to think that having a settled newborn is bugger all to do with anything you have or haven't done?

[IcouldstillbeJoseph]

Obviously disregarding illness or feeding issues etc. I'm talking about the fact that some babies are just better at sleeping and being contented at the very begnning.

So therefore it is really bloody annoying to hear the smug parents come out with gems as to why they think their baby is more settled than others. My personal favourites are:

"i think its because we've been really pro-routine from the very beginning" - as if the parents of unsettled babies wouldn't dearly love to put their DC down at 10pm and have them drift off blissfully until some hours later. Difficult to be pro-fecking-routine when you can't put them down without them howling

"I think its because I was really chilled out during pregnancy" - right, of course that's it, even though your baby wasn't even breathing or aware of the world just yet it was definitely aware that you were really calm and has carried that over into its new little life

"i think it's because i only drink camomile tea"
"I think it's because I always went to bed at the same time every night when I was pregnant"

oh stop being so smug. Its nothing to do with you, its the luck of the draw.

Just so I don't jinx it, I have to recognise that it is likely DD will wake up again in the next ten minutes.

At least she'll have had an hour's sleep.......

littlemilla and penelopepitstop thank you for those words of sanity. You've made me feel a lot better. I keep having these "expert" words ringing in my ears saying "sleeping is a skill, you must help your child learn this skill as when they sleep they grow and regenerate their cells and if you don't they'll end up with ADHD"

I'll stop clogging the thread now. Punch line seems to be, there are no answers

Beginnings, if you can get her to sleep by sitting next to her drinking wine, you have it made!

Seriously though, DS2 was same sleep pattern (but only slept 1 hour in day and 10 hours at night, with a two hour wake up between two and four and requiring resettlement every 45 min. Brought me to my knees. Around 9 months he suddenly started to sleep through. For no reason. Weird.

OMG ignore all books. They have never met you or the baby!

Isn't how your baby is come from a mixture of genetics and treatment rather than just pure luck? My DD can either be all charm and giggles or a very angry grump. I put this down to following her father's personality. Also she will go from one state to another at the flip of a switch. Has she inherited my extreme lack of patience? Also DH and I were both colicly babies. Surprise, surprise, so was DD. Although interestingly, because of much better information available now we managed her colicly episodes ALOT better than our parents both managed ours (shut in the bedroom to scream for hours, as was the way in the 70s). Also us being much older as parents means that we were much calmer.

I guess the luck part is which and how the different elements of you and your partner combine in this new little human - that is sheer randomness. Maybe our next will inherit my calmness and DH's sleeping ability and then the first few months will be a dream.

Hi,
Agree whole-heartedly with everyone. Joseph, YANBU. I read all the books and did everything I was "meant" to. Just made everyone miserable, including my sister who had to listen to me weeping down the phone every morning. Cuddler, I wish I'd had the balls (?) to ignore all the books I was given and all the HV advice earlier. Now, just as I'm getting into my stride doing things my way, friends with older children are giving me their old Gina Ford toddler-taming books. Grrrr. I have made a solemn personal vow never to give anyone a child-rearing book. It is way too personal. People can buy them for themselves if and when they feel they're needed. I mean, you don't give people relationship counselling books as a wedding present!
SB

Fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking books with their fucking alarmist fucking crap. I remember having the same fear too, and also worrying that if DD didn't sleep enough she wouldn't grow either so I'd have a hyperactive dwarf to contend with (she is 2 now so I actually do but I realise this is just a phase).

6 week old babies are freaked out because the world is weird and overwhelming and loud and bright and smelly and unpredictable and they just want to work out which way is up. Frankly I feel that way a lot of the time and I'm 32, so I can't imagine how I'd feel if I'd only had 6 weeks to adjust.

And they do their adjusting in different ways. All of us were freaked out and grumpy when we were six weeks old, most of us do not have ADHD.

bringmesunshine2009 I'm not one for book burning, but......:)

Boringly I think it's a mixture of personality & parents.

I've had 2 that were very different. DC1 - nightmare, screamed incessantly for 3 months. Then did actually start sleeping through albeit temporarily. Was a great sleeper from around 7 months although always prone to early waking. Pretty good eater too although probe to minor pickiness. Very high energy child - needs vast amounts of exercise.

DC2 - delightful baby. Barely cried. Slept well during the day but didn't sleep through the night until 8 months! She was content & happy but I didn't sleep for more than 3 hours at a time. The upside was she would wake, feed & nod straight back off. No pacing the landing for 2 hours at a time like her big brother. However she is a brilliant sleeper these days and has to be prised out of bed at 9am if left to own devices.

DC2 is a quieter, more self reliant and generally more chilled child than DC1 but I do think she was easier partly because we were more confident in what we were doing. I don't think it's a coincidence that people often report that subsequent babies are easier than first ones.

Mind you, my Mum says if my younger brother had been born first I would not have existed.

PenelopePipPop (sorry for misreading your name!). Too effing right. I'm beginning to realise that.

I am a foster carer and have fostered a number of newborn babies. I love them very much and look after them as I looked after my 2 dc. They are all different and some are wonderful sleepers and others need a lot of mothering! I do hate the word "good" when it is used with babies. They are just themselves. Some are placid (they might change later) and some are ahem not at all placid and who knows what they will be like when older, probably very much the same as the good sleepers.

