AIBU to sleep train my 18 week old?

[Wineandpopcorn]

Hi my 18 week old daughter has never slept longer than 3 hours at night, and that was when she was a newborn. For the last 8 weeks she generally only sleeps for an hour and 45 minutes at a time throughout the night, waking up screaming and needing to be fed back to sleep. Most of the times shes not hungry and only has a few sips of her bottle.

She can't keep a dummy in her mouth, it just falls out.

Giving her a cuddle/patting her/shushing her/white noise/swaddling/ music etc all result in even more screaming.

Putting her in bed with me makes no difference.

She only catnaps in the day for about 20 minutes every now and then.

I seriously can't cope anymore. I have no help, plus have a teenager and a 2 year old.

Does anyone have any advice on sleep training a baby so young? I really didn't want to resort to this but I honestly can't cope for much longer.

[EvansAndThePrince]

Becca you did brilliantly, same as fabric it didn't work with mine, she needs a boob! But I don't expect she will when she's school age so I'm fine with it.

[fabricbag]

Evans my older one is now 4 and hasn't needed a boob at night sincw he was 2. He also has a friend who was exactly the same and she grew out of it by 3. You'll get there (and so will my DS2!)

[GraysAnalogy]

4 month old babies don't have tantrums. They're telling you in the only way they can that they need something. Comfort is a need. They've come from a safe and comforting environment to one that is scary and lonely. To ignore that and suggest it's merely a tantrum is strange in my eyes.

[Freezingwinter]

She is too young, it is unnecessary, she is going through the four month sleep regression. It is all normal behaviour. It may not be what you want to hear, but these are the times out babies need us most. Imagine how she feels being tired, not being able to sleep because that little brain is working overtime? No wonder she cries! She needs her mommy to be there for her, not leave her to cry. It really is hard, I know you are knackered but in a few months this will all be a distant memory. I never sleep trained, etc my little boy. He sleeps through the night and is 14 months old.

[CauliflowerBalti]

Babies aren't designed to sleep through the night and there is lots of peer-reviewed, solid evidence to suggest that sleep training causes long-term psychological damage. Your baby isn't manipulating you, having tantrums or behaving in any way unusually. Very very few babies sleep for longer than 3 hours at your baby's age. When a baby cries, it's because he or she needs you. They're needy little fuckers, the resulting sleep deprivation is exhausting and a cruel and unusual form of torture - but there you are. When she cries for you, she needs the comfort of her mother, and it is as important a need as food, warmth and cleanliness.

Look up Sarah Ockwell Smith, read about the science of newborn sleep, and check out her suggestions on ways to cope.

Sending much love and strength because it is bloody horrible.

[CauliflowerBalti]

PS - it will ALL GET BETTER when she can put her dummy back in on her own. I spent a long long time trying to invent ways to keep a dummy in a newborn that social services wouldn't get cross about.

[CauliflowerBalti]

Things are coming flooding back. Sleep begets sleep. Do whatever you can to get her to sleep in the day. Long car journeys? Walking around in a sling?

[Diddlydokey]

Where is that evidence?!!

[Alexa444]

Not ideal at all but will she sleep on her stomach? A work colleague has a baby with reflux and was saying that the only way he can sleep is upright or on his stomach. Interestingly enough I've found myself that heartburn eases when I sleep on my side instead of my back so could be something in it?

[Hairyfecker]

It is very hard, but you would be unreasonable to sleep train now, yes.

[OwlinaTree]

I had to break the feed to sleep cycle at about 4 months. I did the baby whisperer shush pat, pick up, put down. Yes they cry, but you comfort them straight away, they are not left to cry.

Took about a week to get him to nap on his own, which had just been better for all of us, including him. He still had night feeds when he woke (till about 7 months when he was just having a couple of sucks!) but it was only a could of times a night, and he could nap in the day.

It's not cruel to help your baby learn to self settle.

[Cakescakescakes]

I had a reflux baby. Omeprazole etc. His sleep was horrendous until he was about 6 months old then a gradual improvement. He is 2 and has never been a good napper but night times got better eventually. I know how desperate you are feeling (I had a toddler as well). A sling saved my sanity if you haven't tried that already? Otherwise hang in there :)

[hazeyjane]

It does sound as though it is down to her reflux, especially with the few sips of milk.

Is there anything that does stop her crying - bouncing? being carried upright? If you hold the dummy in?

I ask because this might be a clue in how to help her.

Speak to her paed/gp about combining meds. Also is she on a special milk? Ds was much worse on specialist milk.

Is she under the paed just for reflux - are there any other concerns?

Personally I wouldn't sleep train a baby with reflux.

[arethereanyleftatall]

I did CIO and it worked 100% for my girls around the same age I think, possibly younger. 7pm was bedtime in Moses baskets non negotiable. I would put them down, go and have a cuppa at the top of garden (where I couldn't hear them cry) , come back in 5 minutes and they were both always fast asleep. After two nights, I didn't need to go to top of garden, as they fell straight to sleep, and slept through.
So, it worked for my two, but they didn't have reflux.
I recognise it wouldn't work for all children.

[hazeyjane]

Only crying for 5 minutes! And sorted in 2 days!! Wow, that was some quick self settling. I remember when our neighbours were doing CIO, the crying would go on for ages, it was fucking awful.

Really really don't do anything like this with a child with reflux.

[ElectraAzalea]

My 13mo still isn't the best sleeper. For a long time now he has been self settling in his cot at bedtime which is excellent. The majority of the time he will then wake at around 2ish, and he used to settle back down until morning after I had gone to feed him. But recently he has started crying when I put him back in his cot, and then I usually end up with him breastfeeding whilst in bed with me all night. It's absolutely doing my head in. He's a real puzzle as he can obviously self settle; he does so at bedtime.

