Misguided Illusion Part III - Baby still not sleeping through by six months? Come and join us!

[Galena]

Link to previous thread [http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/sleep/851829-Misguided-Illusion-Part-II-Baby-still-not-sleeping-through-by here]

Well, we've now filled 2 threads! Time for a new one methinks...

Hopefully we'll all graduate soon.

ARGH! HERE!

Well, Skye's odd still. Sometimes she sleeps through, sometimes she wakes 3 or 4 times. Sometimes she goes back to sleep quickly with just a drink, no cuddles, sometimes she is awake for 1-2 hours.

I'm considering PUPD to get her to go to sleep in the evening without being cuddled.

Why is it that parenting seems so easy till you're doing it?!

Hello- just marking my place in your shiny new thread as in 3 weeks or so I expect I will be eligible to join. Unless DS suddenly magically starts sleeping one hundred percent better than he has done to date. Unlikely methinks... Good luck with your new thread - hope it brings much sleep- and see you in a few weeks!

hello i have never been here on this thread before but if u have a medal system (do you do you?) i deserve a gold i think .i still feed my 14m er 4-8 x a night
but only till august bank hol weekend
by hook or by crook night feeds will end
course she may still wake up i guess

Hello ladies - marking my place

We've had a good run of sleep from O recently - lots of sleeping through or only waking once at 10.30/11.00pm-ish which is AMAZING.

I'm sure it won't last but I'm enjoying it while it does.

I still find it incredible that some people have been having a regular full night's sleep since their baby was 6 months old or even younger

Welcome such and tired, and welcome back Bicnod.

such, in the nicest possible way, I hope we don't see you in the next few weeks (although you're welcome to join us earlier if you'd like!).

tired, DEFINITELY a gold medal for you. When DD, Skye was night-weaned at just over 12 months, she still woke through the night, but we simply offered water, and while she wasn't terribly impressed, she drank it when she was thirsty. Helped that she takes a dummy (although that'll be a whole other battle to deal with soon)!

Bicnod pleased to hear your great sleep! My friend and I were chatting today about sleep and one of her friends has a baby who has always slept through from about 4 weeks . HOWEVER, she's now 2 and has never eaten a proper meal - she eats crisps and drinks chocolate milk, but no proper food. I guess everything's a tradeoff.

Thanks for starting a new thread Galena. It's DS's first birthday today. He even took his first solo steps in front of both me & DH, both sets of grandparents & great-grandad. The boy knows how to perform! Nights are still very dodgy. Tends to wake once before 4am, and then from 4am he's really difficult to settle and then usually BF & co-sleep from about 4.30/5. He's also not going down terribly well. He was incredibly tired after his birthday lunch today and still exhausted after his nap so I got him down for another. He went down OK at bedtime which is the first time in ages (usually lots of faffing and standing up in the cot), but DH is up with him settling again now. Ho hum.....
Such - what Galena said
Bicnod - totally agree, just cannot get my head around the idea that one might go to bed and then stay there until morning. Just can't imagine it.

tired - tend not to BF until 4.30/5 now. He does wake less, but I think he was ready to do that and that's why we feed less (rather than the other way round). Not that I want to worry you but it does seem harder to get him back down when he wakes though.... Maybe DD will be different [hopeful emoticon]
Back to work as well next week .....

carve WOW! Happy birthday minicarve! And well done on solo steps! Skye's not even nearly there yet, although she is now pulling up to stand like a pro (and covered in bruises from where she falls over and bashes her head on something!)

I just tried the PUPD and Shh/Pat combo and Skye was asleep in 15 minutes! Wow! I know it won't continue, but WOW anyway.

Hello ladies! I used to come on here about 8 months ago when DD was 8 months old. We graduated around 11 months and have had a pretty good run until chicken pox 2 months ago. Since then DD won't go down unless cuddled and sung to and then if she wakes, which is 8 times out of 10, she will not go back in her cot and I end up on the sofa bed with her beside me. If I try to move her she wakes and clings on so to keep the peace (stop her waking hubby, brother up stairs and my mum and dad down stairs) this is the way we have carried on. I rarely feed her though the last couple of nights I have as she's kind of demanded it. We had a little teething episode but now I'm sure she is fine. I'd like her to go back to relaxing in her cot with me reading and her having a drink and a dummy but I'm quite terrified of the screaming! I know I need to act soon before this becomes too much of a habit. Help! What should I do?

Hi jolly. Have you had a look at the PUPD method? It seems to be a technique which avoids the full on screaming, which could wake the world, while encouraging them to self settle. I've just started a thread on it and someone's suggested reading the sleep interview and it's REALLY interesting. I expected awful things tonight and it was really not as bad as I thought it would be. 15 mins!!!

Galena is that pick up put down? I'll take a look. DD very quiet so far, just waiting anxiously for midnight - 1am which is when it usually starts. Just been reading about gradual retreat too which I think I'll try sometime....

Yeah - Pick up put down. Gets her going to sleep in the cot - the key, apparently, which would avoid the need for gradual retreat, is that as they go into their dozing off state, before they are fully asleep, you need to leave the room so they don't rely on your presence. We'll see! At the moment I can't read her sleepiness quite well enough.

