To ask for top tips on raising a child to sleep well?

[SmoothLawAbider]

We have a just-turned-3-year-old who was truly an awful sleeper until about 6 months ago. Woke 5+ times a night, breastfed to sleep until age 2, etc. etc. neither me nor DH slept a full night for 2.5 years. I blame a lot on ourselves, we were parents of a PFB and hated seeing her cry at any time.

When I got pregnant again we vowed to do things better this time, to put him down awake so he could learn to fall asleep by himself, to nightwean quite early, to not rush in the second he makes a sound. To make our lives easier in the long run. But now he's nearly a month old and it's hard to distinguish when/how you should do these things vs. when you should just do what he wants! I feed him every 2 hours overnight at the moment because he's a newborn and that's what you do with a newborn, right? Feed on demand?

So basically, those who raised good sleepers and nightweaned early, any tips? Things to do and at what age?

It’s biologically normal for your child to need you over night until they are 7 years old.

Be prepared that your older child’s sleep may get worse for a while when their sibling arrives.

The only advice I give to parents of new born is NEVER wake them to feed.
If they are sleeping they are thriving.

If a child can drift off to sleep without intervention (rocking/walking/feeding) then they will be able to put themselves back to sleep in the middle of the night without your help and thus you get some decent rest.
Please can you let DD know? Cheers.

OP, people with good sleepers who can put them down drowsy but awake will tell you it's the "drowsy but awake" that cracked it. It's not. It's the fact they're good sleepers that they could do DBA, not DBA making them a good sleeper, IYSWIM.

I do think you can tweak a baby's sleep: a bedtime routine helps, once it can be established - after all the colicky cluster-feeding nights are over; blackout blinds are useful, white noise helps. But it's all obvious. No one with a bad sleeper is out here shoving espressos down their baby in front of some late-night Peppa Pig with a disco light on.

You can't MAKE them sleep. If you could it would be a goldmine.

Each baby/ child is individual, and all the "secrets" that the posters of "good sleepers" share is the same routine based stuff. Some need more/ less sleep than others. Some have more need of routines than others.

DS1 was middling. It all went belly up at 5m. I tried a formula dream feed. Days later he was covered in eczema. We began weaning within a couple of weeks. His face swelled like a balloon on a pump. His sleep was atrocious for months and months... it wasn't my routines or responses, it was the undiagnosed food allergies (it took a further 2 appointments to get a referal despite running in to the GP with a screaming baby with no facial features). He woke frequently for feeds to sooth his permanently aggravated digestive system. Acting on all the "advice" I got out of the time would have made him more miserable.

DS2 is just a much more needy child for comfort. He's an active, lively, child who struggles with the patience to lie still and allow sleep to happen. I co-slept more as a baby as I had been constantly sleep deprived for years and it was just getting through. We have routines, he's just very sleep resistant and thrives on less than the average.

For young babies, roll with it. Do what you have to do to get through. Keep your expectations realistic. Work with the child you have. Sometimes the causes of problems can emerge much later, be it a growth spurt, tooth, or longer term health/ development reason, or just sheer personality.

Sleep deprivation is tough. Sleep deprivation plus guilt that you've fucked it up because "all babies can be trained to sleep well" is even tougher.

Your baby is far too young to try and sleep train, stick with it until 3/4 months. 4 weeks is going from 1 extreme with your first to being a bit too trigger happy with your second, op. I understand why, it sounds like you've had a tough time before.

Helped to give them a thicker bottle before bed then.
I'm not sure what this poster was talking about (fucking around with formula mix can be extremely dangerous, esp when it's a 2 week old baby... Or "tanking up" expressed milk maybe (which as long as its done properly could help)... Or the hard to digest hungry baby stuff that shouldn't be touched without medical advice? Unclear). Don't listen to random people giving out dangerous advice akin to that without the correct oversight or knowledge, is my point.

I used to help in a sleep advisory clinic at our local sure start and there are definitely things people do that don't help. For example having lights on at night, bringing babies downstairs, always going straight to feed rather than trying singing or patting or cuddling. Feeding them to sleep. Never putting them down in the cot awake. Trying new techniques for a week then giving up. Allowing them to be over stimulated near bedtime. Expecting them to wake up rather than expecting them to sleep (sounds weird but true).This last one I think is because if you don't think they will sleep then you don't follow through on advice and also babies are clever monkeys and pick up on any opportunity.
At the end of the day sleep is amazing and it's a good thing to get more of so well worth trying to.

