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?

Count I'd say 5oz too. Can you express as soon as you get up? I find my supply is best then. Also expressing while feeding on the other side or just after is good as the baby gets the let down for you. Good luck. You need a break.

4madboys, thanks for your post. We just got rid of the swaddle gradually. Picked the most guaranteed nap and tried that for a few days, then the afternoon nap, then evening, at first just leaving her to sleep on the bed, but now moving her into her bed.

narmada no, he's never had formula before - good tip. I'm going to try to pull my finger out on the expressing front first I think. LOL at banana nesquik!

I know. I am deeply ashamed when I have to feed him in public. The milk looks like banana milkshake, there's no getting away from it. But the alternative is milk allergy so I just have to look brazen.

Hi everyone, sorry I've not been around for a while. Update on the Blonde household sleep situation - we're doing ok and totally ignoring the sleep consultant! I think I said before that basically her only suggestion was to restrict the night feeds but DS just went crazy when I got to 3 minutes. I have to say I gave up - and somehow or other (whisper it) DS seems to have got much better all by himself. He's slept through 3 times since last Friday (I KNOW!!!) and I've now started doing a dreamfeed. Last night he woke at 12 but was fairly easily settled by DP. I've probably just shot myself in the foot - I really hope not - but I feel loads better than I have done in ages, and maybe there is some truth that they grow out of it themselves!

Ah, I'll probably be back to say it's all gone tits up...

Ooh blonde that's great! How old is your DS?

He's almost 7 months. Last night he slept 7-3 with a dreamfeed at 10, then after a bit of a cry he settled himself and slept until 7.15. I would never have thought that was possible even a couple of weeks ago - I honestly could never have imagined him sleeping through. I've decided not to feed him at all at night after the dreamfeed - but I can only do that because he's not waking up as much, and that's nothing to do with me.

I hope some good nights were had by the rest of you...

Hi everyone, feeling more sleep deprived than usual with this sleep training malarkey. The second night of 5 min feeds was fine, the usual wake ups every 2 hours but he slept in til 7, a lie in!

Last night was not so good. Planned to do 3 min feeds, so did this at his first wake up at 10ish, he then cried off and on for about an hour and a half. I did 2 more feeds that night but was too nervous to make them 3 mins in case there was a rerun of earlier. But they were still short, so overall he is not taking much in at night.

I'm struggling to understand why he has cried so much. He settles fairly well at bedtime (after countless times of pulling himself up) and also was settling after the 5 min feeds ok. So why the hysteria??

Count am thinking of doing the 10 / 11 feed as a formula feed too. Need to make a plan before stopping the feeds altogether (tomorrow night, gulp).

Judys how does your DS settle when you co-sleep? Is there a way you could get him to suck his own finger?? Then at least he would be able to settle on his own. A girl I know "trained" her DS to suck his thumb, everytime his dummy fell out she replaced it with his thumb!!

That's great Blonde. I have a terrible feeling my DS won't grow out of it...he seems so resistant to any change or efforts to improve his sleep .

great news being blonde

thanks for the tips bumper, i think the issue is that tho her daytime naps are ok at home i do have to pop the dummy back in here and there and if unswaddled she will just knock it out and play with it and then not sleep, so i think i will continue with the swaddle until she shows signs of being able to suck on the dummy and replace it etc during the day and not knock it out all the time.....

last night was quite good here, down by 7:45 and slept till 11:30 had to put the dummy back in once :) then fed and slept till 4:20, no having to put the dummy back in, thats the longest stretchi have had for ages! then feed at 5am and then she was just awake and babbling, not cute at 5am but she eventualy took her dummy and was back asleep by 5:40ish but it was a fitful sleep, lots of replacing the dummy but she didnt wake properly till 7:30 and then she lay happily in bed with me till after 8 so i could doze a bit
i think the problem with the 5am feed is the light coming in over the top of the black out blind, so maybe if i feed her at 4:30am she will settle better as its still a bit darker? plus she went till 10am before wanting another feed.

i am hoping at some point that 5am feed will become a sort of 7am feed, but think i will actually maybe end up waiting till after summer to try and do anything about that as the early morning light is just not helping her sleep, at all.

dummy users i have no advice, dd is the first of mine to have a dummy and it is a pita BUT it generally settles her easily and i cant let her cry, esp as ds4 still sleeps on a toddler bed in our room as well, at some point we need to rejig the bedrooms so there are two boys in each room, but i need time and energy to do that...