Hi,
Newbie here. DS is 6 1/2 months and wakes up anything between one and 5-6 times a night.
Our routine is 6.30pm: dinner of veg/carbs and proteines + fruits, a quiet play after, 7pm bedtime with a dreamfeed and then wake up at 10.30, 12am, 2am, 3.30, 4.30 and 5am. Most of the time, he just needs his dummy but we can play this game for 5mn to 1hour. He also want a cuddle which finish in a tantrum when put back into his cot.
I'm back to work full time and wake up at 6am on weekday. It's hard but i'm now use to it!
DH helps too during the night but often works until 2am.
I want to try the Pantley solution but I'm soo tired that I can't be bothered

Welcome Guernsey. Sorry you have to join us. I know what you mean about being so tired you can't be bothered to do anything. We were like that until it got even worse (!) at which point we were willing to try anything. Whilst Skye still doesn't sleep through consistently, we're getting there, and now she tends to wake 0, 1 or sometimes 2 times and very seldom more.

I can't imagine how hard it must be to have to work a full day on little sleep, so well done you!

Hi Galena I've read your thread about pupd. I hope you'll graduate again soon.
I'm quite interested to try this method at the same time that I take the dummy off him.
Night wasn't too bad, Only got up 3 times, 10.30, 12am and and 1.30am then we all slept until 5.30am.

My six-month-old wakes 6-8 times a night.

Um. That's all.

Impressed with the brevity Sappholit. You must be shattered.
Guernsey we've done some Mrs Pantley stuff although I think Bicnod is rather more the expert here. We did the gradual retreat after I did the pull-off thing with BF. It certainly hasn't worked in a nice linear way for us, especially as we had a very long bout of teething/illness and other disruption after starting. Lots of forwards/backwards. Over time (about 4 months), things have improved but I guess it may be the time rather than the techniques. Certainly felt better to feel we were doing something though.

Thanks for the b'day wishes Galena. I realised the other day that often I end up doing PUPD when DS fights going down. Doesn't seem to work as well as you describe for Skye though. He gets a bit wound up and then after about half an hour collapses on my shoulder from exhaustion and doesn't have the energy to get back up once I put him down. Not sure that's quite how its supposed to work . Oh and he's bloody heavy....
He's teething again at the moment so not a good night last night - he was up for ages at one point and BF was the only thing that worked in the end (why it took an hour and a half for me to cotton on to that I don't know )
Hoping tonight is better....

Welcome Sappholit

carve I think most of the methods are used by parents naturally at some point. You just sometimes need someone to point out that what you're doing is valid and give it a name!

Well, PUPD didn't work quite so well tonight - 45 minutes to get her down. I was so fed up as I really didn't need that today (time of the month and all that). Last night she had a very unsettled hour too which DH dealt with. And she woke at 6 which is horribly early compared with her recent 8:00. (I know I shouldn't be complaining, but it feels painful at times!) However, she cut a new tooth this evening, so maybe she's got a reason!

Hello, can I join. DD is 15mths and not slept through the night as yet depending. she is still bf and feeds between 1 and 4 times in a night. She is notoriously hard to settle down to sleep. Anyone know if 2 year old molars can start this early, she is doing all of her normal teething behaviour but has all of her teeth bar those molars??!! Any way hi to all and hope you don't mind me joining in.

Hello, can I join too? DS is 10m and hasn't slept through yet at all. He's still bf at least once between 12-5 and usualy twice. Atm he also has tonsillitis so is needing to be fed every hour and doesn't want to sleep in between. Am starting to find it difficult to cope...

hi all,

not gone through and read it yet, but it's time admit that I have a non-sleeping baby. Mainly marking place, LO generally after midnight wakes every 2 hours and is two weeks away from 6 months.

azazello just caught yours and am ed, I keep thinking it will all be better by then and now I've just seen yawningmonters post .

I need to go lie down

OK, have now gone and caught up. This thread already is really reassuring. My brother has had a DD who is four months younger than ours, and she's slept through from 3 weeks. Before that was only waking once a night and she was being BF at that point.

Right, am actually off to bed now [disclaimer I live in the US so have not been up all night]

Hi yawning, azazello and Climber. Pleased to meet you, although sorry you have to join us.

yawning, I would guess that her molars may well be coming - or at least moving. Was she early with her other teeth (DD is 16 months and has teeth 4 and 5 have just broken through).
azazello, it's REALLY tough when they're poorly, isn't it? Any routines we have tend to go out of the window when she's ill and it is hard to cope. Hopefully the meds will start working soon though and there will be more sleep all round.
Climber,don't worry about anyone else's baby - I had friends whose babies slept through early, but actually they either weren't and the friends were just saying they were, or something would happen and they stopped sleeping through the night.

For those newbies who don't know my story, Skye was born at 27 weeks and is now 16 months old. She had a 4 week period of sleeping through pretty consistently at about 11 months, but has been very poorly for most of the first half of this year, including 4 hospital readmissions. Every time we were getting somewhere with sleep we'd go back into hospital and it would all go to pot again.

We've tried CC and are now trying PUPD. Until last week she had been either bf or cuddled to sleep every night. She is beginning to settle better in the cot in the evening though.

The last 2 nights she's had a quick wake at about 10pm - just needing a quick drink of water and dummy, and has then slept through till morning, so hopefully we're getting somewhere again.

Anyway, here's to sleepy babies and quick solutions!

I'm talking to an infant sleep specialist this evening, to see if she has any bright ideas about helping my 6-m-o settle in the evenings and wake less frequently than every hour.

She doesn' offer 'no sleep, no fee' so I'm not counting my chickens or whatever you say.