Postive input needed for approaching sleep / holding issue with 8 week old

[themadsinger]

I posted here afew weeks ago about the sleeping problems with our daughter (M) who is now nearly 8 weeks, although she was 3 weeks premature (but still 6lb 10oz). I am Dad by the way, and this is our second child ? first is 26 months. At that time, I was shot down on any suggestion of trying to get her into a sleep routine using some sort of crying down.

However, we are now in the situation where M will not even really be put down day or night without crying. If you put her in her rocker and talk to her, she will last afew minutes before starting. AT night, she has to sleep on either myself or my Partner. If we put her in her basket awake she screams the place down and asleep she can go sometime half and hour before waking up, finding where she is and starting. It is really starting to get us down. My other half suffered from PND after out first and I see the signs now of the same she says she cannot even get showered in the morning and hence I often come home and still find her in her pjamas and unable to have gotten out. I do what I can but I have to go to work end of.

My feeling is that if we can sort out the sleeping then the day issue will follow, but please let me know if the more experienced think this is not the case and the two things have to be approached in different ways.

I want to start some sort of crying down and am interested in advice on how best to approach this. M is breast fed, but we have talked about giving her a bottle when she goes to bed around 19:00 (after her bath). This will not be an end to breast feeding for those worrid amongst you just one bottle at this time.

I know from last time there are those amongst you who will scream too early, and I respect you views and you ability to deal with the lack of sleep etc for longer but unfortunately is causing problem with us which I think, if not addressed, will have a more serious impact on M, so please, with respect, keep those views to yourself. I am looking for some positive suggestions as to how best to approach this.

Many thanks

oh forgot to say why dont you take her to se a cranial osteopath. Often babies can get a bit squished and all out of line while coming out and it can cause real pain for them. We did a few CO sessions and it help massively.

Have to be brief but will pop back later. I used this method with DS1

www.busylittleones.co.uk/index.php?p=article_sleep_1

It wasn't perfect but it reduced night waking to once per nioght instead of every 2 hours.

My baby is/was exactly the same so I know how exhausting and difficult it is. He was also 3 weeks early and only weighed 5lb4 so it seemed to go on forever.

But at 11 weeks now and almost 11 lbs he is beginning to want to go in his moses basket and I have even managed to put him down awake on occasion. I feel certain that any sort of attempted sleep training wouldn't have worked and that he will get there when he is ready - which will hopefully be soon!

I too experienced days of barely being able to get dressed as he would not be put down without crying but it slowly improved and he will now on most days entertain himself in his chair in the bathroom with me as I have a shower.

Can't really offer any more practical advice but wanted to offer moral support and to say it really will improve slowly but surely.

Hi Themadsinger,

I would recommend the Baby Whisperer's methods, as others have done. She does not adovcate crying it out - instead she had a method called shush pat for really young babies, where you soothe them all the way.

I have a 5.5 month old who's never been a great sleeper. He still isn't, but the Baby Whisperer methods at least means he goes down easily for naps, goes to sleep fairly easily in the evening and sleeps in his own cot. I'd recommend her book 'The baby whisperer solves all your problems' (by Tracy Hogg. Her methods also helped our dd (who's now 3) sleep through from 9 months.

Also, we found 6-8 weeks really was the toughest time sleepwise with our newborn - it really does start to get better.

best of luck

Firstly, I think it is brilliant of you to realise that your wife needs help and that you are conscious of her slipping back into PND. What a fab husband. But babies are so different with different personalities so while one might feel comfortable being put down to sleep, another will think they are being abandoned (I had one of both too!)

Imagine. You are dropped onto a alien planet where you don't speak the language, don't know how to get food, can't move around. But hey, there are these two fantastic people who are warm, cuddly, calm and safe and seem to be giving you everything you need when you need it. However, when you are tired and feeling your most vulnerable, they suddenly want to drop you by yourself and leave you too it. Aaaahhhhhh. What the f*? Come back.

Alternative scenario, they keep you sleeping next to them as long as you need to feel safe and comfortable, until you start to become familiar with your surroundings and people and routines. As your confidence increases, they put you down for the odd little nap here or there without lying next to you to see how you get on, or just put their hand on you to let you know they are still there and you are safe, but staying close and coming back when you cry so you know you area not alone. They are your rock and centre of your world and you can trust them to come when you need them. However, because you are safe in that knowledge, gradually and slowly, you realise actually you are safe and you can communicate (because your cries have been responded to), and that dinner and a cuddle will be waiting when you wake up.

Little steps at a time, when THE BABY is ready. Forcing it will make the baby cry more and get stressed over sleep time. You're dead right, getting the sleep sorted will help, but a mum hearing her baby crying and getting stressed will not help mum not sink into PND depression because, generally, this is against a mummy's instinct. I got PND and my baby slept 13 hours a night! It was the lack of support elsewhere that had a big impact.

By the way, it is totally normal not to get the chance to get showered and changed when you have an 8-week old and is probably nothing to do with getting sleep, there is just too much to do.

Think you will just have you drop your standards and manage your own expectations for a while. Can you afford a cleaner, or get someone to pop in to help your wife during the day so she can have a coffee and a bath? Good for you for trying to sort things out, I'm sure you'll be fine.

Also, the no-cry sleep solution a lovely book. But then again, the author resolutely does not agree with controlled crying and argues that it is just too damaging to your relationship with baby at this stage of the game. But it does give lots of alternatives for when baby is a little older.

