My baby sleeps eight hours - until 4/5am...

[Bossykate]

During his first six weeks my now seven week old son was sleeping from 7/8pm until 4/5am. For the past week we have been waking him for a feed between 10 and 11pm in the hope that he will sleep 8 hours from that point. However, he is still waking between 4 and 5. Could we/should we do anything more to encourage him to drop the 4/5am feed at this stage and if so how? Alternatively, should we stop waking him at 10pm? I wake him for a feed at 7am regardless of what time he woke in the night. I would be very grateful for any help and advice you could give on this issue.

Thanks in advance.

Jg - not it isn't a lot. DS is a month older and he goes to bed at 730, gets up at 7 (when we are lucky a bit later) and has a 2 hour nap at 1pm.
One thing you might try is to put her to bed at least 30 minutes earlier.... contrary to what you might think that doesn't mean that she will wake up 30 minutes earlier. What is probably happening is that your daughter is absolutely nackered at 8PM and falls into a very deep sleep.
Again... this point from GF is worth emphasising : "Falling asleep through exhaustion, they tend to go into a very deep sleep in the earlier part of the night, waking fully refreshed and raring to go at 5am. I have solved this problem on a number of occasions but it does take a great deal of determination. When they wake up and get out of bed, I take them straight back to their bed, apart from saying schh schh it night time I never get involved in conversation. I usually have to repeat this procedure dozens of times each morning for a couple of weeks until they realise that they do not get up until the light is on. With some I would sit on a chair next to the bed until they went back to sleep even if it took an hour. I can't stress the importance of being consistent with taking them back to bed and not getting into a conversation or putting on the light. "

Katyw, I (personnaly) believe that your son is sleeping too much in the morning and not enough in the afternoon because if I read you correctly, he gets up at 0830 and has a nap at around 1100 -1130 ? for 1.5 hours.
If you tried to re-schuffle his day to be up at say 8 AM (if that is what would suit you best), than put him down for a long nap at 1PM and then to bed at 8PM LATEST... see how that goes. If you believe he needs 2 naps, than he should have a SHORT one -30 min max - at 10 AM and his long nap after his lunch. I must admit that I am recommending a Gina Ford routine to you (I don't want all the credit or all the blame ;-))
My experience of recommending GF routines to parents who have done it very differently up to that point is that their child falls into the routine very easily, usually in a matter of days.
So it may be worth it. I must stress that babies on routines will also have times where they wake up at 530 AM for a while so I will not guarantee that it will resolve the problem for ever but usually these phases do not last.

Thanks Pupice, I was always a bit concerned that if she went to bed earlier she would simply wake up earlier. She never seems particulalry tired in the evening (perhaps with both me and dh working she is simply very happy to see us) however when 8.00pm comes and we suggest that she says goodnight she is very happy to do so. I'll try the later bedtime and let you know how we get on.

Jg... do you mean the EARLIER bedtime (not later) ?
I notice that we often do not realise how tired our kids are...

My 19 month old son has started to wake
regularly in the night. Given a bottle of milk
he will zonk straight out and wake up at 7am.
If we hold out and let him cry, he gets
seriously angry until we finally give in. He
goes to bed around 7:30pm after a busy day
at nursery. He sleeps between 1 and 2 hours
in the day, usually after lunch. He's not a
great eater and has been getting
progresively more picky in the evenings
and seems to be hanging out for his bedtime bottle.
Any suggestions on how to break the cycle ?

Nicolette, it does seem tricky. My initial thought was that your child might be aware that he can get away with whatever he wants. As you confess to going to him in the night or that he eats less and less in the evening (presumably because he knows that you will give him a big bottle of milk). Having said that I have read that at around 18 months old, children start to eat less (I have not found this to be significantly true with my 23mo).
The bottle probably isn't a problem but the night wakings might be.
If you don't want to be using control crying (which works very well according to those who have done it), what about giving him water in his bottle ? He will soon realise that it isn't worth waking up for ?!

I've done controlled crying and it categorically did not work for us! Seeing my daughter reduced to a quivering, sobbing, vomiting heap was good for neither of us. Although she is very sociable (she's 5 now) she is still paranoid about being left alone and those never-to-be-forgotten nights of controlled crying pass though my mind as possibly being the cause.......

