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?

Nowhere near me unfortunately, but nearish to my mum so if I'm ever down that way I'll let you know.

After two days of sleeping 11.30 till 6 (then throwing up her milk) last night dd2 woke every 3 hours. I'm so tired I've actually started sleeping through her crying, and I'm not a heavy sleeper! Dh has come in in the morning a couple of times and taken her without me noticing. And last night when she woke up at 5 I dropped off back to sleep before finally getting her up!

Argh! How annoying! Does DD2 have any teeth yet? Am sure DS is having some grief from his gums.

Baby nurofen is the absolute business for teething. And it generally doesn't wear off for about 6 hours, unlike the useless pink elixir.

I am in SW london count. If it ever gets so bad you just need to sleep, I would be very willing to come and watch your DS for a bit in the daytime so you can kip. But then I am a random stranger from the internet so you might quite possibly think this rather a mad suggestion.

IT is interesting what you say about needing your touch to sleep - Ds is currently the same. Will settle in cot, but only when being touched. At the moment, this means only 30 min naps in the day, but at night after about 8 pm, the same rules don't seem to apply and he's fine on his own mostly. They are a complete law unto themselves.

bumper sorry about the sleepless nights, ugh. But she's slept though before so may well revert back to that.

Yes narmada, I must admit we did dose DS up with Calprofen last night and he slept much better (only one waking between 10 and 6, though would only settle with a feed). So I assume from that that he's in some sort of pain at night. He's nearly 7mo so I assume this is prime teething territory?

You are very sweet to offer your help even if you are a random internet stranger :) I'm SE London/Kent borders, so probably a fair way from you, but it would be fun to meet one day.

Feeling much better today. Slept v badly again last night and was v weepy - woke poor DH up at 4:30 in a bit of a state and he cuddled me and stroked my hair until I fell asleep (I'm getting as bad as DS!) then got DS up at 6, gave him his porridge, brought me breakfast in bed and put DS down for his morning nap, all before going to work. So I got to sleep from 7 until 9:45 when DS woke up. Love the lovely DH :)

So sorry you've had such a rough weekend count. please don't worry about sounding wingy, this is what this thread is here for! We all need somewhere to offload.

I have nothing to report really, other than DS has been feeding like a demon in the night, but has suddenly grown out of 3-6 month clothes, so nice to see a reason for the 2 hourly feeds! He seems to be getting better at settling, I have noticed that if I leave him crying for 5 mins he then often just falls asleep. Won't leave him any longer than that though, and only if it's not really distressed crying. He's settled in the cot a couple more times too so I do feel it's tiny steps forward.

count we very nearly moved to Bromley last year, guessing you're somewhere about those parts. In the end we decided to stay around here (Kingston). really, really sorry you're feeling so crap. I am probably repeating myself over and over and over again, so do humour me, but he has been checked for an ear infection hasn't he? Sometimes they present without fever or any really obvious signs.

It could well be teething though. My super-shocking sleeper, DD1, was never much affected by teeth, I have to say, which always surprised me, so if not done so already, it may be as well to rule out any other causes. You could also experiment a bit - if calpol doesn't work, but ibuprofen does, you can probably hazard a guess at inflammation somewhere.

Earthshattering breakthrough alert - DS is asleep in his cot for his nap, where he has been for (whisper it) longer than 28 minutes. Actually, it's now an hour and 5 minutes. He has also started sleeping in an evening and through the night after dream feed to somewhere between 6.30 and 7.45. That's not to say we don't have an absolute screamfest before every sleep, because we do, even with me patting his bum very very firmly and/ or covering his ear up (!). DP and I have even begun to think about resuming, erm, relations, although I have warned him he is not coming anywhere near me until either I've got a mirena coil or he's had the snip.

I am starting to think I am going to have to resign from this thread...which is a shame because I like everyone on it and really want to know how you're getting on. Ha ha, I bet DS starts waking every hour now as a punishment for me daring to be smug.

