Can't take any more and don't know what to do!

[Liloosmum]

I don't know if this is a sleep or hunger problem so I'll post in both sections!

My DD#2 is now 5.5 months. For the first 12 weeks she was quite a good sleeper starting off with sleeping at least one four hour stretch during the night. This got longer until she reached 12 weeks and since then her sleep has been getting worse and worse.

She currently wakes every 1.5-2 hours some nights and other nights every hour, but does at least then sleep for 2.5 hours once!

I'm breastfeeding and so when she wakes I feed her, but I'm not convinced she's always waking because of hunger. Feeding her seems to be the quickest way of getting her to go back to sleep without waking DD#1, but I am so tired and don't think I'm coping with it very well any more.

I've tried putting her in her own room, putting an extra blanket on her, gloves so her hands aren't cold. I've spoken to a HV who suggested weaning her so I've started, but I don't think that will make much if any difference any time soon.

I know she will have had growth spurts and there's a sleep regression that people talk of around 4 months, but it's been two and a half months since we've had a decent night (ie 4 hours of sleep!)

Any suggestions?

hmm, angeldog i suppose i kind of did that without realising it was a technique as such.

when DS went through periods of frequent wakings i always still picked him up from his bed and you could tell by the way he cuddled in or frantically tried to eat through my top if he was looking for feeding. sometimes he just put his thumb back in and dozed off.

once he could suck his thumb he went through a phase of being awake after a last feed and going to sleep himself. only lasted till about 8 or 9 months strangely... another sleep regression i guess. :-)

i was probably so flippin tired i was on autopilot.

'it always seems to me the mothers with babies who wake all throughout the night are the ones who are more than happy to feed them every time.'

Think you're mixing up causation and correlation there love.

Anecdotally, my mum had 6 kids and we were all fed on demand (5 BF, 1 FF) including at night. All except me were good sleepers.

IMO babies are very much 'luck of the draw'.

my ds3 is 6 months today and his sleep pattern is similar. wakes every 45-60 mins and usually needs bf to re-settle.

it's tough, but my ds2 was the same so my expectations were low! i am co-sleeping and it is he only thing that is enabling me to function in the day to look after the family! ds2 gradually slept better, although i still did bf to sleep at bedtime he did learn to resettle himself every sleep cycle and sleep through. i think sleep is a developmental thing and you cannot make a child sleep better, or by a certain age, just like you cannot decide just because they are 12 months they should walk.

The sleep regression at 4 mths is fairly universal - how long it lasts depends on how you handle it.

Feeding a 5-6 mth old baby every 1-2 hrs a night is creating a feed-sleep association and so makes sleeping worse even when they are over the regression.

My dd3 did this but ( owing to my previous experiences)I worked very hard at not reinforcing her wake ups with feeding. It's very hard work and not without tears on both sides but the longest she ever cried for was about 25 mins (in the same room as me and after I knew she had been fed in the last 3-4 hrs)

She is not sleeping thru yet because she is small and still needs at least one feed a night but she is nowhere near as bad as waking hourly as she used to. The most she gets is two feeds overnight.

I do not believe weaning makes any difference.

jaggy, yep, 8/9 months (often through to 10/11 months) is the next big regression. There are more at 13 months, 18 months and 2.5-3 years. The improvements in DS's sleep at 7 months only lasted till we hit the 8/9 m. regression.

weasle, there is a developmental spurt at 26 weeks (my DS was badly affected).

I fed DS every 2 hours during the 4 month regression and after a few weeks he just went back to his previous pattern. So feeding every time doesn't necessarily cause problems. :)

After the first half of the 9 month regression (the 37 week spurt) he didn't improve on his own though. Once we're through the 46 week spurt I'll be working on helping him settle himself between sleep cycles - but I'll still be feeding him to sleep and not using any technique which involves letting him cry.

Sometimes he's needed feeding more than 3-4 hourly not because he's hungry, but because his tooth hurts or he's struggling with trapped wind - so I wouldn't want to take amijee's approach. BF is about much more than nutrition IMO.

Thanks for all your suggestions and sharing your experiences.

Last night whenever she woke I fed her, but then took her off as soon as her swallowing had slowed and her breathing had calmed. She cried a lot the first couple of times and I had to put her back on again and try again, but by the end of the night she would have a little protest cry when I put her down, but then go to sleep on her own.

She still woke every 1.5-2 hours, but I think I got a bit more sleep. I think I'll carry on with that for a while and see how we get on. Hopefully she'll learn to just go back to sleep by herself.

'Feeding a 5-6 mth old baby every 1-2 hrs a night is creating a feed-sleep association and so makes sleeping worse even when they are over the regression. '

Really, cause I've never refused a night feed (don't see the point in letting my baby cry when I could wodge a nipple in her mouth) and yet she still manages to sleep without boob. In fact, last night she stirred and so I pulled her down the bed for a feed and she pushed me away, rolled over and went back to sleep.

If breastmilk wasn't meant to put babies to sleep it wouldn't be 'formulated' the way it is with higher fat levels etc at night. Why fight nature because a minority of childless 'sleep experts' over the years have decided that feeding to sleep is a bad idea?

Jemjabella - I am envious of you if that was the case for you but unfortunately it is not for many.

I am not a childless sleep expert but a mum of 3 kids under 5 who are not born to sleep! I had terrible sleep issues with my first two who had a tit stuck in their mouth every time they so much as squeaked! They were simply not able to go back to sleep unaided through their natural sleep cycles. In the end, I resorted to cc for both of them ( which worked) but was very distressing.

I am doing things differently with my third ( and it is working) in the hope to avoid cc in the future. When you have to go back to doing 12 hour days at work in a stressful job, not sleeping is not an option for me.

I wasn't calling you a childless sleep expert, I was referring to the likes of She Who Must Not Be Named, etc.

Babies are really dependent (she is only 5.5 months old!) and I really don't mind feeding her 2-3 times during the night. But at the same time I need some sleep too otherwise I can't cope during the day which isn't fair on her or my other daughter either. It's a balance between being there for her at night and having the energy to be a good mother during the day too.

So if she can learn to go to sleep by herself it will be a lot better for all of us. Feeding her to calm her down and then putting her down still awake/drowsy seems like a reasonable way of helping her do this.

And this is why I normally bite my tongue 'love'.

MrsBuble We let DD#1 cry it out when we took away her dummy. For some reason it seems more unfair to do that when what you're taking away is also how she feeds. I'm not against letting them cry.

Everyone has to do whatever works for them.