If your baby is a 'sleeper' please could you tell me...

[Bumbolina]

What the fuck you do differently to me
I'm asking those that say "my kid just started sleeping through at 4 days old" etc etc

Dc2 is now 3 weeks 5 days old. This morning he was awake from 8.00-12.30... could not/would not sleep no matter what I did (fed, rocked, sung, put down and left alone, burped, changed - basically everything I cod think of). He finally dropped off and is still asleep now, and is showing no signs of stirring soon so it will probably be a 3-4 hour block of sleep. At night he'll do no more than an hour at a time.

I am ebf. This is my second - my first fed hourly day and night for the first 6 months and still doesn't sleep through at 2.5. Last night they were tag teaming keeping me awake.

So I want to know from those of you whose kids slept - did you have to work at it?? I'm not interested in leaving to cry. I want to know the basics. Did you use dummies? If so - how? Do you shove it in when they look tired and hope they suck themselves to sleep? Did you "pat shush", did you feed to sleep? If you did when/how did you transfer. Did you wake them/amuse them in the daytime so they'd sleep at night?

Basically did you do anything at all - or were your kids just on the ball when it came to sleep?

Please tell me. There must be something I'm doing wrong. My mil definitely thinks so!

My 3 all slept well (still do) with the proviso they all got up early (ie 6am or sometimes even earlier until they started school). I think mine are natural sleepy kids-they all had long afternoon naps until they were nearly 4 yrs.

The twins were harder when very tiny-when they were under 6 months dh used to take them in the evening and I'd go to bed at 7pm because they'd want feeding 1-2 hourly (I ebf).

However, just in case some of it was down to me that they never woke in the night as toddlers, always napped, slept through from 6-8 months.
I was very routine because my life was routine, particularly with the twins as they were 2nd children so they were in the pram at the same time every day, several times a day on the preschool run. A lot of their naps were outside (well wrapped!) in our (very secure!) garden with me sat on the steps or looking out the window, because we'd arrive home from walk and I'd want them to keep sleeping.

Ds1 I'd rock in my arms until he went to sleep when he was really quite big( I remember thinking he's very big to be doing this- I wonder if he'll just go to sleep if I put him down awake-he looked a bit surprised and then he did), but he was my pfb and I couldn't do that with twins, so I gave them dummies and shushed/patted them. By about 8 months they didn't need the patting/shushing and just went to sleep at 7pm with a dummy. If we were in the house for nap time (rare) then they just went to sleep in their cot with possibly a pat and a shush.

I am a very heavy sleeper and dh is grumpy about getting up, so I suspect we may have ignored quiet crying out/snuffling and only went in at night (moved out of room at 6 months) for full on crying which was always for a feed-I stopped feeding in the night when they stopped waking in the night. The twins I fed in darkness, but ds1 I read books in the night so I must have had a light on.

The last thing was with ds1 -I read him the snail and the whale every night for about 2 years (at his request) and he'd usually be asleep by the end of it -I think ds1 knew what worked for him!

My DS1 is a 'good' sleeper. He has slept through the night on all but a handful of occasions from about 6 months old. Prior to that, he woke once or twice a night from 8 weeks old, and went back down after a quick feed with no problem. He has always been able to sleep through the loudest of noises as long as it's fairly dark. I did what you have been doing pretty much with him. If he grizzled a bit when put down in his cot, I soon learned that he would generally fall asleep within 5 minutes if left to it.

I have tried to do exactly the same with DS2, and he is a nightmare sleeper! I should have known - DS1 slept right through his first night on earth (jaundice) but I was up and down all night with DS2 who shrieked at the top of his lungs, and still does! I feel so sorry for next door (DS1 sleeps through it!).

I haved become convinced that once you have a fairly sensible routine set up - i.e. don't let them get overtired, set bedtime routine, quiet dark room - it is almost entirely down to personality!

I think it's complete luck at least as regards the early months (after that it's still mostly luck, but there is also the question of whether there are bad habits and fixing those habits).

I tried pretty much every single thing suggested on this thread, nothing worked with DD. She would only sleep on my chest for the first 3 months, woke up instantly if removed, after that she would sleep in her basket but needed about a million resettles in the night.

Once she got old enough, CC turned her from an appalling sleeper into an ok sleeper but still not great - she just doesn't need/doesn't like much sleep, and sleeps very lightly.

I think there is a vicious/virtuous cycle thing that happens. If you have a baby who sleeps badly in the first few months, you are more likely to get into bad habits (feeding/rocking to sleep - whatever works at the time to preserve sanity) and those habits then continue to cause bad sleep for the next X months. Whereas if you have a baby who sleeps well from the start, you can avoid creating those bad habits, since you have the energy to focus on gently teaching self settling instead of feeding back to sleep. Does that make sense?

