Tell me sleep will come!

[growingbump2]

I'm exhausted. DS2 is 21 weeks, he is a lovely baby and dare I say hardly ever cries but he doesn't sleep, he has never slept longer than 4 hours. He is BF and starting to wean which is going well but I really thought he would have a 6 hour strech at night by now, any advice?

Some sleep, some don't.
DS1 slept 8 hours from 7 weeks, 12 hours from 16 weeks.
DS2 did the same as your DS2, until we resorted to controlled crying at 9 months (which I'm not going to enter into a debate about)
It will come... they're just all different. I found because my DS2 was more laid back the lack of sleep thing wasn't such an issue, compared to a sleeping, but high maintenance DS1 !

Hang in there - sleep will come eventually. My ds was a dreadful sleeper as a baby (we're talking every hour all through the night!) and even he now sleeps reasonably soundly - he's 22 months.
Advice is difficult, as every child is different and, like Zil113, I don't want to enter into a debate about controlled crying. But please be encouraged that it won't last forever - I know it's hard when you're so tired and exhausted.

You say he is BF, how often in the day, are you still demand feeding? Does he have naps in the day at regular-ish times?

i symathise, my 28 week old still wakes to feed every 3 hours through the night. advice welcome!

I think it a personality thing, we did everything to get DD to sleep. But she didn't sleep longer then 5hours untill she was 13months and not consitantly untill she started preschool last year.

DS on the other hand is 12 week's and already does 8hours some nights. I've done absolutly nothing with him just left him to it. As we tired everything with DD and it didn't work so just decieded to go with the flow this time and co-sleep full time, which we didn't do with DD.

Yes, it is true, they are all different. BUT you can make small changes to their routine to increase the times between feeds. Some babies do automatically start to have longer stretches , but for those who don't you can actually make changes to their routines that have an effect on their night-time feeding.

If you don't want to, you don't have to resign yourself to the fact you will be up every 3 hours. Some babies never 'work out' a more resonable feeding schedule, until you 'train' them. It requires effort- but if you want to change things, you can.

Don't worry, sleep will come. As the mother of teens, I can assure you that having spent the first 10 years trying to get them to sleep more, you spend the next 10 years trying to wake them up and get them out of bed so they don't waste the WHOLE day ;-)

Um, if you are very lucky, it will be less than 10 years.

If it's any help, I found that (after weaning, and not if your baby is underweight) withholding milk at night worked well - at about 5 months, I bottle fed in the night (you can still use breastmilk if you like but the bottle bit is vital) and watered down the feed more and more each night. The babies stopped night waking within a week. I read (and it seems to make sense) that if a baby gets nutrition at a certain time of day (say, 2am) then their body will wake them the next day at the same time (2am) hungry and ready for milk as our bodies are INCREDIBLY well adapted to maximise food sources. Cut out the food source and you cut out the waking. Incidentally, the babies settled just as well on a 50:50 milk/water night feed so it wasn't even tough to do and didn't involve controlled crying.

Good luck - 5 months without a solid night's sleep is inhuman.

I think the habit thing is definitely true. Now that my DS is on solids I would like to try cutting out at least one night feed, but in the wee small hours sticking a boob in his mouth always seems like the easiest option. I can't imagine letting him cry at that time of night, but I suppose we might have to do it. He won't take a bottle, though he is now drinking water from a cup with meals, so maybe we might try offering water rather than milk when he wakes. The plan is to wait until my DH has a few days off work and let him have a go at resettling DS with cuddles/water/whatever and see if that works.

The depressing thing is that he used to sleep for 5-7 hour stretches regularly until he hit the 4 month sleep regression.