To think I'd get my evenings back by now?

[BananaHammock23]

Posting here for traffic hoping someone can help or at least share some hopeful stories.

My 16mo DS has never been a good sleeper. We cosleep and I still breastfeed - I feel like this is probably contributing to the problem.

My problem is that I'd really like to get my evenings back. Even if just a stretch from 7-10pm so we could spend time together without worrying or even have friends over for dinner or go out for a few hours with my mum babysitting.

We have a pretty good 7-7 routine. We do bath, book and bed and he tends to go down pretty quickly on the boob. The problem is that he then wakes up every 20 minutes-ish until I go to bed. Then he wakes up every 3 hours (on a good night). We can have anything between 2-8 wake ups a night. He has one nap a day at around 11.30/12 for 1-2 hours. This doesn't seem to make much difference to the nights.

How can I get him sleeping through, even just for that first stretch? I'd love another baby and I can't even imagine how that'll happen until DS is at least sleeping a few hours.

I have a supportive partner who does try and do their share but it does tend to fall to me in the evenings because it's quicker for me to feed him back to sleep than it is for them to rock him.

Anyway I'm tried and feel like I have no time to myself at all. I'm desperate. Any advice?

All my children were shit sleepers but my youngest was eighteen months as we went into lockdown; I needed those interrupted evenings to do some work (sob, looking after three children and with two working full parents was truly the worst time of my life).

I’d been feeding to sleep and she had a dummy. I just went cold turkey on the dummy and between first bedtime and midnight I didn’t feed her. It sort of worked - she still woke after midnight but we (often my husband) only offered her water and we gradually got our evenings back.

I thought I’d just share that I breastfed my son up until he was 2.5 (he’s now 3) but stopped feeds at night at 13 months so it is totally possible to continue feeding without the night situation. We just fed at certain points in the day gradually reducing them down. I couldn’t cope with the two hourly wakes which never seemed to end!

First of all, just sending love and support. It's bloody hard.

My son is almost 2, and I (hooray!) stopped breast-feeding about 5 or 6 weeks ago. I'm pregnant though, and I wonder if he was slightly going off it anyway. I had got down to only breast-feeding him when he woke at night (and I was still exhausted to get him back to sleep any other way).

Anyway, our son has always been a bad sleeper. Not quite as regular wake-ups as yours, but we were going a bit mad at times with the exhaustion (especially being back at work) and it was really hard sometimes getting him back to sleep. I promise, though, it will get better. Our son now either wakes once in the night or sleeps through and we still haven't sorted out all our issues, so I really feel you can do better than us - good luck!

I think your napping schedule isn't the problem (I wish my son would nap that early! And I think it sounds like you were right to drop to one nap as well).

My suggestions:

• Get your partner to do the putting down to sleep the first time at night. If you're desperate, and it's the easiest thing, when your son wakes in the middle of night, do B-feed, but try to sever the link between feeding and sleeping. The last feed I dropped were the ones in the middle of the night. This is against most of the advice out there, but I really don't think the advice remembers that many women are just bloody knackered by this point.
• Pick a week when your partner's in every night and can do every bed time. I found that we could sever this link surprisingly fast if I just disappeared pre-bath time, and my son essentially forgot I was at home. If possible, your partner should go up to settle him for the first few wake ups too.
• If you can, get your soon to fall asleep in a cot. We're still struggling to get our son to fall asleep in his cot, maddeningly, and this now feels like we have cemented the unhelpful behaviour that he falls asleep in our bed and we move him. I think that's probably confusing for them.
• We really struggled to find other ways to soothe him that weren't feeding him. I can promise you can start to fix, though. For us, early intervention is key, BUT not too early. This is the big trick we learnt, that you never want to interrupt when there's still a chance he can put himself back to sleep - ie some light wimpers heard on the monitor - BUT by the time he's standing up in his cot, angrily holding on and jumping up and down, it's game over, and he's going to wind up back in our bed.

Good luck xxx

How did you managed to night wean. Did you use shush pat or sleep training at all?

It's the breastfeeding. He's using you as a dummy. I had to wean my daughter to get her to sleep. Once weaned she slept through the night. She was a year and half when I decided to wean

I had this with my twins. I bf them all through the night for 15 months 🙈. I got in the habit of bf them to sleep. My husband and I broke the habit by getting up when they woke and gently rubbing their backs and shushing them quietly until they settled back off (we didn't pick them up). It broke the habit and they were sleeping through in no time! Best of luck.

Mine are 8 and 6 and I’m still waiting to have my evenings back. Sleep training is perhaps your only answer although even that didn’t work for us.

it's quicker for me to feed him back to sleep than it is for them to rock him.

Rocking to sleep isn’t the answer either. As others have said, your little one needs to learn how to self soothe. Cut the breastfeeding. At 16 months baby is old enough to be in their own bed too. Are you back at work?

I’d make bedtime later. Mines never had an earlier than 7.45-8pm bedtime and often later. They need the sleep pressure to get a good first stretch of sleep or they’ll keep waking. Also fed to sleep and she’s in our bed, she’s just turned 2 - you could try some white/pink noise (not something we’ve done really, but meant to be good). I roll away and put monitor on, have done since 6 months.
Overall her sleep has been much better since about 20 months, lots of long 7-8 hour stretches with no boob (apart from the odd night when cutting last 4 molars!!) I haven’t done anything differently and she falls to sleep on the boob still! They all learn to fall asleep independently eventually!

