To think that with a bad sleeper it's either cosleep or sleep train?

[LisaSimpsonsbff]

At my wits end, would prefer no bashing (but accept I may get some, I wanted the traffic of AIBU!). My baby will be six months in a couple of days. He has been getting steadily a worse sleeper since around four months, with a couple of periods of brief respite - he wakes up around 6 times a night, with the longest period of sleep between bedtime at 7pm and wake-up at about 10pm (which means it's possible but restrictive for me to get in some sleep then). He then wakes around every 60/90 minutes. I was feeding him back to sleep every time, but that's stopped working and we get long, and very unhappy, awake periods. Things were a bit better when he slept in a Next To Me but he outgrew it (kept waking up hitting the side) and there is no physical way to fit his cotbed alongside our bed - the Next to Me only just fitted.

So, since he outgrew the Next To Me I've been taking him into our bed more and more as this didn't stop the wakings but getting out of bed every time was killing me. This got more frequent over Christmas, when we were staying with family for nearly two weeks and very conscious of him waking up other people, so we were resorting to him sleeping with us earlier and earlier in the night. I've always hated cosleeping - I sleep dreadfully with him in the bed - but was willing to accept this but then on New Years' Day woke up to find I'd pulled the covers, which I'd carefully put below my waist, up over me and over his head in the night and that I was also partially lying on him - he was very deeply asleep so didn't wake instantly when I tried to wake him and that 10 seconds felt like the longest and by far the worst of my life; I was retching with horror in the belief that I had killed him. Writing this now is making me cry. He was fine (though very cross at me shouting at him and shaking him awake!) but I don't want to ever feel like that again, ever in my life. To be very clear : I absolutely know that cosleeping can be very safe and works brilliantly for a lot of people - I'm not at all anti-co sleeping in principle - but I now feel that I never want to do it again and that that is a very hard line for me.

The question is what my alternatives are? If I get up to feed him six times a night I basically don't sleep, and I'm back at work this week (I work mostly from home and DH is now on leave with him, so this isn't a very rough transition for DS; I don't actually think he's noticed so far, though we're only on day two!). There is also what probably adds up to two hours or more of him crying across the night as I keep trying to put him in his cot after he falls asleep feeding, failing, and having to rock him as he cries. It can take six or seven attempts to do this (which is why we gave up on putting him in his cot while staying with other people). There is considerably more crying, and usually total failure, if DH tries to do this without me feeding him first, so him taking over night wakings means more tears and even less sleep for everyone. Part of me wonders whether we should bite the bullet and do a form of sleep training (the only one I'll currently consider is gradual retreat) so at least the crying is, hopefully, 'going somewhere'. Part of me feels bad for considering it. But everyone I know seems to either cosleep or sleep train (or have a magical sleeping baby), and I wonder if I'm being unrealistic to even think it's possible to do neither? AIBU to think that? And what would people do?

Sorry, that's such a long post - using it to vent a bit! Let's summarise all my ramblings to the actual question: if you really don't want to cosleep and your baby isn't helpfully a great sleeper of their own accord, do you have an alternative to some form of sleep training (ideally as gentle as possible)?

I sleep trained my first baby at 9 months and it was fantastic!!!! We did CC under the guidance of a Sleep Consultant and she changed everything about our daytime and night time routines. She was amazing.

I currently co-sleep with my 16 month old and his sleep is awful and I will be sleep training him towards the end of January.

I’m very jealous of people who have found co-sleeping to be the answer!!

DS7 was a ridiculous sleeper for the first 18 months and we eventually accepted that we'd be co-sleeping or have to sell him. The first few weeks weren't great; DH is a light sleeper and would wake more often than the rest of us but he'd sleep in the spare room every now and then if he was struggling and eventually we settled into a routine that worked.

I got it in the neck whenever anyone heard we co-slept, people telling me "you're making a rod for your own back" and "he'll still be in your bed when he's 27". Neither of those things is true; DS7 is an amazing sleeper now and has been in his own room consistently since just before his second birthday; he just needed more of me through the nights than DS1 had, and once we worked that out and rolled with his needs, we all got more sleep. Eventually I stopped listening to MIL's tales of "I know a woman whose child didn't sleep through the night til he was thirty two" and developed a thicker skin.

We also bought a queen sized bed, so that we all had more space. That made a huge difference because DS7 favoured the dead-starfish approach to sleeping.

However, I will also say that although he's almost 8, he does still get into our bed on the odd occasion when he wakes through the night. It's like it's pre-programmed into him that our bed is his safe space when he's not feeling great, and I'm sure it's a throwback to co-sleeping. But it's once every couple of months, so I can live with it (unless he's still doing it at 27 and then I'll have to apologise to MIL and admit that she was right!)