'Giant formula fed babies' - what are you on about?!

"Helped to give them a thicker bottle before bed then."

Ironicle.....I meant increasing the thickness of the milk. So formula used to come in two thicknesses, normal, and stage 2 for hungrier babies, which was a thicker consistency. So rather than doing 4 scoops of normal milk, at bedtime, I might do 2 normal, and 2 of stage 2 milk. Sort of what you do when they move over to the next stage milk. It meant their stomach was more full before bed and they didn't wake up for a feed in the night. Millions of mums used to do it.

But ironicle, this was at the 3 month point, not early days.

Or the hard to digest hungry baby stuff that shouldn't be touched without medical advice?
Dont know what you mean here, stage 2 cow and gate formula was for hungry babies, but it was really really commonly used and was pretty standard stuff in supermarkets. It wasnt hard to digest? And you didn't need medical advice?

It makes me smile to read comments about not feeding on every “whimper” or not responding when they’re just “grizzling”.

Some of us had babies who didn’t whimper or cry, but went from peacefully asleep to full on distressed screaming instantly.

I never had the opportunity to let mine just whimper or grizzle!

I said it upthread: all the tips are helpful to consider, but don’t feel a failure if you get one of the babies that doesn’t respond - and don’t feel smug if you get one that does!

The only advice I give to parents of new born is NEVER wake them to feed. If they are sleeping they are thriving.

No. No no no no no.

Sleeping doesn't always equal thriving.

I had one DC who had "failure to thrive" (awful term). She was a sleepy baby from birth and as her weight dropped, her sleepiness increased until she was sleeping almost all of the time because that's how young babies conserve energy and calories when their intake is low. A very sleepy baby is as much of a warning sign as an overly fractious, crying baby.

I can't speak to what used to happen, but "hungry baby" formula is on the market in most supermarkets which is, at a simplistic level, harder to digest. It's marketed on the tin quite strategically but the real problem is that parents buy it hoping to fill up their babies for longer don't know when it should be safely used (it is especially dangerous with young babies only a few weeks old with their tiny bellies and undeveloped gut). Even in older babies e.g. beyond 6 weeks, it often results in constipation or the babies consuming fewer calories because they're struggling to digest the thickness of the formula... It can result in a vicious cycle when the baby isn't really suitable to be using it.

I personally think it's wrong for formula companies to be able to be able to sell it so easy, it should be treated with caution and better labelling used. Or even only available at pharmacists, with advice. It would be safer.

Well I have twins and DS has always been an absolute dream sleep wise, DD has been a battle and a half! They were very prem and when they came out of NICU at around 4 months old DD was on oxygen and still wasn’t feeding well at all (took me over an hour one time to get 15mls down her!) so she had every reason to be cranky and I tried to keep this in mind - problem was as soon as she went her brother would wake and I had it in stereo, with me stuck in the middle panicking over who to pick up first, who actually had a physical need and who was upset etc. etc.

We had no room to separate them into different areas so that was my life for about 6 months before I finally cracked it with DD.

Our schedule due to their low weight was FF every two hours, strictly, this worked for DS as he had a good appetite but it was stressful for DD and me so she would pick up on my constant worry and it would make her even worse. So I gave her a day of dictating to me when she was hungry (DH was home so DS still got his routine feeds) and tried my best not to panic at how little she had each time. This worked so I continued it as best I could.

Then I started bottle feeding her to sleep (which some said was making a rod for my own back) and would dream feed her in the night. At first she woke every time and got very angry at being woken up so I dropped it down to two feeds at night (unless she woke and told me she was hungry of course) - after a few weeks of listening to her tell me what she needed she started sleeping better, feeding better and came off the oxygen not long after. My point is sometimes routine works wonders - did for DS, but DD didn’t respond well to it at all so instead of trying to enforce one on her (bar the loose bedtime routine of nappy change, pj’s, song and then lights out) I allowed her to tell me and really paid as much attention as I could to what she was trying to tell me - did get it wrong on a few occasions but now both of them are in bed by 7.30pm and sleep through (bar occasions of night time poops, teething etc.) HV kept having a go at me for not feeding her to strict schedule to get her weight up but I stuck to my guns because it wasn’t working! After a month they saw her weight had gained much better and let me crack on 😂

