The 'newborn - sleep nightmare' continuation thread, Cosmosis, count, emo etc. Still a sleep nightmare?

[Bumperlicious]

Just thought I'd catch up with all of you from the last thread to see if now we've moved on from the newborn stage things are any better?

Dd2 is nearly 5 months and sleep is still hit and miss. She is not good at sleeping when out and about so mornings are either spent at home or I choose to socialise and spend the rest of the day fighting to get her to sleep.

She still rarely goes down in the evening despite me trying for 1.5 hours. Eventually goes down 11.30ish and still often wakes twice a night

Am knackered, no end in sight. How's everyone else doing?

Raising: Dream feed can be all of those things.

I've fed DD in her sleep with both breast and bottle. Sometimes she would be in deep sleep so took her a while to stir enough to feed.

We did BLW for the most part

And when did you stop night feeds, penguin? (Am a bit obsessed by this at the mo!)

Sorry just looked back on the thread - you're doing 4 hourly night feeds.

Enoon did you and your DH take turns to settle your DD or did you do it mostly? Hope you don't get sick of us asking you questions! The fact my DH can't settle DS is one of our issues. Last night he went to sleep around 7pm but woke up as usual after 45 mins or so. I had arranged to go out with a friend so had left a bottle of expressed milk and left DH to get on with it. When I got home they were both watching tv and DH was looking traumatised. DS had screamed for about 1.5hours on and off and he just couldn't calm him . Made DH feel really crap and obviously isn't good in the long term. I'm really interested in your routine as well (was looking back in the thread) - do you think it helps doing the last feed before the bath etc.?
Last night was kind of interesting for us because normally I would feed DS again around 8pm when he wakes and then again about 11.30pm. This has happened for the last week or so and then he wakes at 2am almost on the dot for a feed and then sleeps till 4am.

Last night I fed him when after I got home (around 10pm), settled him once before he woke for a feed at 1am. He then slept till 4am (not sure if this makes sense). I think that's kind of how the wake to sleep thing works. You mess up their night time rhythm by waking them earlier. Sure it wouldn't work if I tried it again though....

Night feeds are an issue for us, but her sleep actually used to be better at one point. We've always had concerns about her weight and since I went back to work early (and hence restricted her milk intake in the day) we've not had the confidence to refuse night feeds.

We're aiming to BF her 4 times a day as we don't give her dairy. So our situation is a bit different

Judys - we had the same problem that DS would not settle for DP, this was when I was feeding to sleep pretty much all the time! DS would also scream for ages if with DP in the evening.

When we moved to shush pat to get him to sleep he now accepts that from DP, who now does all the wake ups from bedtime until 11pm.

Its really helped DP to feel more confident with getting DS to sleep.

bumper - meant to add a message to you earlier. Sorry you're having such a crap time. I hate it when people ask me this but what would happen if you just kept dd2 up or left you're DH to it and went to bed once in a while? Would it just mean you'd be up half the night anyway or would she scream the place down? Would him driving her around/pacing the streets for a night work? Sure you've thought of all the options already and as I say people used to always ask us why we didn't just keep DS up instead of spening hours trying to settle him screaming and I got sick of saying he would scream if we kept him up as well. Sounds like you need a break though - hope something changes.

Thanks for the message Judy. DH and I are mid fight about this whole sleep thing. I just feel I am the only one coming up with solutions. His solution is to leave her to cry for a bit 'as she is used to us going to her' , or he will go and try and settle her and get her up within 2 minutes.

Currently she is up having fed to sleep three times but then woken up. She is tired and yelling downstairs but I have come upstairs in a huff and am ignoring them both.

She sleeps when feeding but when I try and delatch her she either roots around for the breast still or wakes within 10 minutes or so. I don't have problems getting her down after night feeds. She does usually feed to sleep though so I wonder if that is our problem. She will occasionally go to sleep without feeding in the afternoon with a mobile on but I have never known her to do that in the evening and she needs feeding, feeds to sleep but then wakes up upset so then definitely won't go down without feeding.

Am really fucked off with this, resentful of DH but it comes down to 'well, you don't have to breastfeed...' GRRRRR!

Might check out the Andrea Grace book. Hope the rest of you are having good nights :)

Urgh, Bumper, poor you. We fight about DS's sleep too - we'd never even had a proper row until a few months ago! It's so hard when you're both shattered. I totally understand about eveningsc- even though DS sleeps in the evening, I don't get to enjoy that time because DH is always telling me to go to bed to stock up on sleep before the night wakings begin. It's horrible because you just feel like you have no time to yourself or adult company.

Hello!!!
It's a bit of an odd point to crash but if I don't do it now I never will!
DS is almost 5 months now and he has always slept well in the car,pram or co-sleeping. He slept in his crib for 5 hours once but my partner tends to sleep through his cries so I always wake and see to him and it became really difficult to keep up on my own. Before he was born I didn't agree with co-sleeping at all because I was worried about DS over heating, but it is the only way he will sleep properly. I've read a sleep guide by Gina Ford that was free with a magazine a while back and we have tried a few of her more gentle techniques because I was so tired of being the only one to get up all the time. We established a new feeding routine and bathed him at 5pm put him to bed at 7pm awake but sleepy he was then 'allowed' to cry for 5 minutes before we went in to resettle him and it did work for a while but never long enough I think after a week we just didn't get enough sleep to function in the day, he doesn't use a soother and I try not to put him on me to calm him because I don't like to get into a different bad habit we will have to change at a later date, things that calm him down are his crib mobile, musical toys and our iTunes Visualisers on our laptops at first we were reluctant to try these at bedtime because it is stimulating but we have found that he often needs that final burst of energy and then he will sleep for a little while. I hope you all begin to make progress however you can.