At last!!! Suedonim- thank you. I'm so glad someone has finally made the point that controlled crying is by no means for everyone. No offence to anyone who finds it works for them- that's great. I've found it useful at some points and not at all at others. I've got friends who tried it and wound up with a situation like yours, Suedonim. They weren't "softies" who let their kids away with whatever they wanted. It just didn't work for them. One of my boys doesn't like going to bed and needs both gentle reassurance and firmness. When he protests he's sometimes "trying it on" and sometimes in need of cuddles and soothing because he's scared of separating for the night. I try to work out which and deliver accordingly. We found this worked for us when they were younger babies too- trying to work out WHY they were upset- it WAS sometimes because they were tired and needed to be left to sleep but not always. We've been lucky with their sleeping. I really hate the idea of using controlled crying for a young baby (under 6 months or so). Their cries are their only way of communicating at that age and I don't think it's necessarily positive to try and "control" that communication, even if it isn't always what we want to hear. This is just my personal view- I've read lots of posts that hail controlled crying for all ages as a sanity saver and I'm all for sane happy mothers!

Scrummymummy, you're not supposed to use controlled crying on babies under 6 months old. As far as I know, there are no experts or books suggesting this.
I think alot of people get the wrong end of the stick about controlled crying, they hear about it and think that it is simply about leaving their child to cry it out, which is not what it is about at all. The first time we used it, I went into my son every 5 mins, as we had never left him to cry before. Gradually, I left him for 7 mins and then 10 mins & I have never left him cry for longer than 15 mins before going to check on him.
I'm not entirely sure what my point is here. Maybe one of the Mumsnet panel of experts should do an advice section about it.

Nicolette, just a thought, could your son be teething? we found that our Ds who has always had a VERY healthy appetite did stop eating for a few days when he was teething - particularly with the molars.

HTH

Controlled crying is not for me either. I will try every other method I can think of instead of using this one. I could not bear to leave ds crying and crying, getting hot and even more upset and totally ignore him. Anyway I cannot see anything wrong in cuddling your baby to sleep, it is lovely for both of us.

Joe1, see my post a few down from yours. I would hate people to think controlled crying, which can work so well, is about leaving your baby for hours uncomforted.

Bugsy, I didnt think, from the postings I have read on Mumsnet, that you do leave them just crying with the controlled crying method. I just couldnt bring myself to walk back out the door while ds is crying behind me.

Joe1 I too could barely bring myself round to controlloed crying but exhaustion drove me to it. What worked for me was going in initially as soon as dd cried, then leaving her for 1 min, 2 mins, 4 mins etc, increasing by 2 mins at a time. The longest I left her was 10 mins after which she did settle down. The next night 5 mins max was all that it took.....you don't have to leave her for an initial 10 mins in which she gets really distressed for controlled crying to work.

Suedomun, I too have found that it can take only 10 minutes or so of heavy crying to induce vomiting. Bye bye supper and milk, and hello cot full of yukky sick.

Both my sons as babies and toddlers have been prone to this. I think controlled crying definitely has a use. I would never knock it but mostly chose not to use it - my son's sleeping problems have been fairly minor considering what some mothers here have had to put up with.

With son number two, I decided very early on not to give him milk just before bed. This was to encourage him to eat solids for supper. He gets a drink of water prior to being put in his cot. He may or may not wake up for milk later. If I have to use controlled crying, ie if he won't go to sleep, even if he is tired - happens once every six weeks or so - I know he is less likely to be sick.

From what I've read about controlled crying, going in to see your child at regular intervals is mainly for the parents benefit. It doesn't really help the child because a baby has no sense of time and five minutes may just as well be five hours to them. It also strikes me that success with controlled crying perhaps depends more on the child's personality than the technique itself.

I also feel that CC can undermine a parents confidence, if it doesn't work. The books seem to offer a 100% surefire way of getting your baby to sleep, then when it fails, seek to blame the parent, by saying they're not implementing it properly. That's my take, as a 'failed' CC-er, anyway!

I don't deny that CC works for some babies, and indeed I'm delighted it's enabled mums and dads to get a decent night's sleep, but it's unfair to parents to lead them to believe it always works.

I have to agree with what people have said re controlled crying being only useful for some parents and lets face it its not really in the interest of the child is it? He's just upset and wants comforting by his carer - sometimes I think people read too much into children's actions e.g. "he's doing it on purpose" - well probably, but his purpose isn't to make you miss out on the last 5 mins of Eastenders, he's just upset, scared, in pain and can't tell you any other way... What is cc teaching them? I think it purely makes them work out that Mum or Dad isn't going to come when they call, so its certainly easier for the parents then isn't it? Not to have a child who cries all the time, to have a child who learns to be obedient, what's that Victorian phrase I'm looking for? Erm...that's it, 'seen but not heard'. Oh very good idea you must agree, don't want any of that new fangled self-expression breeds self-confidence nonsense, keep them in their place that's what I say...