Your DH sounds like a star count.
I have a tiny amount of progress to report as well. After DS's amazing 2 hour evening sleep on Saturday he did 2 hours 40 mins last night and did another 3 hour stint between 3am and 6am (I'm trying to forget the hour he was awake before that). I can't actually remember the last time he's definitely slept more than 2 hours. I was telling my antenatal group today that DS slept for 3 hours straight and they looked at me like I was slightly mad - sure I'll jinx it by posting it on here but I'm really hoping that settling him with no rocking is the key.
Great stuff narmada that you might be leaving the thread (though obviously sad as well). Hope you get to come back and tell us about your lovely new house.

narmada that's great! Gives me hope that DS will catch on eventually :)

Will be sorry to see you go (if you do) but pleased for you at the same time. We'll maybe see you on the inevitable 9-month regression thread

Yes, am not far from Bromley. Kingston is lovely - I used to go there a lot when I lived in Wimbledon, and until recently my SIL lived in Teddington.

DH and I were starting to indulge in some, erm, 'relations' last night (had to mark the anniversary somehow) but DS woke up at quite a crucial moment - dammit!

Sounds good judy! here's hoping for a repeat performance tonight!

Oohhh, I'm not going anywhere just yet. I knew I shouldn't have posted all gleefully. Have just had an hour of screaming before bedtime, and DS would only settle with my face pressed against his! God, the boy doesn't half have persistence.

o add to my grrrr mood, DH and I are currently applying for mortgages. One bank who have the deal we want offered us a measly 110 grand. We have a 50% deposit and the offered loan isn't even twice my DH's salary. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrgh. Needless to say we couldn't buy a shed around here for that amount.

Oh, count, babies, eh? the best form of contraception ever invented. In more ways than one sometimes.

Welcome to the Hotel California narmada!

Dd2 has been awake nearly an hour. Every time she drifts off she wakes with a coughing fit, and has just projectile vomited all over the bed

bumper oh no. And yuck. Are you co-non-sleeping now?

No, I just feed her in bed, lying down usually, but with this cold and the vomiting I'm having to cradle her which seems to take her longer to settle. I shove her back in the hammock as soon as she is asleep.

She is still swaddled, and still in our room. She can't really go in with DD1 until she is less erratic. We have a third room but it is tiny and used as an office/junk room, but I think I might experiment with shoving the hammock in there for a while. But I feel like I need to deal with the swaddling first. But I can't deal with anything when she is like this really. She did nap on the bed without a swaddle for the first time yesterday. Think I will just have to gradually do that.

bumper DS dealt with being unswaddled pretty well (in the sense that he still sleeps unbelievably badly but no worse than before). He is still swaddled for naps though. Sorry about the vomit - that sounds hideous!

Last night DS slept from 7-10:10 (not bad), 10:40-12:50 (not so good), then screamed on and off until 3 (DH finally rocked him to sleep), then slept 3-5:30, woke up soaked, I changed him and fed him back to sleep, put him down at 6:20 and he woke yelling at 6:30

I have another rotten cold and feel like shit. Woke up after DS's morning nap to a text from my NCT pal to say that her DS slept from 7-6:30 with no dreamfeed. Go on FB to find other NCT pal saying her DS had done 11-7 (presumably from dreamfeed). Our contract with Andrea has nearly ended (last call on Thursday). Bleurgh bleurgh bleurgh.

:( count to all of those things, and grim to the vom on bed incident bumper

we are persevering with DS falling asleep in his bed, and it is going well, last night I didn't have to do any chest patting, just a bit of holding hand on his chest / stroking his cheek, but mainly just me sitting on the bed. It isn't making him sleep any longer at a time though. Last night was a good night with wake ups at 10.30, 12.30, 3 and 5 and up for the day at 7 ( this is a real improvement, it is more usually 6).

Hi everyone! Thought I would log on and see how everyone is doing. Sounds like the settling in the cot thing is working for you Cosmosis and Judys.

Sorry to hear that there are still a lot of wake ups for you Count - hopefully your DS will get the idea soon!

Things for us have been up and down. Last week was really bad with DS wakeful in the night and also repeatedly waking about 10 minutes after going to sleep. I think it must have been teething issues. But as a result we're back to co sleeping some of the night.

This week he has been taking aaaages to settle to sleep. 1 hour and 20 minutes tonight! I'm at a bit of a loss, as he wasn't crying or upset, but he did seem tired. He has learnt to sit up from lying down by rolling over and getting onto his hands and knees, so it may be a case of him practising a new skill. There is always something!! Makes me dread when he starts pulling up to standing.

