how to cope with sleep deprivation - 11mo just started crawling

[titferbrains]

I have put up with bad sleep for nearly a year now, and I think I am starting to break. I have spent the last month attempting v gentle sleep training with my DS, but obviously I am waaaaaay too late and he has now started to crawl plus has 2 top teeth coming in. I have had some success with PUPD and he has been self soothing a bit more and occasionally sleeping thru.

Last night was dreadful tho, he was up for over an hour.

I was then up for another hour myself worrying and stressing about life the universe etc

I just cannot see clearly how to cope at night. Do I persevere with PUPD even tho I am shattered from him waking pretty much every night and him requiring soothing for around 30 min?

Do I give in and go back to cosleeping even tho I am desperate to stop cosleeping? It gives me back ache. And it seems to disturb DS more.

DS seems to just moan and groan in his sleep quite a lot, but I have to lie awake listening (impossible to ignore) and often the moaning and groaning in his sleep turns into crying. So then not sure whether to start rushing in at first whimper or leave till it escalates into proper crying when he is then more awake and takes longer to get back to sleep.

I just want to weep.

Oh I feel for you. I definitely wouldn't co-sleep. I know it works for some, but for my DD and I, all it meant was that neither of us got a wink of sleep.

My DD was a nightmare and eventually I discovered that if she was in her own room and I didn't use a baby monitor, I wasn't woken up by the first whimper and often she settled herself. However, I would definitely go in and use PUPD when it has escalated to full scale crying.

You sound so exhausted that you are probably leaping out of bed at every sound and rushing to him (I know that's what I used to do). Now I realise that my poor DD was still asleep, just making noises, and here I was lifting her out of bed!

Stick with it; it gets better.

I can't help unfortunately but wanted to give you my sympathy. My DS does not go more than 2 hours at night without waking most nights and is really hard to settle during the day. I have found myself in tears so often just because I am that tired.
I am also trying to stop cosleeping as to be honest I don't find that either if us get any better sleep with it but sometimes even moving from my room to his seems too hard at 3am. Good luck with it all and sorry I can't offer anything other than sympathy. Hopefully someone will come along who can provide a magic solution

Would definitely advise no feeding through the night (another bad habit that I got into!). Obviously, I'd offer water in case he's thirsty - especially if he's been crying, but try not to give comfort feeds as this only encourages them to wake.

How often does he wake?

We were in a similar situation up until about a month ago when a friend recommended the Sleep Store website which features a range of options and case studies for helping babies learn to resettle themselves back to sleep at night.

We used verbal reassurance and within three nights our nine month old who was previously waking up multiple times in the night and taking hours to resettle was sleeping through 7pm til 6am. It's been like a miracle for us, I was seriously at breaking point.

loobylou I can't see those case studies on the site you've linked to - just the products that they sell. We have a 9 month old on the verge of crawling who wakes and feeds several times a night, ends up co-sleeping at some point. Knackering.

My 22m old has a sort of off switch, when she decides to sleep she just does. If she is restless in the night and I speak softly to her she is reassured and will settle down as fast as possible. The best approach with her is to kiss and settle as soon as she makes a noise. She sleeps like a log.

My 10m old will play, sing, jump about, bang stuff and be a proper PITA. If I even show I am awake when she is meant to be asleep she gets excited and will then do whatever it takes to get me to play with her. Everything I try just makes her worse. At least she's happy I suppose. I have to hide from her as much as I can when she is awake overnight. She wakes for a gnats fart.

My 13y old was an awful baby. She was never happy. She rarely slept properly until she was 2 and in a bed (which she seemed to prefer) and sh was always, always whining about something- often I had no idea what. I ended up co-sleeping with her until she was 5 or so, on and off... But we largely liked it that way. Surprisingly, she never woke up for noise either. I used to hoover round her and everything. Which just made working out WTF was wrong this time even harder!

There's no one thing that works. I guess what I've learned is to try to really tune in and listen to whichever baby I have and go with intuition not book learning. Which is a fucking crap answer to give anyone sleep deprived and tearful I know. Sorry, it's the best I've got.

Just when you think you're going to die.... They sleep through! Yes, DS managed 7-7 last night! I have upped his bedtime bottle to 9 oz and seemed to do the trick. Will be interesting to see what happens tonight. Of course it had to be a night when I was out at a dinner till after 1am... so am still shattered.

But I am pretty encouraged that he has managed this. Will stick to the water only at night and PUPD. He is still feeding to sleep but I don't really care about that as long as he stops with the moany groany night wakings.

Thanks for nice comforting replies everyone, I thought mumsnet had failed me when no one responded initially!

That's brilliant news titferbrains, you must feel like a million bucks!

Sorry rhetorician, the case studies etc can be found here

thanks very much, will read with interest

Hi,
Saw this late but was going to suggest upping the bedtime bottle. My ds is a terrible cot mover when he sleeps and I was getting up every 2 hours to settle him until I changed his routine. I now dreamfeed my 10 month ds at 10.30pm and when he stirs at around 6-7am. He goes to bed in his own room at 9pm and is up at around 8 - 8.30am. He is a big wriggler and what really helped was sleeping in a grobag and buying a small fuzzy jellycat dog that he strokes nd holds near his face for comfort and if he cries out in the night i give it to him and he is immediately soothed and goes back to sleep. I have 3 comforters to the left, right and above the head inside his cot (jellycat dog, small blanket bear and a soft monkey) so he can usually find one by himself. It?s a bit of a military operation but it works. I now have good sleep because I turned the baby monitor down so I can?t hear him moving around and have a 2 cry rule. I don?t go in on the first cry out and he learned how to settle himself. I find him in all sorts of weird positions in the morning but he is fine. If I go toilet in the night I check on him and put a comforter near his face.
During the day I have the same comforters in the cot, blackout blind and he also sleeps on a sheepskin. He sleeps 1 hour in the morning 10-11am and 2 hours in the afternoon 2pm - 4pm and I rarely have to go in. He was never a good sleeper in the early months but he has become one with these methods. If you get a comforter it may take him a while but put it in his hands when he is falling asleep. Hope this helps too.

night number 2 of sleeping thru

Really glad I persevered th PUPD. For anyone who reads this and is just starting out with sleep training, note that when you are doing PUPD it does feel like it's not working but I have been doing it for about 3 weeks and things have definitely improved bit by bit.

I also found out that it's good to do walk in walk out when they have separation anxiety - this reassures them that you haven't disappeared when you move away from the bed. So put them down in cot, say sleep time or whatever, and then move away, they will cry, you go back and pick up, quick cuddle, put down. Repeat. You are showing them that you will come back after leaving their line of vision. Then when calmer you can begin PUPD.