Did you have a crap sleeper that wouldn't take a dummy? How did you fix it?

[OoohOnly90CaloriesIllhave10]

I'm in hell. 8 month old wakes 10-12 times a night. It was 'good' (woke 6 times a night but easy to settle at least) until he cut all 4 teeth at the top at the same time.

But now they are cut and we are in hell.

He's in my bed but every time I roll over he wakes up. That's been the case since he was born. I resent him for that and I don't even want to look at him in the morning, my back hurts from trying to lay in one position as well.

We now have a cot which he hates. He's breastfed and won't take a dummy.

I've booked a phone consultation with a sleep consultant, I wondered what helped others who were in the same position?

Yes I had a sleeper like this! Is there a physical cause? She was diagnosed with silent reflux in the end and medicine transformed her sleep. I know that lactose intolerance can cause similar sleep problems.

When I finally went to the doctors I realised there were lots of signs (cough, bad breath, back arching, sudden waking with crying) that all together pointed to a physical cause. Might that be similar with your baby?

It's such an awful time. I hope you get to the bottom of it. Fwiw my baby is a teen now and I hardly ever see her. Her bed is her favourite place! We all sleep like logs these days but at the time the sleep deprivation seems like it will never end. But it will.

He suffers with reflux but he's on the max dose of ranitidine. He also isn't sick at the moment or getting hiccups so on this occasion I'm quite reluctant to assume it's reflux (this has been he cause in the past though but it seemed a bit more obvious then).

We used a sleep consultant and it was actually a lot less painful all round (a lot less crying) than we thought it would be.

We had tried a similar gentle sleep training method at 7 months and it was clear that it was the wrong thing, but at 10 months the problem had changed (like you, he became very, very hard to resettle) and the same method worked much, much better - I think he was ready for it, and actually for DS I think the difficulty resettling him was a sign that he wanted to be able to go to sleep without all the palaver but couldn't.

Incidentally, what we did was essentially the 'what worked for us' method from MN (Google it if you haven't seen it before) and so I think theoretically we could have done it without the sleep consultant, but in practice we were exhausted and quite emotional about the whole thing and we needed the support. DH and I both think, six months on, that it was worth every penny.

Thank you. How much did it cost you? There's no price list on this SC's website so I'm guessing she costs a lot! But I will pay anything for it to help us.

I will google that now.

£295 - this is who we used and we used option two on this list (skype consultation and four weeks of follow-up):

andreagrace.co.uk/my-sleep-packages/

This is AIBU so I'm sure people will be along soon to say what an idiot I am for paying that, but as I say we think it was money very well spent

Ok I read that thread and I like it.

I'm going to feed him to sleep and put him into his cot for a few days so he can at least associate his new cot with sleep. Then I'm going to commit to that method and see if I can't forgo the cost of a sleep consultant.

Thanks for telling me about the thread.

I don't think you're an idiot at all, even on AIBU I don't think people would think that.

I think most parents would pay anything to get some sleep. Those who have real non-sleepers anyway. Those who were blessed with good sleepers and think it's their good genes or their good routine might bawk at it. But that's because they won't have experienced a True Non-Sleeper...

Ranitidine alone didn't work with my dd. She needed Gaviscon too. We used to syringe it down (mixed with warm water) before a feed. It has to be prescribed under 1 though. She was never sick either.
Good luck with the sleep training though. I do think habit played a major part in her sleep problems once she started to get better.
Fwiw I would have paid double 295 for a solution at the worst times! Sleep deprivation is so difficult.

Different details here, but a commonality is that ds was upset because he wanted to go sleep but couldn't so would get mad! We used a sleep consultant. Money well spent.

Don't get fixated on the dummy issue. Out of my two DCs, the one that slept refused a dummy, and the crap sleeper loved his dummy. Didn't help with the sleep issue though as he always woke when it fell out.

We tried gaviscon and omeprazole as well. They didn't help.

Ranitidine at the highest does is absolutely brilliant for us. The nurses weighed him yesterday so I could check he was still on the correct does and he is.
He's usually sick and hiccuping with is and is isn't so I'm really reluctant to blame reflux (although I'm open minded).

It's not that I think a dummy will help him sleep.
It's rather that I want to take away my boob, the patting, the rocking and my bed. I'd really like to the poor thing to have some kind of comfort. I'm pushing a 'comforter' on him as well which isn't working.

With mine I had to get my husband to read them to sleep rather than me feed to sleep. With my first two neither slept through until I finished breast feeding.

Then I'm going to commit to that method and see if I can't forgo the cost of a sleep consultant.

I think that's a good plan. As I said, I totally think we could have done without the sleep consultant - it was basically handholding, but for us the handholding helped a lot. The analogy I always use is that a sleep consultant is like a personal trainer - they're not going to give you some whole new method you could never have discovered without them, but they do offer the support and guidance to make it a lot easier to actually stick with the method. For some people that's just a little incidental extra that isn't worth the extra cost, for others they're, realistically, not going to manage it on their own (that was us!).

Are you feeding during the night? We had already weaned him off night feeds (in the hope that that alone would solve the problem - it didn't) and I do think that was one reason why it was easier at 10 months than at 7, when he still needed the night feed. By that point he was fully bottle fed (with solids too, obviously), though, which makes a gradual weaning from night feeds a lot simpler, and he had also stopped falling asleep on the bottle of his own accord so it wasn't a comfort/sleep inducing object.

With my first two neither slept through until I finished breast feeding. I stopped breastfeeding my first baby at 11 months. He slept through when he was 5 😭

but for us the handholding helped a lot.
Yes I think this is what I might need. I'm worried I will give in or get stressed and fuck it all up.

Are you feeding during the night? sometimes, but very little if at all.

Sometimes he can wake 10 times and refuse the boob every single time.

He woke 6-7 times (after 10pm) last night but only had a boob twice and that was reluctant as well.