The problem is it's not that I don't want to cosleep because I think it's 'making a rod for your own back'; it's because I'm (probably irrationally) terrified I'll kill him, and no amount of logical reading about how safe cosleeping can be is going to change that now. So I really want to take it off the table as an option, but I'm not sure what that leaves me with?

If co-sleeping isn't an option for you (and no judgement from here - you do what's right for you and yours) then you have to either accept the sleeping situation as it is or do some sort of sleep training with him. There's no other option.

Feed him up really well, dinner (presume he's weaning if not get some food in him!) Bath, story,quiet time, white noise lots of low light and make everything really relaxing. Start from dinner about 5ish aim to get him into bed by 7pm. Big bottle of milk/big breastfeed, soothing hush then leave. He will cry. Go back in,further soothing noises and add dummy if he has one. Don't lift out the cot. Keep going in and soothing. First 2 nights are the hardest but after a few nights he'll be sleeping really well through the night or I'll eat my hat. Disclaimer - this won't work on those few babies that just will not sleep but it's worked for everyone I know bar 1 child!

You're right, of course - I suppose I was hoping for a magical third way but I don't know what it would be! I guess then my question is - is sleep training actually a kinder option, given how much being put in the cot upsets DS anyway? It's not like my current feeding/rocking/cuddling is a no tears solution. If I'm taking the option that he would pick if he could off the table, is it a case that I might as well sleep train and hope that means the tears pass? Or am I deluding myself because that would be best for me, but not for him?

To add when I did this for the first night she cried for 1.5 hours on and off ( I kept going back in to soothe her) she then slept through. 2nd night cried for 20 mins (this is on and off and I kept going in) then slept through. Has slept through ever since every night 7-7.

Sleep training is totally different to "cry it out" method which is just mean.

We have friends who've done the CIO thing and left their DC to cry and cry, but then other friends have had sleep specialists in to sleep train and it's worked wonders with very few tears. I think it depends on how you do it; CIO wouldn't be an option for me simply because I hate the sound of DC crying but there are gentle methods of sleep training which sounds far nicer to work with.

Have you read Elizabeth Pantley No Cry Sleep Solution? It's about making incremental very gardual changes to your routine until you end up closer to where you want to be. So for example we ended up gradually rejigging bedtime with DS so that we did the bedtime feed first, then story, then cuddle to sleep - so he learned to go to sleep without being fed to sleep, so I didn't always have to resettle him. Is is very slow though.

The other option i can see would be to rejig bedrooms so you either can put the cot bed next to you or a single bed next to the cot bed so you can cosleep without worry. Alternatively, I've seen people say you can take the sides off one of the ikea cots to make a cosleeper bigger than your next to me but narrow than your cot bed (no idea which one I'm afraid)

Sorry to jump on your post

@UhUhUhDennis how does this work with a hysterical screamer, no amount of soothing will stop him crying until he's picked up. Do you just leave them to scream hysterically until they pass out? This is the part I've never understood

Are there any circumstances where you would co-sleep? I'm not trying to be goady, but are there any ways you could alleviate your fear?

In particular:

• Wear one of these ridiculous-looking sleeping suits so you don't need any blankets www.slumbersac.co.uk/adult-sleeping-bag-with-feet-stars.html

• Put a mattress on the floor so no risk of your DS rolling off and hurting himself.

Or would you still be just as worried?

Thanks dennis - that sounds quite similar to what I was contemplating (I was thinking of trying the disappearing chair). I just don't know if I can get through 1.5 hours of crying without feeling like I'm 'doing something' - holding him, rocking him - though, even if I'm talking to him and physically present. But again I know that I'm not currently saving him from tears, so I wonder if all the rocking etc is actually more to comfort me than him, so I feel like I'm doing all I can?

Feed him up really well, dinner (presume he's weaning if not get some food in him!)

This is part of the problem, I think - we started weaning a couple of weeks ago, but he's pretty uninterested (he's a bit more so in feeding himself than the spoon, but obviously that means he essentially eats nothing - he gums carrot sticks, etc., but he's swallowing either nothing or as good as). Probably more significantly, since I know it's normal for them not to be taking much solid at his age, it's also become apparent since we've been transitioning to formula during the day that he's not drinking enough milk during the day (and I don't think it's about the bottle, I think he also wasn't when he was EBF) - so he really does need night feeds. Clearly he doesn't need them every 90 minutes, and I guess he'd drink more in the day if he cut down on feeding at night, but I have no idea how to get him to do that without leaving him to cry with hunger, which I really don't want to do.

You need to sleep train. Co-sleeping is popular but it clearly doesn’t work for you.

Decide on your method of sleep training with your DH and stick with it for a few weeks. It may be worth paying for a sleep consultant if you are struggling but don’t put up with being woken 6 times a night or more.