My dd was a brilliant sleeper from 6 weeks old. At the time we put it down to the way we had got her into a routine, and how good we were at the whole parenting thing.

Then we had ds. Did exactly the same things.
Sleep?
Didn't see sleep for 3 years! We had genuinely just got lucky the first time around.

Dd still loves her sleep, and ds still manages on very little and they are both secondary school age now. It is just the way they are wired.

I FF as DS couldn't latch. That might have helped but not sure. He was early and very very sleepy, we barely saw his eyes for 2 months, getting him to wake up enough to feed at all was a nightmare.
I made sure he had plenty of milk during the day once he was 3 months and had started sleeping through. Dream feed at 10 and he went through until 6.
Amby nest in our room until 6 months- amazing baby sleep machine.
Good bedtime regime. Never left to cry.
It might be luck or genes- I love sleep and wouldn't have coped with a difficult baby.

My baby is 14 weeks.

Zero chance of her napping for more than 20 mins, twice, during day.

Or going through the night.

We do however have a fabulous bath, bottle, bed routine which we have done from about 8 weeks. She goes down like a dream from 7-11.

Swaddling helps us, and the white noise app.

Then wakes to feed at 2 and 5.

As I type this she is staring at me from her bouncy chair with beady eyes. She is tired, but won't fecking sleep!

Sincerely hoping this gets better before igo back to work in 4 weeks :(

I'm not sure if it's nature or nurture - both mine have been sleepers but my best friend's have definitely not!

For what it's worth, here's what we did.

-Always start the day at the same time - we decided on 7am. Any wakings before then, I resettled.

-All naps during the day were in sleeping bag, swaddled and in a pitch dark room (black out blinds).

-Make sure little one is awake by 5pm if you want them to go down at 7pm.

-Start bed time routine at 6pm - 1/2 feed, bath, jamas, sleeping bag, swaddle, 2nd half of the feed in dark room before putting in cot. We found that warming the mattress with a hot water bottle before putting him down helped, also taking my tshirt off and putting it down in the cot.
For my son, he really preferred to sleep on his side, so we got a sort of wedge thing that stopped him rolling onto his front.

• We also used to wake to feed at 10.30-11pm. For this one, we made sure ours were properly awake (they used to come down and watch Newsnight...) so that they took a really good feed at this point. If I had expressed during the day, my DH often did this so I could go to sleep at 8pm.

• Any wakings between 11.30pm and 7am - I fed in the dark, no eye contact or interaction and only change nappy if absolutely necessary.

This routine worked for both of mine - but I don't have a 'control child' to check whether it's our family genes!

Feeling your pain this morning. Dd (2 weeks and 2 days) decided to do a machine gun poo and shot it across the bedroom at 3.30 this morning. I then fed her and tried to settle and we had lots of crying and fussing. Wouldn't latch again and was obviously tired. Didn't conk out until 6am. She's still asleep now but m boobs are starting t hurt! Sorry for shit typing. Am watching this thread with interest.

My DD was a poor sleeper, but she did eventually start sleeping through regularly at about 2.6 (now 2.9). However, 'sleeping through' is for her 8.30 pm to 5.30 am- she just doesn't need very much sleep.

My parents' first baby self-settled and slept through at 7 weeks without any form of sleep training at all. Their second woke every 2 hours until he was 3. Both were ebf. So I think that there is a very large element of luck involved.

Ignore your mil. My mil claimed that all her babies were '6-6' sleepers but she eventually admitted that DH was still waking in the night a lot at age 18 months.

Hi - just to say it does change over time. My DD was EBF and woke every 3 hours or more often til over the age of 1, sometimes matching this with v. early wakings. Only now (at 14 months) has she started sleeping from 7 til 6am ish. We can't believe it! Nothing we did (and we've tried everything) xx

I think it just depends on the baby. My first never slept. He's 4 now and sometimes still wakes up in the night. I did all the 'right' things, read all the books. We had an amazing bedtime routine. Nope. He just wasn't a sleeper. Number 2 is 7 weeks old and sleeping through. I can't say I've done anything special. Just chill... It won't last forever.

I think all new mums should read this thread... could save them a lot of money in sleep experts books, and their sanity knowing it has seemingly more to do with luck and genetics than parenting

Both my two woke frequently for feeds in the night until a couple of months on solid food. I was really wound up and anxious the first time because I thought I was at fault. Did the whole bed time routine thing and lots of evening feeds. Still lots of night time waking for milk.

Both went through the night to 5.00 once on three little meals a day. Sleeping past 7.00 when they dropped their naps at aged 2 (days were very long though). With hindsight we have been very lucky but it didn't seem it when DD1 was 4 months old.

Two of my friends who had the perfect GF babies first time round have had nightmare sleepers second time. Others who never picked up a book have had dream babies. So many variables.