To wonder why babies sleep is getting worse

[Pondlife87]

My LG will be 11 months next week. She's never been a great sleeper with 6 hour stretches being the absolute max. But it's just getting worse.
Our routine is roughly this:
Awake at 6 30 (although recently we've been getting 5.30 wakes).
Nap around 9.30 (sleeps for between 30 to 80 mins)
Nap around 2 (sleeps for between 30 to 80 mins)
Bedtime at 6.30/7

She's not too bad being put down but then she wakes up every 30-45 minutes until around 10. Then she will do a 2/3/4 hour stretch. Then she's up again every hour. It's normally for boob and she's breastfed so it's all on me.
Will this ever end 😭?

X post!

It's those night waking DH must do

I guess what you need to aim for is her being able to self settle. Even cuddling to sleep is an unhelpful association. I know what you mean if you just put her into bed she'll start screaming. But as long as you are feeding/cuddling her to sleep she will not be able to put herself back to sleep in the night. Have you tried hands on settling in the cot? So hand on tummy, patting cot mattress firmly and shushing? It takes a LOT of perseverance. The idea being that you drop one method at a time until you are left with shushing only. And then you stop that and as if by magic she can put herself to sleep Definitely try now as once she starts walking it will be 10 times harder.

I'll caveat all of the above by saying I have a 5 year old who still doesn't sleep, and I really believe some kids are just AWFUL sleepers, but I did all of the above with my second born daughter and she has slept through the night since she was 4/5 months old.

Also, you can’t “teach” self settling. It’s something children develop in their own time

You can encourage it by gradually comforting physically less and less. The baby needs to learn/associate that nothing bad happens to them when they fall asleep on their own in their cot. They need to associate the cot as a safe place to be asleep.

@NoIDontWatchLoveIsland I night weaned at 14 months and honestly there was barely any crying. Just a lot of wiggling and cuddling for a few nights. Every baby is different and every parent is different. IMO 4 months is absolutely tiny and I’m happy to go at their pace when they are that small. But each to their own.

Nobody gets their baby into a routine any more it's all on demand so they will demand all the time.
When I had mine it was four hourly feeds. If they woke in betweven feeds they didn't get a feed. They were picked up, checked and put down and yes left to cry a bit.
As a result everyone got some sleep.
Now they are picked up the second they cry and fed and as a result a whole generation of babies that don't sleep and can't settle themselves.

Unfortunately I agree with PP, the only way you are going to get any more meaningful sleep is to sleep train her. Babies aren't born with the ability to fall asleep by themselves, if you bf her to sleep, when she wakes she's realising your boob is no longer in her mouth and she's waking and crying for it. I say this as someone who breastfed my first for 2.5 years through the night, and then decided I couldn't survive like that, so sleep trained my second at 3 months and by 3.5 months he was sleeping from 10pm-7am (he was also breastfed). An 11 month old does NOT need to be fed through the night. I was in denial with my first and was convinced she was hungry, she needs to be fed etc etc. She didn't, it was comfort and I look back and wince at myself for putting up with it for so long. I was sleep deprived and broken for her first few years and as hard as it is to admit, I resented her for it. My second is almost a year old and he sleeps from 6:30pm until anywhere between 7-8:30. He's done this since 5.5 months old, and the difference in me as a mother between now and when my eldest was this age is absolutely incompatible. Never underestimate the importance of sleep for you, as well as them.

Anyone who is telling you that "sleeping through the night is a developmental milestone" is somewhat correct, however, you wouldn't let your child teach themselves how to count would you? Or spell, or read and write. They need to be taught how to do it, the same way babies need to be taught how to fall asleep and stay asleep without your input. There are plenty of gentle, non-CIO methods. Lucy woolfe sleep is a great approach. You don't need to let your baby scream the house down in order to teach them to self soothe, you just need to find an approach that works for you and give you and your baby the gift of a good bloody nights sleep.

@purplemonkeyinabubblegumtree Counting, reading and writing are taught skills, obviously. They are not developmental milestones. Plenty of adults cannot any of those things as they have not had the privilege of being taught.

An example of a developmental milestone would be rolling over, crawling, walking, being able to swallow solid food, being dry at night These milestones happen because of changes in the body whether they are taught or not.

Most adults do not wake hourly not because someone taught them how to sleep but because they wake up and resettle throughout the night, without even knowing it.

P

@upthewolves We can agree to disagree. I would never liken it to crawling /

Whoops sorry posted early

@upthewolves I would never liken it to crawling / walking / being able to swallow solid food because they are all things that babies must learn by themselves. We cant teach a baby how to swallow solid food, but we can teach a baby how to self soothe, so in my humble opinion they are incomparable.

Shorten the first nap so that it forces her to have a decent second nap. She could be overtired by bedtime if she's doing it the other way around

I always put mine to bed awake with a music toy . Both slot through from 12 weeks .

This happened to us. It ended when she went to school age 5. It was awful it got west and worse until every night for years we were up every hour or all night. Shes an only child because of it and I'm now I'll with my mental health if I could go back and give myself some advice it would be . Not to make the whole of my life about lack of sleep and rest and take help when I can. It's a nightmare and ruined the whole of the rest of our lives.

Don't want to be a doom monger, but I was desperate to get my DS into good sleep habits, so I put him down drowsy but awake to self settle from about 4 months, and he could do it brilliantly. And it made no difference, he still woke up a hundred times in the night (he was BF). So at about 18m I night weaned, I gave him to DH for a week. He didn't really cry at all apart from about 2 minutes on the first night. He was self settling too. And it made no difference. He still woke up a hundred times a night.

