so when did your LO start sleeping through the night?

[maybelater]

and how did you do it??

"After all surely everybody does a bit of 'sleep training' during the day when we know they're not hungry etc. "

hahahahahhahahha - DS1 wouldn't sleep in the day either for love nor money

What, not even as a newborn?

You are beginning to sound like my mother, who has some very strange recollections of my babyhood. I never slept during the day and was speaking in sentences at 9 months, apparently

DS - 3 months
DD - not yet, no way (she's 4 months)

i think we were bloody lucky with DS.

no not even as a newborn - the only place he would sleep was in my arms half attached to the breast.

we NEVER intended to co-sleep (that's what COTS are for and why we'd bought a rather nice cot for him to sleep in) but he would not sleep. When he wasn't sleeping in my arms he was screaming.

Trust me - this isn't "clouded memory" - this is fact. I remember those first 6 months as being pure torture for me. He wouldn't even sleep on his first night in the hospital and as I was having trouble getting in and out of the bed (had a CS) and was having to buzz so often to get help with getting him out of the bedside crib to comfort/feed him they ended up rearrangeing furniture around my bed slightly to put him in bed with me !!!

oh and as an aside he didn't walk until he was 18 1/2 months or talk until he was 2

(he's very stubborn - rather like his mother

FAQ, my ds was like that too. He cried for about the first 12 weeks unless he was latched on and rarely slept anywhere else other than latched on to me and that included at night time too.

I truly believe that he still has a need to be close to me rather than it being a habit and there is the school of thought that needs that are met will eventually go away.

When we did try CC, yes it worked, but the slightest little thing meant that we had to re-do it, something that both he and I liked doing less and less. I used to find my milk let down something terrible while he was crying, and I felt that my body was telling me that I should be with my baby, not enforcing separation because society thinks it is the norm.

7 month old DS sleeps thru the night but the wrong part of the night. Settles brilliantly at 7pm by himself and sleeps til 3.30am without a peep but then likes to wake up and won't go back to sleep without milk even though he's not hungry. Have tried everything from sssh pat to CC but nothing works except milk. Poor thing has slept thru 3 times and given me hope that we were turning a corner, but alas....

DS1 - 10 months

DS2 - 9 months

DS1 - 3 and still getting up in the night to come into our bed.
DD2 - 5 months and has been sleeping through roughly from 9.30 - 7.30/8ish since about 4 weeks although there has been the very odd exception where she has woken up earlier.

I think it's just luck. Some babies sleep through, others don't.

dd from 5 wks, bottle fed (difficulties with milk & tongue tie)

Sleeps for 12h without a peep and always wakes up smily. Makes me want to have a 2nd, no doubt this one will then turn out to be a monkey

cote
you really are sounding nasty now

I knew you had it in for me but do you really have to do it to anyone else?

FAQ- my DS2 wouldn't sleep in the day until he was gone 6mths too. It was bizarre and torturous as he was quite clingy and i couldn't get anything done. And it's def not clouded memory here either- he's only 14mths now.

Cotedazur, why is it so difficult for you to accept that what worked for you might not necessarily work for other people? that not all billions of babies worldwide behave like your own??

do you really need the validation of a bunch of strangers (which you seem to hold in such contempt, anyway) to know you have done the right thing for your particular circumstances?

I am glad your dd or ds sleeps so well, but that doesnt make you a better mother than anyone else with poor sleepers, and it certainly doesnt give you the right to be so belligerant about it.

happy new year to everyone, by the way!

FAQ - DD was exactly like that in the first couple of months. The only place she would sleep was in my arms, attached to my breast.

The "nasty" person that I am I got her a dummy and reclaimed by breast (and my sanity).

What I was trying to say was that babies do have a need to sleep much longer than adults. (coming from '6 hours unbroken sleep means sleeping through the night' claim) What I understand from your posts is that your DS did, too. He just didn't want to sleep on his own. But he would sleep once in your arms and on your breast.

NewQueen - Who are you and why do you think I have a special grudge against you?

