will i ever sleep again?!

[waiting4bambino]

this is my nightly routine with my 6mth old - is it normal?!

Approximately 8pm, she goes down in her cot, i'll go up to bed about 9pm, just as i am dropping off, she will cry out and i go to comfort her etc, and when she goes back off and i get back into bed, just as i am about to drop off, she wakes again and we repeat the process!! Sometimes this can go on for all of the night! She has a feed at midnight and we get up at 5am - her choice not mine!!

How can i get her to sleep for longer periods and later into the morning?! Am i asking the impossible?

What do you do to comfort her? How long does it take to resettle her?
Have you tried co-sleeping?

To comfort her i generally just put my hand on her chest and keep it there until she goes off again, if she is crying too much i will pick her up and rock her. I never leave her to cry. Unsurprisingly, as soon as i pick her up, she stops crying! My parents say that i have spoilt her! We have been co-sleeping for about the first 4mths of her life, as it was the same situation with the moses basket and I was exhausted. I just cant see any way around this!

sounds like cosleeping is the quick fix, although it can be a hard habit to undo if it's not something you want long term. i have been a reluctant cosleeper b/c at the end of the day i just want sleep and that seems to be the only way i get it.

good luck. sleep deprivation is hell. bearing that in mind it doesn't exactly make one think very clearly so go for baby steps when it comes to making changes and having expectations of how your lo should behave.

If you have discovery channel at 10 am and 10.30 am today - channel 255 I think and you are around to read this, the Baby Whisperer has 2 episodes dealing with exactly this.

That's if the baby whisperer is something you are keen to watch or take tips from.

Tricky one when she is still so young. I used stay with my ds until he slept. When he was about 11 months my neighbours said 'you can't do that all the time, leave him to settle on his own'. The first night I went in every 10 minutes while he cried for about an hour, the next night same routine - he cried for about 1/2 hour, the third night was about 10 minutes and that was that. Cracked in 3 nights. But it is so tough to do. Also at her age she might be teething etc etc.
From reading on here and listening to other peoples experiences in RL - sleeping regiemes generally take less than a week but obviously your gut feeling is to comfort your little one and you need to take the steps you are happy with.

I had the same experience with dd, I co slept with her, still do. Co - slept with ds until he was 2.6 and he then went to his own bed fine. Will do same with dd after we have got round to decorating her bedroom.

Good sleep is so important to me, thats why I co - sleep. Ds sleeps really well. No probs since we moved him into his room when he was 2 and half. He never comes into our bed, which is just as well as dd is with us now!!

With both my dc, their sleeping got a lot better at about 7-8 months when they were eating a lot more solid food. So maybe there's light just around the corner!!