@darceybussell I think that's because self settling is different to linking sleep cycles. When sleep training there is inevitably going to be times when baby wakes in the night, and you have to continue self settling techniques during the night also. As well as weaning off night feeds. For about 2 weeks when I was weaning my son off the boob during the night, I spend hours each night cuddling him, singing to him, rocking him - anything to get him to go back to sleep without a feed. And eventually after 2 weeks he just stopped waking as he knew he wasn't getting the boob.

Msloverlover

To be clear, I didn't night wean at 4 months. However, I introduced different methods of settling at bedtime. I found that as a result, both my two stopped waking hourly/between sleep cycles, and only woke when actually hungry (usually once or twice a night). DS (much bigger and fed a lot in the day) slept through with no feeds earlier than DD.

In both cases there was very little crying, they were self settling from early on so didn't know any different.

Ultimately every baby is different and every mother is different. What works for you won’t necessarily work for someone else. The best thing you can do is listen to others experience, and your gut and your baby and then do what feels right to you.

I agree with a lot on this, we followed the little ones program which teaches how to sleep train to a guide based on age to get LOs to sleep through ASAP & self settle using soothing techniques. It suggests a 20/30 min morning nap for 10/12 months old between 9.30-10 & lunch nap I’d ideally 2.5 hours or as close as possible then 7pm bed. So shortening morning nap would try to encourage longer lunch nap & bed 7pm. You work towards this & it gives tips like others have suggested on self soothing like limiting amounts fed each time (try half a boob then bum pat) but at that age I’d def be limiting the morning nap past 10am as a longer morning nap can lead to an early morning wake.if they wake earlier then put down for nap earlier but never met sleep past 10am if you want a good lunch nap & bed 7pm. It takes time to adjust

@Minster2012 I completely agree - this is exactly what we follow with my 11m old. Up until around 5 months he had 45/60min morning nap, followed by long lunch nap. Once lunch nap started to shorten, morning nap was shortened to 30 mins to extend it again, then down to 20 mins and eventually dropped altogether between 12-18 months, whenever baby starts fighting the lunch nap. My son is 11m and has 20 mins from 9:45-10:05 (ish) and then between 2-3 hours from 12:15. If he has a short lunch nap he goes to bed at 6:30, otherwise it's 7pm and he wakes between 7-8am. Has always worked perfectly for us, along with self settling which is crucial.

Honestly, this is just how it is for a lot of us. I have one bf baby who is exactly the same (same age too), and my first was bottle fed. She's do longer stretches but was often up for 3hr+ in the night as she couldn't be as easily fed back to sleep. She's still not sleeping through every night at nearly 3.

It's this myth that we sell new parents that the really rubbish night are when their baby is a newborn, and they don't have to juggle it with work, when for a lot of us, it's just a case of muddling through and feeling knackered. I get substantially less sleep than a friend of mine with a newborn, and she can sleep in and nap during the day, whereas I have a toddler and juggling working from home. Yeah, it's pretty crap tbh.

You can sleep train, and it'll probably work, but I never had the heart to do that and would personally rather go at my child's pace. It either takes time or tears, and that's your choice really.

Neither of my children slept well until they were 2. They were fine after that.

Yep @mrsmummy111, all about keeping that sanity of the lynchpin lunch nap!

We are now 20 months & until lockdown my DS was doing solid 2 hours at lunch as long as he was work out (he’s manic the rest of the time don’t get me wrong!) so c6.30/6.45 am- 12.30 manic, 12.30-2 thank god sleep. Then bed we do 7.30 but then started dropping it to 30/45 mins as his routine was messed up no playgroups/gymnastics/nursery.

We’ve had to instil MORE running round & later to 1pm he’s back up to about an hour and a quarter. I think that’s our lot. My sanity saviour. He loves his sleep

The little ones program, white noise & black out blinds was the best money we’ve spent 😂

I haven't read all the thread so apologies in advance. I am 15 months into a baby who woke every 45 mins, breast fed to sleep and every time she woke.

I moved her into her own room 10 days ago and at the same time daddy took over putting to sleep.

It was not as bad as we thought it would be. For the first three night we kept her up until she was really tired and then daddy rocked her to sleep in a rocking chair. Then we slowly moved her bed time forwards.

Daddy puts her to sleep and deals with the wakings until midnight then I take over and boob her when she wakes. She's slowly getting a little longer with her sleep but it's early days.

She cried a little when being put to bed but I know she's had tea, been for a walk in the pram, had a bath, had a pouch of banana baby rice and boobed before bed so it is just fighting sleep as she's used to boob.

I was told to do this by a breast feeding specialist from the children's services.

You don't need to CIO, you don't need to night wean until 18 months or whenever you are ready. It can be done, it's hard to hear her cry sometimes but grab a cuppa and go in the garden or car.

Feel free to pm me

@Minster2012 yes we have used white noise at an ear splitting volume throughout every nap and all night since day 1 and it's been an absolute life saver!!! Muslins as comforters and blackout blinds (and I mean blackkkkkkkkout) and jobs a goodun!
I often find that actually an earlier bedtime makes for a later wakeup, I used to really push him until 7pm even when he was clearly asleep on his feet, but I think it was making him overtired - which is his biggest sleep killer, so 6:30 is working better for us at the mo. It's all about adjusting it to keep up with your changing baby.

Hi op, I'm sure you have tried everything ignore the people on this thread who are blaming you, saying you haven't let baby cry etc. My baby was exactly the same and I tried everything. dc1 was a grand sleeper but dc2 wasn't despite me doing exactly the same things. Some babies just don't sleep. I'm sorry but I had to wait until he was 3 and then he just slept through on his own. They will do it in their own time hang in there and don't blame yourself!

ps night weaning may not help, I tried that at 1.5 years it was still 3 years old before he slept through reliably..