Ds1 Nearly 7 Months, I haven't Slept Since He Was Born!!!!

[magnolia1]

Ok I have slept, but the most has been 4 hrs and that was ONCE!!! Normally it is for 1-2hrs.
He feeds 2-3hrs day and night. Good feeds, sometimes both sides sometimes not. 2/3 solid meals a day but these are not rigid and apart from breakfas it's as and when I have someting suitable for him from ours.
He has reflux but is on ranitdine and it's keeping it well under control. Generally a happyish baby although very very demanding.

My friends suggest giving up b/f which I will not do at all until he is at leats a year old probably older.
I don't mind feeding in the night but I do wish he would go longer. I know it's probably habit but with 4 other children and a dh who works hard and needs sleep to anable him to drive heavy machinary what can I do???

The doctor prescribed Phenergan which did diddly sqat
I can't co sleep. I have tried but I don' sleep at all and so it defeats the object really.
He will go to sleep fine and goes to bed at 8pm but will be up at 10pm then probably every 1-2hrs I don't feed
sraight away ant have tried to shush him, cuddle him, leave him each of these just make him cry more and more until the only way is to feed him.
He won't have a dummy.

I am contemplating leaving dh with a bottle of water and feeding him at 11pm, staying at my mums then coming home at 6am. Madness???

i don't know what to suggest but do sympathize. I didn't sleep for the first 4 months of my ds's life, until i started putting him in the bed with me and co sleeping, but you say you can't do that. you could google La Leche League - they have local volunteer mum advisors on breastfeeding, and are usually brilliant. Maybe someone else will think of something here. I can understand you needing to sleep somewhere else for a night, but not sure if it is a long term solution! Good luck...

dh did Fridays nights when DS was little. I expressed a couple of bottles, and went to bed after DS had fed. Slept in spare room with earplugs, until 7am, gave me one night's sleep a week, and the amount I expressed at 7 am was huge, enough for at least one bottle and sometimnes 2. my full noghts sleep meant i could keep going.

So what I am saying is, yes, try to let DH do a night shift, maybe with just water, and go elsewhere to have a decent night!

I don't mind it being milk but just thought if it's only habit that makes him wake will water break the habit?? Maybe he is a bit young though? Dd4 was over a year before she stopped feeding at night but at least she let me get 4-5 hours

I can hear you are tired, magnolia
This night time pattern is on the normal spectrum, though, and one option which you don't say you have tried is to co-sleep, going with the flow and simply allowing him to feed when he wants....7 mths is very young for 'sleep training' , to be honest, though I know some people do it; leaving a bottle of water with dh while you disappear deprives your baby of you and milk which seems a lot for a 7 mth old to cope with....

I don't know if this is helpful or not, sorry, but going with the flow might mean everyone gets a better night than what's happening now.

I have tried co sleeping tiktok and I just can't sleep so it hasn't helped

I really want to go with the flow but his flow is every hour screaming

I can cope with on demand all day and nearly every night but even 4-5 hours sleep once in a while I am desperate for.

He can't actually be hungry every hour though surely? And if he is how can I fullfil him more apart from up his solids?

I definately won't go down the control crying thing as it's not for me at all and I won't leave him to cry for more than 2-3 minutes ever so what else??

OK - the hourly screaming will cease with co-sleeping, but I can understand it's not for you.

You deserve a break - and PandaG's idea seems a good one! You get a lovely night off occasionally, without doing the things you don't feel are right for you...would that work, do you think?

magnolia: no definite advice but there a quite a few of us with the same prob - see thread in Sleep called Sleep is For The Weak. We exchange ideas (some of which work ... for a time) and vent when night go completely up the spout

are

Yes it would work but I feel terribly guilty at leaving him. Not Sure I will be able to do it to be honest.

Will join you lot on the other thread too

Magnolia, I'm in a similar situation to you (8m non-sleeper, wakes to feed 2-3-hourly through the night). The way we cope is that dh gives ds2 a bottle at 10pm-ish (formula, I'm no good at expressing, besides, can't find the time!), then gives him water if he wakes until 2-3am-ish, when I take over. This gives me several hours sleep, and I'm far better able to function during the day as a result.