No advice but I have exactly the same problem. Dd is almost 7 months and hates her cot with a passion. She sleeps in a moving pushchair, the car some of the time and wants to be on or next to someone the rest of the time.

We have tried putting her down and going up to reassure but she screams and screams and screams and rolls about and screams some more often to the point it can take a good 10 minutes to calm her down and I'm really not comfortable doing that.

We've tried getting her to sleep in our bed (which is easy) and then lifting her into the cot. 9 times out of 10 she wakes up in the first 10 minutes and starts screaming.

Her cot is still in our room she just doesn't want to be in it.

Dh is happy to co-sleep, we have a massive bed so there is plenty of space but I just can't cope with the idea. The nights we've tried, I end up awake all night watching him and her sleep which is less than ideal also.

Co-sleep. Cuddle up. Your baby is still very little.

I would also recommend Elizabeth Pantley - her method is a bit of a faff very gentle so it may be the compromise you're looking for. Alternatively, Teach Your Child To Sleep from the Millpond Clinic (and the sleep consultation service that the clinic does, although I think the book is clear enough that you have a good chance of managing to sort it using the book alone) was the one we used and it was really helpful. There's all sorts of methods (Millpond cover most of them in the book) from cry it out, through controlled crying, to staged withdrawal, down to even more gentle methods than that. You have the one baby, so that makes it easier, and six months up is a good time, because he's not been in the habit of co-sleeping all that long at this age, but he is also old enough that you know he doesn't need feeding every 2 hours. IMHO it is kinder to sleep train than to continue with bad sleep for everyone - we sleep trained our twins at about 6 months and for DD2 it was a revelation, her mood just improved massively over about a week because she was getting so much more sleep. She still had milk in the night till she was about a year old, but you can cope with one night waking, specially if they go happily back to sleep straight after.

Thanks newishmum - those are thoughtful and practical suggestions. I sort of wish I'd tried that sleeping bag before the covers incident, as then maybe I wouldn't have this fear - but now I feel so scared (as I said, thinking about it makes me well up) that I don't think I can get over it. Plus the issue of me lying on him - I'd moved really quite a lot to do that (which I thought I was supposed to instinctively not do - another way in which I can beat myself up!) which terrified me, as did the fact that he didn't wake up when I did it, which I would have thought he would by six months. I guess maybe he would have if I had been restricting his breathing, but how can I take that risk?

I sleep trained both mine (w ds2 it was always a bit of a temporary fix admittedly). It was that or a mental breakdown quite honestly. Tried co-sleeping but found I couldnt actually sleep.

My greatest regret (w ds1) was that I waited til 10 mo.

Just wanted to say that I share your pain. We can’t co-sleep (wrong mattress plus I would just worry all night) and our baby simply will not sleep in the cot. At the moment we survive with me getting up and sitting/feeding/rocking/trying to put back down until about 4am-5am, and then DH gets up with the baby and I go to bed until 7. It’s dreadful.

I think CC works for some babies, but ours just got so wound up and hysterical that I am worried about trying it again. I think we might just have to struggle on as we are for a few more months. - nobody can imagine how shit months of sleep deprivation is until they’ve been there.

I would sleep train, I sleep trained DS1 at 9 months - 1 night with a lot of crying, 2nd night about 15 mins then has consistently slept for 12 hours a night unless ill (He's now nearly 7). DS2 trained at 20 months, I was softer and soppier because he was my last, but to be honest it nearly broke us and in the end it was selfishness on my part of wanting to be gentle. Same pattern with him, 1 bad night, 2nd night a bit disturbed followed by consistent sleeping. It took me having flu and still getting up 3-4 times a night to feed DS2 whilst feeling like death to realise how ridiculous I was being.

We basically put down to sleep, left for 1 min, and did this on repeat. Possibly longer gaps for DS2 as he was 20 months and had a lot of understanding.

Save this to read at 2am!

www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/patricksmith/its-evolution-baby#ampf=undefined

I am in exactly the same position OP.

DS2 is 7 months. He's been a poor sleeper since 4 month sleep regression (which has been fucking up my life one baby at a time).

I am terrified of co-sleeping, though it was happening quite frequently for a few months. I'm not going back there.

We're now night weaning. It isn't going particularly well and DH (who's been shouldering most of it) is exhausted. I'm back to work in 3 weeks and this isn't sustainable.

I don't know what to do. With DS1 we sleep trained at 10 months (cc). It worked brilliantly and is one of the best parenting decisions we ever made.

However DS2 still feels too young. He's also a more determined baby than DS1 so I can imagine it being more painful for all concerned.

Gentle sleep solutions do not seem to work on my babies.