Sorry for the long post.

count my dh made me go to bed too! And I felt it was the one bit of adult time I had. He was probably right though .

Judy, dh never settled her since she was about 2 months old, before that she would settle with him in the sling and he would transfer to the cot. She then fed to sleep and I was he only one who would settle her (partly coz I was being a control freak and partly coz he got home too late).

With new house he has hot shorter commute so is home much earlier and she goes to bed later so he can do whole bath/story/bed routine which is lovely. Since she started the new routine she will settle no problem for both of us.

The sleep lady said that feeding before the bath was key to breaking the food/sleep association. There should be a long enough gap between last feed and bed so that they aren't going to sleep "under the influence" of milk. Although dd was self settling before, it was always immediately after a big feed.

Bumper, sorry you are having such a bad time. Sorry if you've already talked about this but have you tried shush pat? It sounds like your dd needs to feed to sleep, so whenever she wakes up without a nipple in her mouth she needs you to get her back to sleep. There is also a technique in the no cry sleep solution which gently weans them off feeding to sleep. This worked for us up to the point where she could self settle for bedtime after a feed.

bumper have you tried a dummy for her after delatching? I find DS takes a dummy then and it helps him sleep, but he won't take one if you just give it to him iyswim.

I've just had my HV round and she was actually really nice about it all. Not sure there was much new in what she had to say but very sympathetic and said the nursery nurse who comes round next week will go through more strategies. She said that if I wasn't ready for it they wouldn't recommend tough regimes and they don't recommend CC before 8 months anyway.
Most of what she said we are doing already - routine, quiet time before bed. She did say as we have started weaning I could try adding in a meal in the evening but I don't think hunger is the problem anyway. She didn't even say to go cold turkey on the night feeds as she said at this age he could need them.
The only thing she did suggest that maybe I'll try is waiting a bit longer in the night before going in to DS - she suggested 5 mins. I tend to wait until it escalates from little moans to full on crying as this happens quite quickly. Not sure if I will try this as if he gets really upset he's quite difficult to calm but if I go in quickly I can normally settle him ok. I'm not sure I believe if I leave him he'll magically go back to sleep.
Was nice to have someone to talk to about it all and I only cried a little which is progress for me lately when talking to health professionals (I find it really hard not to cry anyway when I'm down and someone is nice to me IYSWIM).
The one thing she didn't really comment on and that's confusing me at the moment is that if I settle DS in the cot with shushing or stroking his head he'll wake after 45 mins but if I feed him to sleep he'll sleep for 2 hours or so (though not at bedtime).

I am exactly the same Judy - everyone seems to think I should leave DS a while before I go in when he is crying, but if I do that his crying just gets more hysterical and it gets impossible to settle him.

Last night was shocking - I had one 2 hour stretch - and tonight looks to be as bad so far. He went down at 6.30 and has been up twice, the last time for 30 mins. To make everything worse DH has just gone to collect his parents from the airport - they're staying here this weekend and I can't bear the thought of them! Superficially I get on with his mum but I actually think she's an idiot and she bugs the hell out of me. Just what I need! Bring on the sleep clinic - but I have to fill in a sleep diary for 2 weeks from tomorrow first, so it feels like forever before we'll get any advice! I do think if we could get DS to nap better in the day it would help at night, but I devoted all day today to that and he only did a total of 1hr! SO SHIT.

Evening all. Not meaning to be trite or anything, and I am really not one of those 'could be worse posters' but just thought I'd point out this thread. Just when you are up in the middle of the night and want to cry with exhaustion you may just want to give them an extra squeeze.

That is just tragic :( - can't imagine what she and her family are going through. Does put it all into perspective, doesn't it?

I know, sorry to put such a downer on the thread but just thought I'd better point it out as it is one of those things you can miss on here. So devastating. I really hate when people belittle your problems when something awful like this happens as they are still problems so I wasn't trying to do that. But it does just make you grateful for what you have got.

I do try and remind myself from time to time - when the sleep thing is driving me nuts - that we are so lucky that he arrived safely, and is happy and healthy and so beautiful :)

Hope everyone had OK nights. We had the usual shenanigans ...

Going to give DS some food today. Quite excited!

PS liking the namechange, Bumper - feeling a bit continental today? :)

Oh, poor family :(
What an awful, awful thing to happen.

Really sad and quite terrifying how quickly it all happened. Must be so hard to deal with.

Usual night for us - at least no worse.

I've been thinking the same bumper.

DD has been a nightmare the last four nights. Feeding at the right times has been working for she sleeps for an hour and then screams for 30mins. It is exhausting and frustrating but Edgar's situation helps me put it into perspective.

I agree - a healthy baby is a blessing and something like that puts it all into perspective.

We started solids today too Count! How did it go? Of course they'll sleep through now, obvs...

I saw that thread too. Just devastating. That and watching comic relief last night has put things into perspective a bit. So terrible and so sudden.I did have several moments of just being v thankful each time I fed ds last night.