He obviously has some kind of feed/sleep association. I used to feed my DD to sleep and twice a night until she was 18mo and started sleeping through by herself and I wanted to avoid doing the same with DS and not fall into the same feed/sleep cycle. But my DS was born with the most awkward tongue tie that became apparent when he was around a month old (it was snipped 3 times and was never perfect). Breastfeeding him was such a battle, probably the hardest thing I have ever done, but it meant that all my efforts just went to getting him fed, and it made it very difficult to establish any routine, or not feed him to sleep.

It caused me an awful lot of stress and anxiety, after a stressful time leading up to his birth (big house move, DH moving jobs etc), and I have struggled with anxiety since, not helped at all by a lack of a full nights sleep. I am trying to take sertraline for the anxiety now but it makes me feel a bit grim to start with and I struggle to persist. Sometimes when I have been at my wits end I have left DS to cry. I tried cc when he was around 9mo but hated it. No one wants to leave their baby to cry and cause 'psychological damage' but we didn't cease being human beings ourselves with our own needs when our DC were born and sometimes everything can overwhelm you. We need to take care of ourselves too.

[Zukazama]

My baby was exactly the same. She was awful at sleeping, would wake up every 3 hours at night and only napped for 30 minutes at a time in her buggy. She was diagnosed with silent reflux at 4 months,we were given infant gaviscon which didn't work. Next we were given Ranitidine, didnt work either. So we were told to up the dosage, again no luck. We took her to a different doctor who decided she wasn't suffering from reflux at all but was infact lactose intolerent. Now on lactose free milk and lactose free food she is a different baby. Sleeps 6pm till 5am every night and naps for 90 minutes twice a day!

[Wineandpopcorn]

Thank you for all the advice, I am going to buy a sleepyhead today!

We only saw the paediatrician last week, who stopped the domperidone and declared her asymptomatic so just to continue with 7mls of omeprazol. It's the paediatrician who advised me to do cc!!!

I was utterly desperate when I posted this yesterday, but I feel a bit more rational now and am going to see if the special dummys and sleepyhead make an improvement instead!

[Magstermay]

I would also suggest looking up Sarah Ockwell-Smith and Babycalm. We had a horrific 4 month sleep regression and our DS literally would not sleep in his crib from 4 to 5 1/2 months. It improved when he managed to roll over and I wonder if there was some reflux but I was too tired to even think about anything.
We did a sleep workshop with Babycalm and it was a real eye opener and very reassuring that it's all perfectly normal (although incredibly hard).
Babies at this age cannot self soothe - sleep 'training' merely teaches learned helplessness, ie don't bother crying as no one is going to come. It has also been shown to affect brain development.

[peardroplets]

I may have misunderstood but if by sleep training you mean CIO then there are a big reason not to do it from the baby's point of view.

It doesn't teach them to comfort themselves, it teaches them not to stay silient and not ask for comfort from their caregiver. Studies have looked at cortisol (stress hormones) in babies left to cry it out and although they are no longer crying, their cortisol levels show that they are still very distressed.

You will get through it I promise, we are coming out the end of it. Eight months now and it has gradually improved since five months with a bit of back and forwards.

x

[CauliflowerBalti]

Diddlydokey - click around through this: sarahockwell-smith.com/2014/06/30/self-settling-what-really-happens-when-you-teach-a-baby-to-self-soothe-to-sleep/

[peardroplets]

Sorry for the typos in my post. Should read 'teaches them to stay silent'....

[Diddlydokey]

Cauliflower

I'm not a fan of the language she uses in that blog. She's basically equating a baby who is being raised in a loving family who is sleep trained with a crying method to a child that has been abused. That is just ridiculous in my mind.

I would argue that a baby who wakes up every 45 minutes isn't getting enough rest overall and the detrimental effect of that level of sleep deprivation is worse for the whole family than 2/3 nights of sleep training.

Have a browse of this

www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/pages/Infant-Sleep-Training-is-Effective-and-Safe-Study-Finds.aspx?nfstatus=401&nftoken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000&nfstatusdescription=ERROR%3a+No+local+token

The cortisol argument that she refers to is a popular one against CC/CIO, but it's not a particularly good one. Did you know that they have done multiple studies that indicate that babies with high cortisol levels have better mental performance?

A Pennsylvania State University Study: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15892778

A study by the British Columbia Research Institute: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16122876

Did you know that there have been studies of breastfed babies having 40% higher cortisol level then their formula fed peers?

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19874763

[Oysterbabe]

My opinion FWIW is that a CIO method of parenting can damage some children. You'll never know if it's damaged yours until it's too late.
I was the most clingy and insecure child ever and I'm convinced it's linked. My earliest memory was when I was about 4 and we were getting back in the car after shopping. Everyone got in the car before me and my sister hadn't unlocked my side yet from the inside. My dad started the engine and I started screaming hysterically and banging on the side of the car, thinking he was going to drive off without me. Children of any age need to know that their caregiver is there and can be relied on not to leave them.
There are loads of different gentle sleep training methods that don't involve leaving babies to cry. IMO CIO and controlled crying for babies is lazy and yes a form of abuse.

[Tootsiepops]

Isn't this all just down to individual babies, and sheer dumb luck? My now 19 week old daughter started sleeping through the night at four weeks, and it was fuck all to do with anything we as parents had or hadn't done - she did it herself when she was ready.