Doing 'everything' wrong...

[Scarlett175]

well the title says it all really!

DD is 20 weeks and a joy :)

BUT at present we are BF'ing to sleep at night and for naps-
putting in cot asleep as she struggles to settle herself and have gone from sleeping for 6-8 hour stretches up to 13 weeks old to sleeping for 3 hours at night (8-11pm) then to be honest I struggle to even get her back in the cot.... typically we then co-sleep from midnight to 7/8am which hubby is not overly keen on. During the night she latches on and off but I would guess at least 3-4 times..

For naps we have always laid together on bed and slept 10-11.30 and 3-4.30pm, again BF'ing to sleep.

Now she has occasionally fallen asleep on DH shoulder, regularly falls asleep in baby bjorn/carseat/pram, but for short periods of time and none of these methods work at night-time of course. But she can fall asleep without me??

Have read NCSS, but am unsure where to start when naps/night time both a struggle. Anyone in similar predicament??

I had similar but babygirl had a cold. Perhaps start with feeds. I would get into a 2.5-3 hourly feeding cycle in the day. Doesnt have to be precise. If she wants more than that try feeding til shes done, 5-10min break, feed again same side and see if that keeps her satisfied for longer.

You may be in this situation because she is too distracted to feed in the day now shes a little older and catching up at night. If you'd prefer night to be for sleeping then take time out in the day and feed her somewhere comfortable and quiet and go for getting lots of milk into her at regular intervals.

Take a few days to experiment, write down when you are feeding etc. If she is still feeding round the clock call a breast feeding advice line. I have been breastfeeding for 7 months now and the two times I called them they sorted me out. I know without that help I would have turned to bottles convinced that BF is too hard, I dont have enough mik for my big girl etc etc.

Once shes not constantly snacking you are then clear to sort out her sleep patterns.

Then maybe try resettling her or making sure you are allowing her to resettle to make sleeps a bit longer. In other words dont immediately touch her if she cries out in her sleep. Babies often have a bit of a grizzle as they get to sleep and between different bouts of sleep. I dont mean CC in any sense, just look at your watch and let a minute pass and maybe she will go back to sleep. If not give her 30 seconds of patting and again leave it for a minute. Or something like that. You may find that rather than comforting her when she wakens you have actually been interrupting her sleep. Thats what I realized I had been doing when babygirl was 3-4 months

You're not doing anything wrong! It's only wrong if it's not working for you and your family. If you feel you need more sleep because of your LO's sleeping pattern (and indeed, your DH isn't happy with it), then it's time to try and change things.

You could have been describing my own DD, now 7mo! She's just starting to improve her overnight sleep without needing me to feed her back every time she wakes up.

Basically, I had to leave her to learn to self-settle, instead of feeding her to sleep each time. The first couple of bed-times when I put her down awake and didn't respond when she protested weren't much fun, but within 25 mins, she had fallen asleep. She didn't go into melt-down, but she did a fair bit of protest crying.

The effect was immediate. In less than a week, her overnight awakenings have gone from a minimum of 5 to 1-3. And bed-times have become quick and easy. She usually goes down (awake) without a peep, and gets herself off to sleep within 15 mins or so.

However, that basically qualifies as sleep-training mixed in with CC (something I'm not 100 per cent comfortable with) and isn't advisable on LOs less than 6months.

The naps I find much harder to teach her to self-settle, the reason is she's not as tired and day sleep is different from night sleep, so I'm still feeding her to sleep in those situations, although just starting to gently ease her towards self-settling there too. (No point in leaving the protest crying, it goes on too long and doesn't tend to result in longer naps).

So I would say, do what you can with the naps, but don't push for radical changes there (but be aware of when is a good time to put her down for a nap... AngelDog and Igglybluff have a lot of good info on that sort of thing).

Good luck!

thanks both for your responses...

Firsttimer you raise a good point re her milk- at the mo she latches on and off all night (sometimes I don't even notice) so I have been trying to get more into her in the day but she is definitely distracted at the moment, more interested in anything but food!!

Inmaculada- I have been happily doing everything wrong so far!! but DH really does not sleep well with her in the bed, is very paranoid about rolling on her, and whilst it started out as a last resort to placate her is now happening every night.... the feeding to sleep thing seems to be being less effective anyway so I may start having to put her down more awake.... think she is teething this week so not ideal for changes but will re-read NCSS and prepare to tackle it in the next week or so....

I also should have said you arent doing everything wrong. I have been happily going with whatever suited us...including lots of feeding to sleep, sleeping on top of us etc ONly problem is she keeps changing and suddenly you are on mumsnet trying to figure out how to tackle something new.