Anyway, next week I am planning to start restricting the feeds again to go cold turkey on the weekend of the royal wedding!! I know I've been here (twice) before and bottled it, but want to give it a good go this time at least.

Will keep you posted.

Hi Raising - I need to do the night weaning all over again because since I let him cry at bedtime over the weekend (the whole Mary Poppins shenanigans) he just won't settle without a feed in the night. It seems to have traumatised him so much that we're basically back to square one (except worse, because since the weekend he's started waking for the day around 5am - gah!). I might do it next week if I feel up to it, so we can encourage each other as we go along!

Feel very low as I just had an email from Andrea in which she basically admitted she was flummoxed by DS and can't help us any more. As she has a 98% success rate (according to her marketing literature) we have one shit sleeper on our hands. I've made an appointment with the GP for later this morning and am going to ask for ADs. I have to admit that I'm just really not coping anymore.

Oh count poor you. Hope the ADs help though. Don't think of it as you 'not coping' just being in a shit situation over which you have no control.

:( I think you may need some hugs count even though they're not the done thing.

I think there is a very very fine line between exhaustion and depression and I know I have felt myself wavering on it before, so please don't feel bad about it.

Thanks all :)

hi guys i wonder if u can help....

my son is 5 months and is a terrible sleeper...
we have been doing a bedtime routine since he was bout 2 months and it works wonders for getting him to go to sleep as he does not self sooth at all and for a while he was sleeping between feeds even got him to sleep in his cot between feeds after a lot of effort although still waking every 3 hours for feeds

however we now seem to be going backwards he wont sleep in his cot at all and we have resorted to co sleepin out of sheer exhaustion.
and is tending to wake for numerous reaseons every half hour or so..
he also has a dummy as from birth he has been very colicy it seems to have subsided mostly now and i would like to get rid of the dummy but it is the easiest way to get him back to sleep .. but he now tends to chew it so it pops out of his mouth and he wakes up.

i have tried everything i can think of to get him to sleep longer at least to go between feeds in his cot or with me and nothing is working and it seems to b getting worse

i am starting to feel a bit lost as i dont no wat the best thing to do is? .. i dont no weather i should just go with it and wait for him to get bit older and keep tryin a little or should i be working harder to get him into good sleeping habbits..

he is very windy and has sore teeth so i feel i need to pick him up everytime he cries as there is no way to know weather he is in pain or not..

any advise or reassurance wud b great as i am not sure how i should b handling this situation!

pugsmum you poor thing, that sounds awful. You must be exhausted. I don't have much in the way of advice TBH - my DS is such a shit sleeper, even a Harley St sleep consultant couldn't figure out what his problem is

Every half hour is very frequent waking indeed though. Have you had a GP check him out for any medical/physical causes?

Everyone on this thread is struggling with wakeful babies so although we might not have any advice for you, we can offer sympathy and moral support.

Update from me: got DS checked out by doc and he is fine. She is a youngish mum of two who bf both her DDs: DD1 until 15 mo (which was when she finally slept through ) and DD2 for 7 mo. She basically said I need to get some sleep and/or a break from DS or I will go mental (or words to that effect) and DH should give him the odd FF if that's what it takes, so I am finally giving in this weekend and letting DH give him a bottle. I am sure I will laugh in a few years' time at my PFB insistence on EBF when he's existing on Fruitshoots and Greggs sausage rolls but I do feel crap about him having formula. I'm quite a stubborn, all-or-nothing person and rubbish at accepting help from others. But my mental health is the important thing here. Doc says I should try that first then return in 2 weeks with DH to discuss ADs if necessary.

She did say she could see a tooth coming too, so that might be behind some of the recent deterioration in his sleep.

BTW again, no judgeypants about formula, it's just that bf is the one thing about motherhood that's been relatively easy and mostly enjoyable so have weirdly emotional connection to it ...

Welcome pugsmum. Not sure if this is the right place for advice (though we have all tried lots of things!) but you will definitely get some sympathy.

Have you tried calpol in case it is pain? What about white noise? You can buy a bear that plays white noise that is movement activated. The dummy thing does pass but I would think about getting rid if you can (I say that as someone who's dd1 had one till 2.5 and it was v traumatic giving it up!).

Count, will ds take a bottle? Can you express? Make sure you sleep somewhere else and wear ear plugs if possible!