those of you trying to cut down on/stop night feeds, how old are your babies? only all my elder three (totally bfed) probably fed in the night until one ish? i started with getitng them to go down in the evening and then had a no feed for 3 hrs rule, which extended till midnight and then gradually till they were going through till about 5am without a feed, VERY gradually, i just patted them, rocked them etc and then as they got older they didnt feed till after 6am etc. the dream feed never really worked with any of them. it does seem to work with dd in that i feed her when i go up at about 11:30 sometiems earlier, sometimes later and then she goes through till 5am when the dummy doesnt seem to work and she is obviously hungry and at her age i think thats pretty good tbh.

tbh i cant complain much as she settles well in the evening and after her dream feed, its just the early hours of the morning that are a complete pita at the moment.

judys i just remembered that my ds1 was a finger sucker, we tried a dummy and he wouldnt have it at all, he did just grow out of it but again it took time and tbh it meant that dp could settle him with walking him up and down as well, so i got a bit of a break.

and re training to suck their thumbs, dd is starting to find hers during the day, and once or twice has sucked her thumb and had a SHORT sleep in the pushchair but when she is properly tired she obviously doesnt have the co or dination to find it, doesnt even try tbh, but maybe as she gets older that will change, she just gets cross when i have tried to help her find it. i also think she is teething very dribbly and lots of sucking/chewing on fingers, thumb and her dummy at times.

narmada re bottle refusers my dd has been like this, she has just started taking 6oz after only having 4oz for ages and genereally feeds ok now but for ages i had to jiggle her, rock, walk around etc to get her to take her formula, we tried allsorts but theonly thing that has made a difference is making sure the milk is pretty warm, warmer than they are 'meant' to have it and she does seem to have gradually settled down, tho was fussy this morning mainly cos she was pretty hungry and if she is fussing at the start of the bottle thne she doesnt settle into a good sucking rhythm and so takes in more air and then gets wriggly? or at least i think thats the problem tbh its just a guessing game

Well, we had not too bad a night in the end - sleep at 8pm, resettled at 9pm, feed at 12am, 3am, 5.30am and up at 6.30am. Three feeds is pretty good going for us. I don't think I want to incorporate 40 minutes of crying back into our bedtime routine though so have decided to try something like the Pantley Pull Off for the sucking. Very rarely DS will suck his fingers himself but if I try and gently encourage him to thumb suck he just gets cross - they aren't as satisfying as my nice juicy fingers!
Beingblonde - that sounds great! Really happy for you. Sure you don't have any tips to pass on? How did you managed to settle your DS if not by feeding. Maybe even getting to 3 mins had an effect? Good luck to you too - raisingmrc.
Count - hope the formula feed goes well. Have you got your own bedtime routine planned for the weekend?
Thanks for the tips 4madboys.

yes i am wondering about the pantley pull of with the dummy for dd, but she settles easily with it and its her comfort so i am loathe to take it away from her. babies need comfort and sucking is a main one i am just hoping she will get the hang of putting it in herself when older?

oh i dont know i just put her down for her morning nap and tho she was tired she was quite happily laying babbling in the pram without the dummy but she gets very wriggly and i didnt want her to wriggle out of her swaddle so i stuck the dummy in and straight away her eyes start to go and she is now asleep. so it works? aghhh its such a dilema cos the putting it in in the night is a pita. i am thinking that whilst it works i shall carry on and if/when i get to breaking point at replacing it during the night (which may not happen as she has good nights) then i will get rid if i have to but i really think that if she needs to suck then i should let her? i may try her morning nap (the easiest one) without it, but not till i have dp at home to help as today i am on my own with all of them and my priority is just that she HAS a good sleep iykwim?

re settling without feeds as mine got older i just took them off the breast awake at bedtime and then layed with them will they went to sleep and then patted them if necessary, and would try that at night as well, it wasa very gradual process that they would start to settle at bedtime without a boob in their mouth and then they gradually went longer inbetween feeds, i didnt have a special technique other than patting/rockign them but i could generally tell quite quickly if they were going to settle wihtout a feed iykwim? sucking for comfort IS something that they grow out of, eventually.... hold that thought.

and judys you are right your fingers are much nice to suck on and dd's dummy is obviously better than her own thumb!

ok so having done some reading on the pantly pull off i think that when we put her down in the evening we will try this, i shant bother for daytime naps, i think its more imp that she sleeps!

she used to have the dummy for the day and then go down fine without it in the evening and then went through a stage of being really difficult to settle so we just let her have the dummy

i shall try it in the evening the next few nights as dp will be at home and see if it improves her night time sleep (again she used to sleep fine at night without the dummy)

so i will give it a go but tbh i think i am going to end up riding it out until she is big enough to replace the dummy herself.