Also her comfort blanket came in handy after she got old enough to associate that with bedtime 😊

Ironicle....I've already said it wouldnt be used for newborns....its a stage 2 milk, so for babies when they are bigger and the normal stage 1 isn't sustaining them anymore. I've never heard anyone say it's harder to digest and mine loved it. It's certainly not dangerous for babies at that stage. I'm not sure about now, but there used to be 3 stages, 1 for new borns etc (green tin), 2 for later on (used to be a blue tin), and then 3 for after a year old, but I never used 3 as they went on to cows milk then. I think there was another one for hungrier babies which was a yellow tin, but I'm talking about when they moved from stage one to two, which was pretty normal.

Hi OP

I breastfed both my babies, one naturally night weaned but we had an awful time with the second. I read everything and did everything 'right', (bedtime routines, nao routines, only putting her to sleep in the cot, blackout blinds, white noise, etc etc) the health visitors were involved but she woke up every 90 minutes at least and wanted breastfed and wouldn't go to sleep any other way, if we left her she went crazy or if we rocked her to sleep she would wake up again 20 min later.

We stuck it out til 7 months when I think they dont 'need' a sleep in the night, and got a sleep consultant in. We did the disappearing chair technique...and she slept fine from the second night in.

So I would say dont worry about what you're doing now, you can still always correct their behaviour when they are older if they dont naturally get there themselves

We did the feed on demand at the start as that's what everyone tells you to do but it was just spiralling into stressful chaos, and there was no way I was having a 4 year old who woke hourly and needed rocking to sleep so we did this -

Feed every 2 hours 9am-9pm. Keep baby awake 9pm-11pm. Feed at 11pm and straight to bed. Swaddle and dummy. If baby woke I would offer the dummy and settle again, if that didn't work I would offer water. All night feeds were done in the dark and no noise, no eye contact. Daytime naps happened wherever, lights on, hoover on, telly on etc. Daytime feeds were cuddly and lovely, lots of playtime and a bath before the last nap of the day. Night one of this routine baby woke at 5am, had water and then went asleep and up at 9 for the first bottle of the day. By the end of the week it was 11pm-9am no wake ups and it has stayed like that since. Baby is now a 3yo toddler who sleeps 7pm-9am.

It can be done. And it makes for a happier baby and much happier mum. But it is bloody hard work to stick to the routine and not give in.

Ooooh Northie, you are very brave to mention giving water, last time I mentioned that on here I was hung drawn and quartered as apparently its really bad. But no seriously, I will own up, water does the trick too. I needed my 3 month old to sleep through because I was going back to work, so gave her water in the night, after 3 nights, she stopped waking up for it and slept through.

TabbyMumz that's because context is king. There's a difference between giving a healthy, 3 month old baby 1oz of cooled boiled water in 24hrs. Even 2oz would be fine.

Vs

Giving a premie, complex health needs 11 week old 6oz of tap water in a single feed.

The type, treatment, and amount of water is critical information! As in, critical enough that it can be extremely dangerous & babies have died when it's done in some situations... Or it's fine and can benefit a slightly constipated healthy baby..so: it depends!

Don't creep around when baby is asleep - otherwise they'll never learn to sleep through household noises and will always be light sleepers.

Nothing.
Don't put too much stress on Sleep, be prepared to be tired and accept it.

All night feeds were done in the dark and no noise, no eye contact.
Ah, clearly the vuvuzela, floodlights and family conga line during night feeds were where I went wrong.

I think some people do have unrealistic expectations of babies sleeping through the night and that's pushed them to do dubious sounding things with thickened milk.

And yes, mine baby had no drowsy but awake state that she could be put down in so that was a non starter.

Ah, clearly the vuvuzela, floodlights and family conga line during night feeds were where I went wrong.

shit, I thought it was a great idea! Did I get that wrong too?

Don't creep around when baby is asleep - otherwise they'll never learn to sleep through household noises and will always be light sleepers

See, I tried this from the beginning and the baby just always woke up, wouldn't go back to sleep, became chronically overtired and we had an utterly miserable first four months until we just let her have a dark quiet place to sleep in the day. Is that just normal and you're supposed to persevere with the 24/7 screaming until they one day learn to sleep through it. Genuine question.