Obviously your dh couldn't do that as he needs his sleep for safety, but perhaps he could give a bottle at the first waking after bedtime, while you went to bed early and got an extra couple of hours sleep? Then, perhaps, he could do antoher feed as well on Friday and Saturday nights, so you could get even longer to sleep once or twice a week.

I think there are perhaps some helpful ideas among all these here:
www.lalecheleague.org/NB/NBsleep.html

Personally I found sharing a bed the best way for me and my baby too and getting rid of the clock! Now I'm breastfeeding my last baby, I actually enjoy the nighttime feeds most of all - rare moments of peace in a chaotic noisy house!

I find these frequent wakings usually correspond with growth spurts or developmental stages like when they are mastering new skills - such as sitting up and crawling.

Good luck!

co sleeping was a god send to us - once i started feeding baby in bed [i could sleep quite easily tho] we all got a lovely night's sleep. But a friend of mine is going through this at the moment and can't sleep when feeding, so i guess everyone is different.

Although I got more sleep when we co-slept and I let ds2 help himself at the milk bar whenever he wanted, it meant that he didn't know any other way to get himself to sleep. He would get frantically overtired, but could not get to sleep unless I fed him to sleep and then stayed by him. Not possible when there are other children to look after as well! And he wouldn't sleep for more than 20mins or so at a time during the day.

At least by moving him out of our bed and into a room of his own - albeit with a bed where one of us can sleep as well - he has learned to settle himself some of the time and will nap in his cot for anything between 30min to 2h. Which also means that I am less frazzled.

Dh thinks the cot matress is to hard

Anyone use a matress topper?

Mattresses for cots have to be hard, magnolia - this is a safety requirement. I think there may be a British Standard for this, so getting a softer mattress for a cot may not be possible.

I know but what about something like the sheepskins? I have never used anything like that so not sure how safe they are?

hi
whats your gut feeling as to why he's waking? do you think its comfort, food, habit?
my dd has never been a great sleeper and also at this time i was up every 2 hours. thought i was going to lose my mind. partly habit on my part as i'd jump up before she woke dh, i slowly had to train myself to give her a chance to settle herself (never did cc though). i put her on solids at 6mths and was frustrated it didn't seem to make a difference. i think you need to be more consistent here to rule out hunger. try to ensure that last meal has a good proportion of carbs to give him a nice full tummy with slow release energy food.
at 9 mths i started to give dd formula. just a dream feed at 10pm. it DID seem to make a difference. going to bed not dreading her waking up also helped me. i carried on bf for another month after that, coming to a gradual halt with no problems. stopped dream feed when she didn't seem to want it anymore (never woke her, just put bottle in her mouth).
another thought is that with 4 other children to contend with, maybe your ds has worked out that he gets you all to himself at night so does wake up for comfort? maybe you could allocate some time just with him, without juggling the others, before bed - easier said than done i know.
the biggest help for me during the worst periods was for me to look at my attitude towards the lack of sleep. i felt under alot of pressure to do something about it, that people must be thinking i was mad for putting up with it. once i made a concious decision to shrug my shoulders and go with the flow i felt alot better. reminding myself that she was just a baby and it wasn't going to last forever helped. even now she's not a great sleeper but she's wonderful when she's awake and i wouldn't swap her with my friends "through the night" but PITA during the day babies for anything (I'm not saying it has to be one or the other, just in some cases....)
i really feel for you.

I think thats part of it really, dh seems to be bothered by my lack of sleep more than I am. I can go with the flow most of the time it's just every so often like now I keep doing stupid things out of exhaustion

He has me to himself every morning till 11.30 but is a demanding so and so

..... your DS1 is 7 MONTHS old already!!!!!???!?!?!........woah thats flown by

{{{{{hugs}}}} but i havent read ya post as gotta dash to bham airport from lpool!