Battle to get 4 mo to sleep in evenings - enforce or go with the flow?

[Bumperlicious]

Dd2 is 4 mo. It has always been a battle to get her down in the evenings. About a month ago I started taking her upstairs between 6 & 7 and trying to get her down, rarely succeeding before 8.30. It's hit and miss. Tonight after feeding till 8 she was still wide awake. Sat her up for a bit. Tried to feed her to sleep. She flatly refused feeding so I put her in her hammock & dh has just been rocking her. He has finally got her up after 15 mins of yelling but is still upstairs as I have been trying to follow the advice of preserving night time etc.

But I am sitting here wondering if I should continue battling with her and just go with the flow, bring her downstairs so dh & can actually see each other. When she does go down she is still waking every four hours whereas when I used to let her feed all evening she slept for 7! (hasn't done that for about 7 weeks though!)

Any advice?

Any advice?

I dunno bumper but I am with you every night. It's about 9.30 when DS usually conks out. He gets more milk at about 11, and then you can pretty much calculate when he will next wake from the amount he's consumed during the day (he's FF. Every 4 hours doesn't sound too bad in theory, but I guess by the time you get to bed you don't typically get 4 hours, and also if you've got another DC to get up for in the morning..... well, ugh.

Trying to think back to my DD and what we did with her as I remember evenings being a battle with her too. I seem to think that it was around 16 weeks that I decided she was going to bed at 8 no matter what - and then I distinctly remember having to re-settle her every 45 mintues or so until 11 pm for god knows how long. Must just breed crap sleepers.

No advice really, but just want you to know you are not alone. THink I've posted on your daytime-sleep-fighter thread too. urgggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh.

I dunno bumper but I am with you every night. It's about 9.30 when DS usually conks out. He gets more milk at about 11, and then you can pretty much calculate when he will next wake from the amount he's consumed during the day (he's FF. Every 4 hours doesn't sound too bad in theory, but I guess by the time you get to bed you don't typically get 4 hours, and also if you've got another DC to get up for in the morning..... well, ugh.

Trying to think back to my DD and what we did with her as I remember evenings being a battle with her too. I seem to think that it was around 16 weeks that I decided she was going to bed at 8 no matter what - and then I distinctly remember having to re-settle her every 45 mintues or so until 11 pm for god knows how long. Must just breed crap sleepers.

No advice really, but just want you to know you are not alone. THink I've posted on your daytime-sleep-fighter thread too. urgggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh.

oops, sorry. something gone wrong there.

'Every 4 hours doesn't sound too bad in theory, but I guess by the time you get to bed you don't typically get 4 hours, and also if you've got another DC to get up for in the morning..... well, ugh.'

Exactly! I'm getting about 6 hours a night!

Didnt help with my mum saying 'well, I never had any problems getting any of you to sleep...'. Helpful! Clearly it is something I am doing wrong!

Sorry to find you on another sleep thread narmada. Do you find your life revolves around sleep (theirs) or lack of it (yours)?

You're getting 6 hours?! That's called sleeping through!

Don't know if my advice will help, i have three little ones 4yrs, 2yrs and 7mo, when i went through the 4mo sleep drama, i started weaning, tiny bit of baby rice at our teatime, tried to encourage an earlier lunchtime nap and held of on milk in the evening, to make it more associated with sleep, than me, if that makes sense. If little one woke in the night i gave a tiny bit of milk to settle but not enough to put him in a deep sleep, so that he started to learn how to settle himself. That for us seemed to work, i remember with my other doing an evening walk, that seemed to help. Any way good luck hope its all sorted soon.

6 hours in two blocks of 3.

This will probably make a lot of people go but my mum and her best mate swear by a quarter of a farley's rusk with the evening feed at 4mths with the bottle teat being made a little bit bigger to facilitate the flow and if b'feeding then mixing it with some breast milk and spooning in...lines their tummies better for a better part of the night.. and it does help them to settle more!

I say go with the flow. With DS1, I battled to get him in bed for around 7 o clock, most nights ended up there with him until 9 or 10. Did a lot of rocking and pacing. It was rubbish spending all evening trying to get him to sleep. Wish I hadn't bothered, he wasn't a creature of habit and routines didn't suit him or me.

With DS2 I decided that to preserve my sanity he would stay downstairs with me until he's properly conked out. He usually falls asleep around 9 but sometimes it's a bit earlier, sometimes later. He is also a crap napper, has one long sleep at some point in the day but generally grabs half an hour here/ 10 minutes there sort of thing.

I am not a go-with-the-flow kind of person but the main advantage is that I now don't exhaust myself trying to get DS2 to sleep at fixed times. If he looks tired, I try to encourage him to sleep but that's all. I know routines work really well for some but for me, every day was a big FAIL and made me feel like I was rubbish at being a mother.

I try not to have any expectations with nighttime sleep either. He started sleeping for 7 hours, until 4 am or so, a week ago, having a feed then back to sleep until 8 or 9. DS1 didn't sleep through until he was 2 so that, to me, is miraculously good. He started on another growth spurt yesterday though and fed a lot in the night but that's fine because I thought he might. Shattered hopes when you are sleep deprived are hard to take.

Having tried both, I'd choose spending some time with your DH, actually having an evening and letting her tank up for the night. She may well go back to longer sleeps.

Good luck whatever you decide, hope you're getting some more sleep soon.

pussin, I weaned DS1 at 20 weeks on advice from a HV who told me he would start sleeping better if I did. Made no difference to his sleep whatsoever.

Yes can see that it may not work for all babies

My mum and her friend are of the wean at 4mths brigade anyway as that is what they were used to...my mum was practically teary with nostalgia when she crushed up a farley for DS (a reduced sugar one I should add as I was pfb at the amount of sugar in the normal ones)

Bumper - hope it gets sorted for you. Btw, I can remember your threads about the size of your bump - am having the same problems now...10 weeks to go with a big bump and people looking aghast when I tell them no, its not twins and that I'm not actually due until end of March!