(Sorry for sarcasm (lowest form of wit and all) but am feeling that way out today and haven't had a dig at anything on here for oooo...days!)

Hi Lizzer, I appreciate your sentiments but I'm afraid I don't agree. Our son was 15 months before we tried controlled crying, because I'd never heard of it and because I was absolutely desperate & to be honest so was he. He was awake every night for between an hour and two hours from 2 - 4am. It was impossible to get him to go to sleep. He was happy to sit in my lap but he wouldn't sleep in our bed, he wouldn't sleep with me in the spare room and if I put him back in his cot he would howl. He wasn't hungry or thirsty as he would gag if I tried to give him milk or water and he wasn't wet either.
Controlled crying was hard work. I turned the light on in our bedroom and watched the clock & went in every 5 mins. The first night he cried and whinged on and off for an hour and a half, which is about the same time he would have been awake for, the second night we repeated the procedure for about 40 mins and the third night I only had to go in once. He is now 25 months old and we have not had serious night-time wakings since then.
For me, it really was not a case of him being seen and not heard or interrupting my television viewing time. It was a genuine desire to ensure that he got a decent night's sleep (& obviously me too).
I really don't think that most parents who genuinely follow a controlled crying programme are doing it to make their lives easier. It is one of the most testing things I have ever done. If anyone knows of a less stressful method of breaking a bad sleeping habit, I would love to hear it.

Yes Lizzer there is a benefit for parents when controlled crying works - we really enjoyed the first decent night's sleep in over four months! It did also stop us from wandering around like zombies during the daytime and meant that we could be more patient with ds because we were not so tetchy from lack of sleep.

We eventually tried controlled crying when ds was about 15 months old and, like a lot of people, were amazed that within three days, ds was asleep within ten minutes without ANY crying and slept through until the morning. Ds seemed to enjoy himself more during the daytime as he was not exhausted from lack of sleep.

Although it was definately worth it for our family, I think that you have to be approaching breaking point before trying it - dh and I sat and cuddled eachother for comfort for the first night when we had no idea how long the crying would last - it was really, really awful sitting and listening to him cry and not just go and comfort him straight away.

Fair point from both of you, but I have heard the 'oh just leave him crying otherwise he'll think you're soft' type of comments far too often, and usually aimed at mothers with babies of a very young age, I think I remember one of 5 weeks who was getting this treatment. I know fine well that when used properly it has no detremental affects on the child but of course like everything it is open to abuse in the wrong hands...

As others have pointed out, I think "controlled crying" means many things to many people. My understanding is that it is not picking your child up when s/he is crying, but instead comforting by patting on the head, rubbing the chest, saying comforting words etc., leaving the room and coming in every five/ten minutes to reassure. In terms of experts not recommending this below 6m, well actually the HV on mumsnet has recommended this for a 3m old baby. I've just been to the page to check but the link to archived questions isn't working. Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure of this, as I printed it out to show to our local HV, who has also recommended controlled crying for our 4m old, to my surprise. We are not currently doing it - but are seriously thinking about it in the absence of any other advice on this. If anyone has another approach I'd be really interested!

I wouldn't care to use CC on a small baby. There are plenty of other ways to get a baby off to sleep, such as bed-sharing, rocking, feeding, a dummy, playing soothing music, or good old pacing the floor. Something that we used with one of ours was a womb music tape, which I don't think anyone else has mentioned. It has to be used within 10 weeks of birth but had an amazing effect on her. Sadly, it didn't work on No4 - rather like CC!

I agree with you, Suedonim & Lizzer. IMO little babies just need endless love and patience, not control. Also, once the sleepless nights with tiny ones draw to a close, you can look back and miss those odd tired times when you paced up and down your hallway with two warm bundles of baby, singing "The Quarter Master's Stores" for the seventeenth time... Or drifted in and out of sleep with a baby either side of you and your partner curled at your feet!

Suedonim and Scummymummy
I'd be interested to know if you had problems later with "bad" habits that you then had to break? e.g. getting baby to sleep in his/her own room, not going to sleep without being walked etc? I don't have an agenda for asking, I'm just curious. I have read that it's better not to start something that you wouldn't want to be doing when your baby is say 12/15m - when it would presumably be much more traumatic for them to adapt to something new. Did they just start going to sleep on their own after a while?

by the way, i am not advocating cc for a small baby. it's just that someone mentioned that it's not recommended by experts for babies below 6m, and as i said our hv recommended it for our situation even though our baby is only 4m.