11 months without a full night sleep

[Lammveg]

Hi all

As the title really. My DD is 11 months and hasn't ever slept through. I'm up at least 3 times a night, and she's EBF so I'm the only one who can do the nights really. She will sometimes settle for DH but will just wake again a bit later to feed. She also still won't sleep in her cot or even a next to me as she wants to be touching me all of the time at night so we co sleep. She refuses bottles and dummies.

I've been ill now for 7 days, have never been so ill in my life..headache, fatigue, gastro issues, sneezing etc and while usually I cope well with the nights I'm just so so exhausted. DH also struggles with the intensity of DD in the day so I feel guilty that I'm not so active with DD at the minute.

Not sure what I'm asking for really. Just needed to vent.

My DS has just turned 11 months and I’m in the same boat - EBF, co sleeping, 2-5 night wakings, never slept through, I do all night wakings. My DD who is now 3 was similar, though she would at least start the night in her cot.

With DD we spoke to a sleep consultant at 11 months who gave us some advice that worked wonders, though really I think what made the difference was moving her into her own bed in her own room. We also upped the amount she was outside in the day to get some sunlight and regulate her rhythms and focuses on at least 15 minutes of quiet wind-down time before naps and bedtime. She’s now a great sleeper - 8 until 8 every night with wakeups very rarely except when she’s ill. It did involve some crying as I stopped feeding her to sleep and she did NOT like that at first - but we were always there patting or stroking her until she went to sleep.

At some stage we will try the same approach with DS but I don’t feel ready to move him out yet and we need a few weeks where DH has a quiet period at work so he’s available to help.

Point is, as others have said you’ll get there sooner or later. Don’t let people pressure you into sleep training but don’t feel bad if you do go down that route. It’s not black and white - there’s a long way between co-sleeping forever and feeding to sleep whenever baby stirs and leaving them alone to cry all night, what works and you feel ok with will probably be somewhere in between.

Could you look into safe cosleeping? Its been a life saver for me, was recommended by my health visitor (NHS have guidance for professionals so they can discuss it with people now). Follow the safe sleep 7, there are also plenty of great resources from people like Happy Cosleeper, Lyndsey Hookway and Cosleepy on Instagram.
I know it's not for everyone but my little boy is EBF and we all get better sleep this way. I can function at work. I was worried little boy wouldn't sleep at nursery due to it but he adjusted really well.
There's no evidence formula helps babies sleep through and as adults we often wake for various reasons even when we are nice and full before bed!
Hope you find something that helps.

I can only go off my experience. My formula fed daughter has never had a day off nursery whereas all the breast fed babies around us seem to spend more time off than in!

Same goes for my NCT group. So many of the breastfed have been hospitalised due to various sicknesses. Maybe it's due to the antibodies you speak of not agreeing with them- who knows, I'm not a healthcare professional. The poor mites🥹

Antibodies disagreeing with them 🤣🤣🤣

That's hilarious.

I'm delighted your child hasn't been ill, ridiculous that you think it's becaus eyou formula fed. What nonsense.

I'm through the other side now (DC now 6 and 9) but it was absolutely relentless at the time. I BF mine until 6 months and then moved them into their own rooms. That meant DH could take a turn with night feeds. Bottles prepared ready to go in fridge which he just had to warm up. I didn't stop BF because of the sleep aspect as such, mine just got far too distracted on the boob by that age. But being on bottles meant we could share nights. On a couple of occasions I nipped off to the local Premier Inn for a sleep to catch up a bit!

Hmmm, you could “only go off your experience” or you could look at all the scientific evidence and medical guidelines that says you’re wrong.

Formula feeding is absolutely fine, no judgement at all whether people feed formula, combi or EBF. But don’t just make up your own evidence.

I feel your pain, we have a baby like this, I was on my knees especially since returning to work.

Last week we went down the sleep training (Ferber) route and we've just had two full nights sleep in a row. Life changing. I know it's not for everyone, we just weighed up the harm done by me not sleeping (mentally and physically driving etc). And appreciate also that when you're tired, sleep training can feel like an insurmountable task. We tried at 7 months and abandoned until now, because we just weren't sure if he was ill/hungry/teething. It took just shy of 4 months until we dared try again.