Personally, I say go with the flow - I am in the process of trying to get DD to sleep earlier, as it was suggested on this site that her sleep might improve if she went to bed sooner (in case she was over tired) but the result has been me going to bed with her 15 minutes earlier every other day and her still only getting into a deep sleep at 9pm like she did before when she was downstairs with us. Only difference now is my dinner is rushed and I hardly get to see my husband. Oh, and she still wakes every 2 hours.

OH yes bumper, days are completely driven by trying to get DS to sleep, and usually failing, or succeeding for only 30 minutes. I am utterly cheesed off with it. I have just had to put DS down in his cot and have a shouty attack in the kitchen.

I am sick, sick, sick, of having no life, dealing with a permanently grizzly baby, having no time for DD1 (who is anyway in nursery 4 days as DS2 is such a difficult baby), having to scrabble round every morning for clean clothes for all of us because I don't have time for washing. And having to dash out of the house with the effing pram every time DS needs a sleep. And then spending every evening with an alternately wriggly, squirmy, screaming baby on my lap until 10 pm.

Honestly, this is insane. When will it get better?

Rant over.

And for what it's worth, DD1s sleep was also crap and the introduction of solids made no difference whatsoever. She was huge, no problem with lack of food with ehr. The only thing that got her to sleep in the end was sitting with her while she cried herself to sleep in her cot. She was 6 months old tho.

oh god, and I had pinned some hope on weaning having some effect when she is finally ready...

Anyone else looking forward to the teenage years when all they want to do is sleep? Personally, I will be popping in every 2 hours and waking them to make me a sandwich. Revenge will be sweet.

JoinTheDots Can't wait for that!

Bumperlicious, sorry no advice but thank you for your post as it makes me realise that I'm not the only one and I'm not doing everything wrong! I remember spending hours with DS1 trying to feed him to sleep in the evenings, sitting upstairs on my own while DH ate dinner alone! This time round I just couldn't do it again so DS2 has spent most of his evenings (he's 18 weeks) downstairs with us, sometimes happy and relaxed, sometimes screaming and tired but fighting it. In the main he hasn't gone to bed until 9pm at the earliest, and even then it's been difficult to get him to sleep. He just wasn't ready to go to bed any earlier.

If it makes you feel any better, I think I might have seen a bit of progress in the last few nights in that he's starting to go down a bit easier without me actually doing anything different - maybe it's his age. I haven't started weaning yet, but have thought about it since this new study.

Last night he actually slept in his cot from 8pm till 9.45pm - a first! So, good luck and hang in there. It won't be forever.

Do you know what, I was at bfing group today and I was chatting about our sleep issues to the bfing counsellor & I realised that even though I am pretty anti routine, don't follow one, don't want to & quite frankly wouldn't know where to start, the idea of a routine as the answer to sleep problems is so pervasive that I always have this nagging in the back of my mind that if I just succumbed to a routine all would be good, & I am just making my own life harder by not following one. I always feel as if I am resisting the routine culture and feel as though I have to justify not using one that it must be the reason why dd doesn't sleep well. Anyone else see what I mean?

i wasted a lot of evenings sat in dd1's room in the dark, shhing and patting until my throat was dry and i had rsi in my hands. she normally caved in at 9pmish

3mo dd2 is a similarly shite sleeper, but i prefer to soothe her in the sitting room, with low lighting and the telly on low, or mning on the laptop. i did everything "properly" last time and it didn't make one bit of a difference.

the only thing that did was cc when dd1 was older. i think we might end up going that way with dd2 when the time is right.

Totally know what you mean. Routine = successful, organised, in charge. No routine = rod for own back, not in charge, asking for trouble. Not really but you get what I mean.

I think routines are the answer for some families. And people (myself included, see v long post above!) tend to be a bit evangelical about whatever has worked for them. So it's worth a try but it's not worth perservering with at all costs. It's a shame that abandoning routines is seen as so alternative. It's an even greater shame that it took me til DS1 was nearly 2 to realise that routines aren't The Law! Ho hum.

It does feel like that, I am obsessing about nap times (or lack thereof) and bedtime routines (one minute late an I panic DD is over tired). I think I need to chill out, but have not had enough sleep to remember how....

We have never had a routine before, and I am wondering if it is the key. Probably not.

I was quite against a routine and always thought I would be more of a relaxed go with the flow type of mum. Well, my first 2-3 months were shit, no daytime sleeping in her bed and used to dread getting up in the morning as I NEVER knew what the day would hold. So, I started trying to implement a bit of routine and it has saved my sanity, no word of a lie. And thankfully my DD seems to like it (I would not have forced her into one if she clearly was hating it/wasn't working).

We also had no routine for the first 3 or 4 months, lots of tears, me going to bed at 9 and my DH responsible for settling an overtired baby (which sometimes didn't happen til 1am!)

I then took the bull by the horns and decided to do a bedtime routine, starting when DD showed signs of tiredness. I thought the bedtime routine thing was rubbish and our DD wouldn't get the idea, but -having stuck to it rigidly for 3 months- I think it really does help. DD knows exactly what to expect and when. We started PUPD/self-settling at the same time, which took ages to start with (in hindsight she was quite young to learn to self-settle!) so it was hard work...but worth it as DD gets a decent amount of sleep and we get to eat together with both hands!!

We are also quite strict about not letting DD nap after 4pm (unless we know she'll b having a later bedtime) as it's always a real struggle if she's not quite tired enough for sleep.

I reckon if you are consistent in whatever approach you take, it will soon get easier