse it got.

Here's my advice, FWIW, which isn't much :

1. Continue with the no night feeds things. This isn't a breast/bottle feeding comment, I'd advise the same whichever you were doing.

1. Try some milk / yoghurt / banana shortly before bed; they're all good for stimulating sleep hormones plus will mean you can be sure he's not waking up from hunger.

1. Prepare yourself before trying controlled crying. How about for 2 or 3 nights, you decide that your partner will deal with ALL the nighttime wakeups, even if that means he doesn't get much sleep for that short period. For those nights, you go to bed at 9, after a warm bath with earplugs/nytol/wine/whatever gets you to sleep. Preferably in a spare room. Your mission for those 2 or 3 nights is to stock up on sleep so that you are better able to tackle this. At the moment you're exhausted, with good reason, and so your mental resolve and emotional reserves are low. To give controlled crying the best chance of working, prepare yourself so you're in a better place.

1. After those 2 or 3 nights, your partner gets to sleep through and you tackle this head on. As I said, controlled crying was in the end the only thing that worked for us and I have to say for lots of our friends too. Do it consistently for 7 nights and see. If you've seen absolutely no improvement in that time, reassess.

1. During that 7 days, start a support thread on here, so that you can come on and weep when your stamina is wearing low and you're worried that you're forever psychologically harming your baby. Then we can all post helpful things like "Step away from the door handle you mad wench" and "Finish your wine first, then see how he's doing"

Because of the extended cosleeping / night feeding it's probably a bigger adjustment for him than for other babies. That isn't a criticism, by the way, but just it would seem that way to me. BUT YOU CAN DO THIS.

HTH

Yes, it is in the wrong place. Blame severe sleep deprivation, and thanks for answering as though it were in the right place.

Actually, I think I whiled away the hours last night composing furious "AIBU to expect my son to farking well SLEEP at some point" posts in my head, so that was still fresh in my mind when I posted this morning.

Re advice: I agree with whoever said that cutting out milk entirely would probably just be an extra stress for him, so no plans to do that just yet. We have cut down daytime milk though, so he has morning and bedtime milk, plus naptime if required, but no more hanging off me all day because he is so tired after a night of not really sleeping.

I can't really get tougher as I won't leave him to cry. It just doesn't work for me and it doesn't work for him. So I suppose I'm not really sure what I want from posting about it. A magic wand maybe? That would be nice.

Thanks all for the support and ideas. It helps.

agree remove cup or bottle he likes
we genuinely lost ours and he stopped asking for it.
found it a year later

I'm not going to flame, as such and dont know exactly how the OP found herself in this situation whilst others did not, however...

for anyone who implied to me I was cruel or negligent or hard as nails or unmaternal or whatever else for putting my children in their cot/moses basket AWAKE and getting them to settle themselves to sleep...(which didn't mean crying by the way)

this is why

OP, you have my sympathy, but I dont have any advice now things have got this far. There might be a good book out there for you, hopefully someone will come along.

Yuno, in your OP you said "What am I doing wrong?" and asked "Do I need to do things differently?"

Then when you get suggestions you respond by saying you're not going to change anything.

That's your choice, but in the gentlest possible voice I'd just say this: your current plan doesn't seem to be working, or your OP wouldn't exist. So you might want to open your mind a little bit more to some other points of view. Honestly, I say that gently.

But you don't seem to want the advice you asked for in yur OP, so I'll but out now.

Best of luck.

OP
if you want him to learn to sleep on his own you will have to put up with some crying

Just my twopennorth. If you can't leave him to cry then ....

exactly
be hard

oh god you are breastfeeding still
hteres yer problem!! wtf!

ok, you can start to gradually reduce the night feedings, and there will be some crying, help him settle in other ways, and there will be some crying

or you can co sleep and let him feed/cuddle all night and at least you're not trying to get him into his own bed

at 2.5 he is old enough to start grasping things, but there will be some crying, keep reiterating no milk until morning, be gentle but firm

i would perhaps do the no milk til morning but sleep in mummy's bed, so he's next to you and then when no milk til morning is a success, then move him itno his own bed

start a night time routine which gets him bathed, fed, and in his bed and you have to ether stick to it and bear some crying or not do it at all

i remember hissing at s3
"mummys in bed daddys in bed the brothers aree in bed EVERYONE IS IN BED NOW YOU GO TO BED"

AND Saying that again in the day time when discussing night time behavioir