I had this with both of my children, they were both really terrible sleepers and I just breastfed them to sleep each time. At 15 months, I went cold turkey and just started giving them something else to eat after dinner and then one bottle of cows milk at bed time. That worked for both of them because with that, I knew they were not hungry and just gave water when they woke up in the night. I remember it only took less than a week before we started getting 6 hour stretches of sleep and within 2 months, they were sleeping through.

This isn’t meant to sound discouraging - you would try some of the different suggestions advised here - but do not blame yourself or your little one if you don’t get an all night sleeper for a while. I had a ‘waker’ who didn’t sleep all the way through the night once until she was 6 years old! And even now at 12 years old she will want to crawl into bed with me once a week because she wakes up and can’t get back to sleep.

We did get our adult evenings back by about 2 years old when she was old enough to understand not to get up and come downstairs during that time - didn’t always mean she would get back to sleep though.

All kids are different though so don’t let it put you off another baby - the next one might be a really easy sleeper.

I stopped breastfeeding our eldest at 2. She didn't sleep through a single night until she was nearly 6, and she took far longer to settle to sleep once I stopped feeding.
Some children just don't sleep well.
Our other breastfed and slept great.

Oh and we do a bedtime snack of banana, peanut butter on toast, or porridge. Would recommend that too!
night weaning could go either way, it might work, or it might mean you lose the one easy way of getting them back to sleep!

Would you be adverse to moving DS into a cot in his own room? I found my DDs sleep transformed when she moved out of our room (she is also 16 months and I put her to bed at 7pm and she sleeps through to 7am). We were in the frequent wakings/BF back to sleep cycle prior to this too so I sympathise. I do miss the cuddles sometimes but we both get much better quality sleep like this and she is much happier for it!

We waited for a bit for things to be normal, no bugs or people visiting. Then I would give her a feed but hand to dp after to read bedtime story and I would leave. After fortnight she would stop feeding as soon as she saw him as she was more interested in the story. We then started with doing story and putting her in for at lunchtime nap while she was awake and sitting in room with her til she went over. Someone said nap time was best time to try as you're less tired. We then introduced it at bedtime once established at naptime.

There’s no guarantee weaning will work. I bf my first until nearly 3 and my second is still bf at two.
I found it’s just an age thing and suddenly it clicks. Around 18 months ish It does help if they have full stomachs of food rather than milk. And I didn’t put mine to bed at 7, nearer 8. It also doesn’t matter if you do the bath story stuff because that makes no difference either.
One thing I did find was put them to sleep in a double bed and the roll out and leave them

i would also second putting the DC in their own room. The problem with cosleeping is that quite often you are the ones disturbing the child’s sleep and then they wake and can’t resettle and then expect the boob to be able to go back to sleep.

Room sharing is obviously advised in the early months due to the reduction in SIDS risk but as others have said - this is a toddler, not a newborn. There is absolutely no reason why they shouldn’t learn to self settle in their own room.

Another thing I would highly recommend is to use some kind of lullaby light or white noise to help them settle.

Good luck OP.

False starts are generally overtired or undertired. 7-7 might be what the mainstream sells, but the National Sleep Foundation's stats find more like 10-11 hours is the norm. If it were me I'd try bed at 8 and wake up at 7am for a week and then review. Feeding to sleep is normal and what we're biologically programmed to do. If you need to change it then do so, but don't feel bad for it.

Try and enjoy this precious time with your baby, there’s loads of opportunity and time ahead for evenings off when your kids are toddlers. Once they hit school age you’ll find yourself missing those baby snuggles you were desperate to get a break from.

She was a bit annoyed at first but I never left her to cry, I sat beside her and soothed etc.

This is all very good advice from this PP and many others.

However do be aware that with some babies and toddlers this really does not work so if you are not having any joy after 2-3 weeks, you might need to try sleep training. I don't want you or anyone else reading this to think that if your child is one like this you must keep running yourself beyond ragged because you supposedly absolutely must not leave them to cry ever.

Even 30+ yrs ago, well before this age ,advice was waking at night they should only be offered water to drink at night . That soon stops them waking in the night .

You sound like me to an extent, though I cracked sooner and never co slept. I was up every 40 mins throughout the night though and it was boob sleep association that was the problem. We had a really clear bedtime routine.

The most helpful things I “learned” were that age, even breastfed babies do not need milk in the night. They don’t. They might fancy some, but they don’t need it. So I decided that if she woke at night, I would offer water if it was past 1am.

I also did the Jo Frost sleep training, but with shorter periods of time between going in and we fully settled our baby when we did.

After 3 nights our baby was sleeping for 12 hours. We felt human and we didn’t regret it. I had tried the “No cry sleep solution” and there was significantly more crying trying to calm her with those methods, than with sleep training. I carried on breastfeeding with no issue.

You don’t have to do this, there are loads of parents who are like you at the moment and I know several family’s who are still co sleeping with their 5/6 year olds. It depends what you want most.

My little girl was an awful sleeper too. I stopped the feeding in the night and it made a big difference. The only way I could do it was for my husband to go and settle her in the night instead of me. It took a while, but it gradually got better. We’re a few months on now, and still if I go into her in the night to settle her she just gets really wound up and her crying escalates. Whereas if my husband goes in, she settles really quickly. I still feed her at bedtime, but that’s the only feed she has now. She does still wake sometimes, but I’d say 70% of the time she sleeps 7.30-6.15ish (she’s always been an early waker too!)

I had an almost identical experience. DC1 in particular was very fond of constant bf and just wouldn’t settle at night without it.

OP, every child is different. I have the same issue with mine although he’s now 20 months. He stopped being fed to sleep a long time ago and our life is exactly the same as yours.

I’m not saying don’t try this, but don’t put all your hopes on this being answer.