Here, have a ticker and a hug. New year and all that.

i tend to feel that babies need help learning how to sleep - they have to learn how to latch on properly, then how to eat solids, wave/clap/crawl/walk/talk and all those other developmental things too. i read somewhere that very young babies 'forget' how to fall asleep - hence when they are so tired, but screaming - they've forgotten how to drop off, is the theory.

i read ferber's 'solve your child's sleep problems' after DD starting waking 3 times a night around 6 months, and i also started loosely following the gina ford schedule for day sleeps around this time (previously DD had day sleeps if she fell asleep randomly).

it took a few days to settle in, but everything fell in to place with eating/sleeping once i had a plan of action. DD needs her routine, she wanted to sleep (is my belief) but did not know how to. I was trying to be all casual, but my feeling is she got into bad habits and needed to be set on the right course.

at 9 months, DD now sleeps 12 hours 7pm-7am, apart from occasional night terrors, where me or DH will have to go in and sing to her, hold her hand, be physically there with her till she settles down again. usually about 2 hours...

DD1 8 weeks (exclusively BF BTW)
DD2 4 months.

Yes, I know. And yes, I do appreciate it. Very much.

The sleep book is great (Dr Marc Weissbluth). I whole heartedly recommend it.

DD2 also exclusively BF at that age.
Don't agree with all these 'experts' who say babies don't sleep thru until on solids.

yea at night he would sleep for an hour on the breast, wake up, I'd have to swap sides, he'd suckle for an 1/2hr to an hour, (wriggling around and keeping me awake in the process lol), then sleep for an hour, then repeat ad naseaum.

"sleep" during the day in my arms was about 30 minutes (if we were lucky)

I spent a fortune on dummy's too (actually I spent a lot of money on stuff that never got used for DS1 ) different shapes and types to try and get him to take one - sod that he wasn't having any of it.

I was so sleep deprived by the time he was 6 months, and we'd moved into our own (rented) house where he could have his own room. Then we did the CC, we did it at the weekend worked really quickly - and I slept more in that weekend than I had in 6 months LOL

, I'd seen friends on the Friday, I saw them again on the Monday and they were very sympathetic and kind to me, apparently I looked totally drained and they thought it hadn't worked............actually I'd had so much sleep (well just "normal" nights sleep actually) that my body couldn't cope

In your place, I probably wouldn't have any other children. Already, it took us 3 years to forget the horror that was DD's first six months.

She did take the dummy, though, which probably saved my life. And hers . She loved the dummy so much that had to have one in her mouth, one in each hand, and several sprinkled around the cot until she was 2.

well DS2 was the first of 2 "surprises" that we had after DS1 - he wasn't exactly planned and I had nightmares when pg about him being like DS1 was.

FAQ - your firstborn sounds an awful lot like ours (in fact, I think yours might be the first case I've heard that is actually worse!). But we were complete idiots and had fertility treatment to have our second. No fool like an old fool eh? Luckily DD2 seems to be a bit calmer than her big sister (fingers crossed). It was touch and go for a while though, and I was very scared that I would have to go through it all again - with a toddler!

"After all surely everybody does a bit of 'sleep training' during the day when we know they're not hungry etc. "

hahahahahhahahha - DS1 wouldn't sleep in the day either for love nor money
................

Yes but he was a PFB wasn't he?. When you've got 3 small ones, the baby often has to settle himself because you physically can't stick a boob in every time they cry.

And I include babywearing as a form of sleeptraining - they soon nod off and a vertical hold helps with colic.

Buckets - nothing to do with PFBness

DS3 who was also breastfed in the early days was exactly the same, and no nothing got done, and my other DS's became very self reliant and just like DS1 he would scream when I put him down - not sleep........

Thankfully he did grow out of that quite quickly (though not without a couple of months of co-sleeping - much less restlesss that DS1 had been though so a lot easier for me to sleep). During the day he did tolerate the sling a little, and I had friends around who would hold him for me quite frequently too. (DS1 would sream if he wasn't feeding regardless of who was holding him and hated the sling with a passion)