also by 6mths her hand eye co ordination should be better and she should be able to put it in herself and we have a soft comfortor that we can attach the dummy to so i shall do that during the day for her to play with and learn to put the dummy in and out and then start attaching it to that at nighttime when she isnt swaddled anymore so she can maybe find it herself?

i have also been reading about how at 8mths ish their sleep cycles lengthen so she may not need it so often at night then anyway? and i am ignoring all comments about an 8mth sleep regression......

during the day naps she def wakes after 45mins or so needing the dummy, sometimes she goes straight back to sleep, othertimes she is awake for a little while, ten mins or so maybe but will go back to sleep with the dummy, without it there is NO way she would go back to sleep, so i dont think its worth trying to get rid of it for the day.

4madboys DS is 7 months. He seems to expect a feed each time he wakes, which is pretty much hourly at the moment , hence why I'm trying to restrict feeds between 11 and 5. He's clearly not hungry and it's just too tiring for me to have to deal with all the wake-ups. I do like the sound of your plan though - might try that in a couple of months to try and get rid of that 10/11pm feed.

Last night was better in that reintroducing DH at bedtime has worked and he can now sometimes settle DS for me in the night without a feed - yaaaaay! And he woke every 2 hours rather than every hour. I only did two 7-min feeds between 1 and 6:30, which is an improvement on recent nights.

DS seems strangely excited by the Royal Wedding and kept craning to look at the TV when I was trying to feed him to keep him quiet during the ceremony :)

two feeds doesnt sound too bad :) especially if they were short.

i found that mine always sleep best when they first go down in the evening, hence why i tried not to feed them if they woke up soon after, so they would go down by 9ish at 7mth and i would try and get to midnight without feeding them and then longer as they got older.

glad that your dh can help, my dp can help get her down in the evening but is such a heavy sleeper taht he NEVER wakes in the night ever, unless i wake him and that can take ages so its just easier to do it myself, he will however let me have a lie in the mornings that he is at home.

getting your dh to settle him sounds like a good plan tho as he is obviously associating you with feeding and wants that. which was the issue i had with my first three boys, if i caught them as they stirred in their sleep i could pat/rock them back to sleep but if not then they would have to be fed. i think its just trial and error tbh i just gradually tried patting more and feeding less etc and they did gradually go longer without feeds, and i am always happy if i have an evening, hence why i cant complain about dd as she goes down by 7:30-8pm and generally sleeps till i go to bed and she has her dream feed. BUT i am wondering if thats a bit early adn thats why she is waking at 5am, i read they should have ten hours at night and four hours in the day? she has four hours ish in the day sometimes less if we are out. so that is obviously why her sleep is fitful after 5am she just isnt tired enough to sleep properly?

i am debating using gaffa tape to tape the blackout material to the wall so that there are NO gaps around the edge where light can come in.......i hate the bloody summer early morning sun rises, i can cope with 6am onwards, but i am NOT getting up at 5am, plus the boys would then get up as well and ds4 especially would end up overtired and miserable.

anyhow madame is still asleep, she has now had two hours and ihave had to put the dummy in twice? so thats ok, she will be waking soon for a feed and then i will get the kids out to the park i think, tho its rather windy, which dd doesnt like but she does like being out and is often quite content in the pushchair to watch whats going on etc and can be harder to entertain at home.

We had a good night- he was exhausted at half six so I put him to bed then. He woke at seven fifteen but I was sitting by the cot and caught it immediately, stroked his nose to sleep and he next woke up at ten! Wow! After that dummy at eleven, feeds at two and four and up for good at six thirty. I shouldn't have fed him at four, he wasn't hungry and I knew it but it is so quick! He hasn't fed much today though so I'm desperately shoving a boob in his direction to avoid reverse cycling!

So good things - slept without formula, two three hour blocks, and slept in his cot not my bed. Hurray!

He's wildly interested in the wedding too. I was hatching a plan to marry him to will and kate's daughter (I've had a bottle of cava :) ) but then DH pointed out that would make him Prince Albert :o

LOL at Prince Albert

another LOL at prince albert

and glad you had an ok night.

btw does anyone else here feel like they think about sleep too much?!! i just keep finding myself googling things about sleep etc, i ehow to get them to sleep without the dummy, how much daytime sleep blah blah blah when actually i think its best to try and go with the flow a bit, i mean to have a bedtime routine but to not obsess over how much they sleep, how they go to sleep? you can drive yourself mad with it and i should know by now that they DO all get there eventually.

and can i just say after ds4 who has been a dream i am finding dd's sleep harder to deal with, when in reality she isnt too bad, its just that i was SPOILT by ds4, tho i felt that i deserved it after the first three!

