Sleep training - DS gone hoarse Help!

[fruitstick]

I'm trying to move DS2 out of our bed and get him to sleep by himself. He is 11 months old and daytime sleeps were becoming non-existent, and he was waking in the night and wanting to be permanently latched on.

Anyway, I'm not too good at leaving him to cry so have been doing kind of a combination of gradual withdrawal and controlled crying (probably just enough to confuse him!). I do a winddown routine then lay him in his cot, shush and keep my hand on him for a minute for too, then take my hadn away and move the door, then leave. He is quiet but screams as soon as I leave the room. I then have been going back every 5 minutes and laying him back down.

It's been going fairly well, bedtime is good but daytime naps take about half an hour and then he only sleeps for half an hour. Last night he was awake between 4am and 6am crying.

People keep telling me to be firm with him and I can't just take him back into bed and feed him as I will only have to go through it all again but I can't bear it!

tonight he went to sleep really well, without a whimper but he's just woken up and he's hoarse he's been crying so much over the past few days. I thought he must have a sore throat so I fed him and he fell asleep as soon as he latched on. When I put him down he started screaming again and thrashing about.

I think he's gone to sleep now whilst I've been writing this but I feel so awful! I hate what I'm doing to him but also know that he needs more sleep than he's been getting up until now.

Come stroke my hair and shush me please!

Hello fruitstick - it's horrible isn't it? We did this a few weeks ago in desperation with our then not quite 9mo DS. Just when we were getting somewhere he started teething, so a couple of weeks later we had to do it all again.

Our experience has been that DS was settling quite well at bedtime after about 3 nights, but for about a week he had a night-time wake of up to 2 hours. He rarely cried for much of this - he'd have a long feed, fall asleep so I put him in his cot, then he woke as soon as I left him and chatted, cried for 5mins, then settled when DH went to him and either fell asleep or chatted a bit more then fell asleep. There was just one night when he cried for about 30mins so got multiple visits from DH.

The past three nights he has just woken for his feed then gone back to sleep quickly. Fingers crossed this will continue.

Hope that gives you some reassurance.

I abandoned the CC for daytime naps, as I didn't think the 30min crying for 30min sleep exchange was worth it. Plus I found it harder to locate the right nap window for DS, as they moved a lot once he was sleeping so much better at night.

I read somewhere that it's a different part of the brain that controls daytime naps and night sleep, so it doesn't matter if you settle them differently. I've been rocking to sleep for daytime naps, and hasn't affected nights.

Thanks - that makes me feel better.

I feel exactly like that about daytime naps. the trouble is I also have DS1 who is nearly 4 and it was taking too long to rock DS2 to sleep. DS1 was getting neglected and kept coming in looking for me.

I really want DS2 to sleep well during the day so that I have long enough to spend quality time with DS1 without the baby getting in the way.

So it ended up with me trying for a while, getting nowhere and DS2 only napping for brief stints in car, pushchair etc and generally being tired and miserable.

I'm not very good at this!

Ah, that complicates things! Only having one DS to worry about makes things a bit easier, but I still posted earlier today in desperation as DS totally bypassed his afternoon nap leaving me feeling bruised and battered (both physically and emotionally).

When we first did the CC thing, his daytime naps also got quicker to settle with rocking (generally within 5mins and no more than 10mins). I just had to wait for the signals that he was properly tired (full on crying for my DS!). I think the problem at the mo may be because he's thinking of dropping his second nap of the day...

Anyways, what I'm trying to say is, give it a few days on the night-time CC, and you may find that it gets easier to settle him to daytime naps with rocking/whatever you've been doing in the past.