I'm probably going to get slammed for this, but my son (who is now nearly 15 months old) would frequently fight the need for sleep, and occasionally we needed to put him to bed crying.

At 5 weeks of age, he would shake his head to wake himself up, even though he was so tired his eyes were rolling back in his sockets. But without the sleep he was just awful, getting upset at everything and he was usually a very happy child (I have a photo of him at 4 weeks giggling away in his bouncer).

Finally, to make sure he had good day time nap my DH and I put him down in his cot (he had already been sleeping in his own room for a few weeks) and in the end he cried for 35 minutes before falling asleep. For the previous few days I had tried to do the 10 minute thing, but he would just start up louder when I walked into the room and it would go for hours... literally. The next day, he only cried for about 15 minutes, day 3 about 5, and on day 4 he whinged as I put him into his cot but went to sleep quickly. (I do need to add that this was VERY difficult for me to do, and I had tears in my eyes the whole time but nothing else was working.)

Every now and then he does this again, deciding he doesn't want to go to sleep, and we have to let him cry himself out in his cot. If we let it go on for a few days he would just get worse and worse.

But let me just add that we only did this when we were sure there wasn't anything wrong physically. There were other times when he was crying when I felt it was because he had a very sore stomach, not feeling well, teething, etc, absolutely no leaving him crying in bed at those times.

Recently while I was away with my DS and he didn't want to go to sleep for his nap (completely different time zone and environment), I would hold him on my bed, cuddling him but pinning his arms down at the same time let him cry in my arms, and he would be asleep in 5 minutes. He was just too unsettled to be put into his cot and left there.

Can I just add that I've tried the No Cry Sleep Solution - it's a lovely idea but I found it took months to make any progress as you have to do everything in micro-mini sized steps. Then once DS started teething we ended back at square 1 (i.e. teething undid about 2 months' worth of no-cry approach). I wrote to the author about my frustration, who sent back a polite but useless reply. It was at that point that I consigned the No Cry Sleep Solution to the bonfire.

How's it going, madsinger?

We've just had our 2nd and our first is 21 months. To be honest I have little memory of how we put him down - but there is one piece of advice I was given by my mother which I know I have stuck to and continued to do with 2nd. It is this:

Put them down while they are still awake, after the bath and bottle and cuddle (and story / song). Tell them its time to sleep, stroke their head and go. They will go to sleep, they may cry briefly (4 mins in my experience) but then conk out. And of course, sometimes they are already asleep. But not always.

Unless there has been an unresolved issue; wet or full nappy, wind, hunger, then there has not been a problem for us.

It may simply be that we've been extremely lucky with two "good" sleepers (I italicize that only because number 1 is waking randomly each night with what appear to be nightmares, and I'm shattered).

I hope this is helpful in some minor way.

My husband reminds me that with number 1 son we had one instance of him wanting to be awake in the middle of the night. He cried for 20 mins and then stopped. WE didn't have the same problem again. So there you go. That may fit one of the definitions you're talking about, but I don't know, not read the books I'm afraid.

Good luck with this one. If your wife can catch up on rest on the weekend just one morning / afternoon she'll feel a lot better. And if she can force herself to shower each morning - its about survival after all, then she will beat some of the gravity of the exhaustion.

Firstly, I'm sorry things are so hard at the moment. You sound a very considerate person and well done for noticing the warning signs in your wife. I know it's awful when they won't go to sleep on their own and I barely functioned. We went through the same thing as you. Thankfully by 12 weeks ds would go to sleep for 11 hours at night. It was just a phase but it nearly broke me. I felt like a zombie and dh was not much better! It is so so so hard.

Please tell your wife that she needs to see a gp. She may not accept it at first. I struggled for a long time in denial (8 months), once I accepted the fact that I was depressed, it enabled me to take a step back and try and work things out whilst being more kind to myself as I was ill. DS is 10 months old now and still wont actually go to sleep on his own so have to feed or rock him to sleep (my fault I know!) but he does sleep through.

MadSinger, I have the same problem with my 12 week old. Have tried to leave him cry for a few minutes which was more than I could bear. Just don't think CC works, or that it's right. Not sure if it's the right thing to do but I've decided to just go with it and hold him and comfort him as much as possible which of course means zero me time and that there are days when I don't get out of my pyjamas but the way I see it is that it won't be forever and that why maternity leave exists! I don't really find that the Baby Whisperer or any of the other books help at all - find it hilarious when they recommend that you put your baby down awake so that he can settle himself. Yeah, right! My baby screams the minute he is lowered into his moses basket! Another trick I have recently found is to put him to sleep in our bed and lay next to him breastfeeding until he falls asleep then transfer him to the moses basket much later when he is in a deep sleep. Seems to work for the minute.

have you tried a sling during the day? my dd1 was like this and ds1 was 21 months when she was born. I carried dd1 in a sling for much of the day, even cooking ds1s dinner while wearing her. I remember being frantic by the time dh came home and handing her to him. I think dd1 started sleeping for longer periods at night round about 6 weeks too, but for a long time she was up most of the evening being held/fed.

(I also second seeing if your dd has reflux - I now realise that dd1 did have it - when we were having similar issues with dd2 and she was diagnosed with reflux - dealing with this transformed her).

I personally do not think any kind of sleep training at this age is a Good Thing, sorry.