That's great bigkids. Dd2 was pretty interested in the wedding too!

The good news is dd2 has stopped being sick. Maybe a coincidence but we've avoided dairy for 2 days. The bad news is her sleep isn't any better, up every 2 hours last night. Tried to settle her without feeding but that didn't work. So tired.

Last night he went to bed at seven thirty and woke at 9.15, 11, 2, 3.30, 4, 6.30. I fed at 9.15, 11, 2 and 4 and am worried, he hasn't fed this morning yet. How do we avoid reverse cycling? I tried to settle without feeding too Bumper but no go.

Is the four month regression also a growth spurt? Could he be hungry? Last week he was down to two feeds so I do really want to keep trying to settle without feeding.

Bumper, DS has a dairy issue. Even after dairy was excluded from his diet, it still took a bit of sleep training to get him on the right track. I think there were habitual problems initially caused by the digestive issues. BUT, he was far more receptive to sleep training once the digestive issues were more under control. Sorry you were up so frequently. Stinks.

DS is having a questionable patch, horrible hacking cough, wakes about every half an hour all evening. For some reason he always switches off from about 11 pm, and we don't hear from him till morning...and in any case I can cope with the half-hour curtain calls of an evening as at least we do kind of GET an evening now!

Well we seem to be continuing with the good pattern of only havign a feed at 2ish, and DH settling at the 10/11ish wake and the 4ish wake -although last night we didn't have the 4ish wake!

narmada I'd happily do every half hour to get from 11 till morning!

Glad no more vom bumper I wonder if it is dairy related then?

Could anyone who has experience of a sleep consultant just give me a brief overview of how they suggest cutting out the night feeds please. I have a nearly 7mth DD who still wakes a for a couple of feeds in the night (which I am not convinced she really needs as she eats very well (solids and milk) during the day and is putting on plenty of weight). I have seen a few posts referring to cutting down the length of the night feeds (which seems to be on the advice the sleep consultant?), but just wondered how exactly you do this. Do you tackle it one feed at a time or reduce all the night feeds by the same amount of time each night?

Any advice would be great, thanks.

4madboys - Can I ask you something? You said above that 'sucking for comfort IS something that they grow out of, eventually'. My DD has in the last couple of weeks started staying on the breast when she's finished feeding and comfort sucking to fall asleep. It's way easier than rocking her to sleep but I was getting worried about her only being able to fall asleep like this, especially when I go back to work.

She does suck her thumbs but they are red and the skin looks so sore that I almost prefer her to stay in the breast to fall asleep!

We were getting to a point where I could put her down half awake and she would fall asleep eventually butl that's been forgotten now.

I do think you're right when you say you have to go with the flow as much as you can. I wasn't feeling too stressed about any of it, thinking she would get to sleeping through when was ready and then I read a couple of baby books and found out I was doing everything wrong!

jellybelly yes, you reduce all feeds by the same amount over a few nights. So you could start with 10 minute feeds - time the feed then unlatch. Do that for one or two nights. Then 7 minutes. Then 5, then 3, then nothing (gulp). I did it quite successfully with my DS, but ruined it all by attempting gradual withdrawal, which made him cry lots and get super-clingy :( and now he'll only settle with a feed again most of the time.

I wanted to keep the 10/11pm feed as he was only just 6 months at the time. So I shortened feeds for wakings between 11 and 6. Each time I went down an increment he'd protest a bit, then get used to it (I did it very slowly). I found that when I unlatched him he'd let out a little yelp of protest, but if I stood up and walked around with him a bit he'd forget about it and stop crying. Then I'd put him down awake and soothe him to sleep in the cot by shushing, patting, jiggling or holding his hands. The night I stopped the feeds there was quite a bit of crying IIRC but it diminished over the night.

It worked in the sense that he became easier to settle without a feed and I could just pop in, shush/pat etc and he'd go back off. But it didn't really make him wake less often, so I still had to keep getting up loads in the night. Worse, the sleep consultant had advised that I do all the sleep training to break the whole 'Mummy = milk' connection. Result: I finally stopped feeding in the night but DS would only settle for me and not DH - so I still had to handle all the bloody wakings! So I'd advise you to alternate with your DP/DH if possible so your baby doesn't get used to one or the other of you IYSWIM.

I need to do it all over again. Tried 5-min feeds last night but DS was being v tricky. I think he's teething.