Nah I believe they just are the way they are.
We are both laid back kinda people and our dd has had phases of bad sleep since day 1. Ive broken every one of the rules to appease her aswell; let her sleep on me, fed her more often through the night, didnt give her a set bedtime routine til she was 6 months, went up to see to her everytime she cried etc etc.
Shes a determined and demanding child - refuses to learn to crawl in favour of being put on her feet and walked around the house for example - so I believe the general "unsettledness" is in her nature, iyswim.

See, showmethemummy I really dont think looking after babies is hard work.
So it shows how different we all are.

BTW all mine are excellent sleepers apart from DC3 who has autism.
Once is is asleep he stays that way till 7am but he takes ages to drop off.

DD was an angel to settle as a baby. A good eater too and happy to go to anyone. She was a dream, really. She is now nearing 5, a picky eater who refuses to go to bed and answers back all the time.

DS is picky with his food and craves company when he drifts off to sleep. He can't be left with anyone as he'll scream the place down. I'm hoping he'll be a model child in a few years time

Oh, and I had depression while pregnant with DD and was incredibly highly strung and yet ended up with a very contented baby.

Both of mine had a routine from quite early on- DS from a couple of weeks old and like I said, he is very hard to please.

I don't think it'd got very much to do with the parents. Some babies thrive on routine and some don't. Same as adults really.

Well I must just point out that my ds was quite a good sleeper, although a nightmare for thingss being just so, so he could sleep, has ADHD and poss asd.

Now he is twelve his sleeping routines have changed but still finds it hard to settle down and drop off but once asleep stays asleep

Bad sleeping habits do not cause ADHD although kids with the condition can find it hard to sleep and settle.

Does that make sense?

I have 6 dc's, they have all been different babies, some demanding some not. Dc5 was a dream in every way. I thought it was down to my experience. HA! Then no 6 came along and was the most difficult baby I had ever encountered!

YANBU it is totally luck of the draw. Ds1, great sleeper, chilled most of the time. Ds2 terrible sleeper, tantrummed from beig born to current day. Both treat the same. Go figure.

Yanbu - my twins proved that.

DTD was and still is an angel.

DTS was the hardest of my 4 as a young baby, though is chilling out nicely at nearly one.

They're chalk and cheese though, and lots of twins I know are the same.

But common sense comes into it, we would keep LO up with us in her buggy or carrycot as it felt a bit strange putting a newborn into a dark room upstairs on her own, however when downstairs with us she would grizzle for a couple of hours before falling asleep - when we finally started putting her to bed at 7 in her cot upstairs she went to sleep straight away.

Funny - I was thinking about this type of thing earlier - particularly how some people can make life overly complicated for themselves.

In those early sleep deprived days I remember listening in awe to a fellow new mum tell me of their evening wind down routine, with dimmed lights, classical music and lavendar scented bath oil. I waited to hear how her little cherub then settled at 7.30 and slept until 7 am. Except he didn't - she told us that he woke up every couple of hours, just like my DD.

Best friend had the 'perfect' baby , slept , ate and did everything a perfect baby should do . My ds was the devil incarnate in comparison . Best friend had another baby , second baby was a screaming babygro full of sheer unadultered off the richter scale disgust at the world . There was nothing wrong with either child , friend did the same with both .

I'm not a book burner either but by the time I'd read 3 parenting books in sheer desperation just after DD was born I realised (through the sleep deprivation fog) that they all said different things and the whole thing depended on me and on my baby's character. No idea (now) what I was fretting about as DD was and is a good sleeper; DS also good but disturbs more easily. I was very stressed when pg w DD and even more so w DS but much more relaxed post natally w DS and in both cases there a plenty of herbal tea. The idea that there's "an answer" really gets me, and I'm a control freak who needs an answer. More support for the "doing one's best for all involved" course of action!

A bit like bonnieslilsister I have cared for many many babies and it is clear to me that they are born with their like, dislikes and personalities and not much can change them.

I have noticed a bit of a trend in that very laid back parents often seem to have the more laid back babies. I have put that down to genetics. It stands to reason that two easy going people are quite likely to have a child with an easy going personality.

My DDs couldn't have been more different. My mother had told me to make lots of noise when DD1 was asleep from day one. After a couple of weeks of her waking every time I moved or spoke and serious sleep deprivation beginning to kick in I learned to let sleeping babies lie. She didn't ever stay asleep for long and didn't sleep through even once until she was 2. It wasn't regular until she was 6. She spent the first three years welded to my side every waking moment (and there were a lot of them) because she couldn't bear to be alone or entertain herself. After a year I was on my knees with exhaustion but even the dreaded CC didn't work.

Six years later DD2 was put in the cot by the midwife on the first night, put her head to the side and went off to sleep. I didn't let myself believe it but it happened again and again. She had to co-sleep for the first month because she couldn't maintain her own body temperature but after that she still self soothed very happily. She would doze off in the car, the pushchair or under the play gym. It was nothing I did, she was just like that.

The nearest I have ever been to punching anyone was when my cousin told me, exceedingly smugly, that if only I'd read Gina Ford DD1 would have slept like an angel like theirs did. Nowadays I can be quietly smug when my DDs behave beautifully acceptably at family gatherings while theirs are demanding and disruptive.

It all balances out in the end.