@Cmonluv yes of course. You are correct. It's all a choice. I'm sorry for my clumsy wording. I'm also sleep deprived up with a 9 week old baby so didn't phrase my reply well.

Sleep training (gentle method) did work so well for us and so I feel the need to pass on the advice. I too thought I could ride it out but I became so unwell physically and it probably would have gone that way mentally too had I not.

Solidarity to anyone with small ones making tough decisions on the best way to parent everyday!

Absolutely and sleep training when you have to is perfectly fine. However much leaving a baby to get used to not being responded to at night may not be ideal, far worse to have a mum who is too unwell to function! Apologies for being snippy.

My experience, and only that, is that I thought with my first I would EBF but to about 6 months not 12 and in the end low supply plus tongue tie intervened so I very very reluctantly had to mix feed. I battled on with the breast feeding, including at ungodly hours of night for ages in hindsight given it clearly wasn't going very well, but by around 5 months was tapering to mostly FF anyway. At this point we moved to a separate room and gently sleep trained, which basically just involved stopping night feeds.

Second time around was twins and having already surrendered on EBF once and sleep trained, I wasn't going to stress myself out over it second time round. So although I did Bf and in particular pump, it was mixed from the start and it was also very routine driven from the start.

All of mine have slept through from 4/5 months, the twins maybe even a bit before and remain extremely reliable sleepers years on. However I have no experience of BF an older baby.

DS was six before it was less than three wake ups a night from him.

Does he have ADHD? Only asking because my almost 6 yr old still wakes up to 3 times a night but has slept through a fair bit fro me age 3 and is in the referral process

My DC2 has just turned 1 and in the last year I have slept through the night perhaps once, depends how you define ‘through the night’ as he still woke up at 5:30am.

A typical night he will wake around 1 when he is easy to resettle then around 3 when he is not easy to resettle
this has been known to take 2+ hours. Then he is up for the day anywhere between 5-7 depending how long he was awake for at 3am.

I am on my knees, I can feel my temper with DS1 is unfairly short, the house is a tip and it’s all I can do to keep everyone fed and alive everyday.

The saving grace has always been he goes down very well
so we either have our evening or I can get an early night, but tonight for some reason he was awake until about 30 mins ago - crying and screaming. I held him for around 1.5 hours all in but he was just wide awake.

So in short no advice I’m afraid Just solidarity, DS1
was not like this.

ETA - he has been both breastfed and formula fed and his sleep has been shite from day 1.

My daughter only accepts me over night and most of the time in evening. Even after we switched to formula even after we removed all drinks overnight. When the sun is awake she happily accepts either of us.

Yes, that could happen of course. Might not though…

Yes it might not but so you know absolutely destroying it is to have false hope? The amount of people who told me my daughters sleep would be amazing on formula. I was utterly desperate when switching to formula and when it didn't result in improved sleep it was so much harder because of the well meaning people telling me formula would make her sleep through. It changed our lives during the day but we paid the price at night when it was actually worse and she went to waking every 20-30 minutes as formula caused horrendous reflux. She screamed like a junkie for more formula because it caused terrible pain and the only thing that made her better was formula which made her worse. This was all despite maxing out available reflux meds.

So to avoid the possibility of false hope, the OP should try… nothing?

Not at all but I do feel for women that can be railroaded into switching to formula on the promise of it magically improving sleep. I'm not saying this thread is railroading but pretty much every thread where there is someone with a older baby that isn't sleeping there will be a bunch of comments about "'needing' to switch to formula as it's absolutely necessary. Formula fed babies sleep through and breastfeed babies wake a billion of times". I had it in my own life and my friends had it too and those that did switch also found very minimal changes to sleep and now had more things added to their to do lists exhausting them more. As well as friends who have only formula fed and had long battles with sleep.

So I do raise my experience that formula isn't a magic cure to get a baby to sleep. I know there are others that have found formula to help. My nan was one. She formula fed or close to all of hers and they all slept through early. My dad slept through from 8 weeks/36 week gestation when corrected drinking carnation milk! His sisters formula fed their children and they both had one good sleeper and one bad sleeper!