19 w/o - I don't want to use any of the 'techniques' to teach self-settle - any advice?!

[kiwilizzie]

Hi

I have a lovely 19 w/o DD2 who has, of course, been a great night sleeper but is now starting to regress (love the terminology...)

Strangely, she never settled on an evening or in the day in her cot for naps but has started both in the past week (hooray!) but has gone downhill in her night sleeping (boo).

Am chuffed with her generally as she is a sweet wee child and a good sort. She seems to have grown out of her unsettled first 4 months and into a wee routine, all of her own, with me reading her cues more than using any sort of technique, as such.

She doesn't self-settle as I feed her to sleep at night and she has a dummy for her naps in the day. Every bone in my body screams when I start to think about using something like shush/pat or PU/PD and I don't know why? I feel really anxious about it and the thought of having to go through a 'pain barrier' mentally (me) leaves me cold.

I know that theoretically, I need to 'teach' her to self-settle and to date, this hasn't been any problem for us so I haven't had to confront this issue. Although I don't co-sleep, in every other way I would call myself a strong advocate of attachment parenting and I HATE letting my LO's cry...perhaps even to an irrational degree that 'makes a rod for my own back' haha again, hideous terminology..

I don't co-sleep for a number of reasons and I don't actually mind getting up to feed babe in night in an armchair (she is still in our room) but I don't know how best to approach these night wakings as they continue, being consistent and kind to baby but not being unhelpful to her (which the literature would have me believe I am doing by not ACTIVELY teaching the skill to self-settle)

My DD1 (aged 2y4m) never self-settled and has always had a dummy. However, I gave up BF her at only 7 weeks so have no experience of BF a baby to sleep at this age.

The past few nights since night wakings began, I have been unsure whether to get baby up to feed her back to sleep or give a dummy instead? I LOATHE the idea of getting up every hour to give a dummy but last night I tried not feeding to see what happened and she never spat dummy back out but she did wake every hour from 2am so possibly she was a wee bit hungry or maybe wanted comfort?

This is such a long rambling post, sorry! Just suppose I'd love to hear from anyone who successfully came out the other side of sleep disruption WITHOUT employing the techniques in the books and perhaps just old-fashioned feeding back to sleep and any tips or particular things to look out for / watch out for.

Feeling good on the whole but want to do the best by my daughter and feeling a bit of a newbie to this whole situation even though a second time mum because a first time BF'r to this stage. DD2 EBF and no plan to wean til 6m if can help it.

Thanks in advance and any contrary viewpoints very welcome as am not pig-headed enough to think I am 'right', it just feels 'wrong' to me based on my anxious feelings about a regime or something I have read - feels like too much pressure??

Did wonder if should try ditch the dummy altogether too as have never used it in night til last couple of night.

Just remembered a little post-scipt...

...she does not seem to have learnt to co-ordinate her thumbs/fingers for self-soothing and at night, she is swaddled. Obviously, it would be easier to ditch her dummy totally if I knew she could suck something else for comfort.

Is it a vicious cycle, in that as long as she has a dummy, she is less inclined to learn to suck thumb/fingers? If I remove her dummy completely and de-swaddle her at some point too, will she 'find' her thumb/fingers instead because she will want something to suck? I am such a scaredy-cat (of any crying) that the thought of her crying while having nothing to suck until one night she eventually finds her hands through sheer distress, distresses me!!

So if anyone can advise on thumb/finger-sucking and dummy usage, I'd be most obliged (I don't ask much!!)

Lizzie

I've just been through a similar situation with my 20wk DS. He was a great sleeper until he hit 15wks then started waking every 90 mins at night.

I really felt strongly that I didn't want to let him cry as part of teaching self-settling, so started using "no cry sleep solution" which worked really well at first - got him to stop feeding to sleep, but unfortunately the night wakings still continued. Tried a dummy but that made him worse - he found spitting it out just after I'd replaced it was a great way to keep me in the room with him and he was smiling after he did it.

In the end I was so sleep deprived that I felt it was time to let him cry a bit in order to get a quicker solution as I was starting to feel so down about things I was no longer enjoying any part of my days with him.

I tried shush pat for a week but being in the room with him just seemed to make him more upset as he couldn't understand why he wasn't getting picked up. It felt more like teasing him than helping him, and his cries quickly turned from tired to distressed. I never tried pick-up put-down as again I felt that offering comfort in short bursts then taking it away again would just make him more distressed.

I ended up following the self-settling technique in "save our sleep", where you essentially leave them to it unless they start to sound distressed, at which point you pick them up straight away and comfort them and stay in the room until they are asleep. Putting him down, leaving the room and staying out actually worked well for him, even though it went against my basic parenting philosophy.....clearly he's less into attachment style parenting than I am

I'm only on day 3 of this approach and the change in his sleep is dramatic. I now dreamfeed at 10:30 and he wakes at around 3 when I feed him again. I'm not wholly convinced he's hungry at that feed, but he goes back into his cot awake and settles again quickly so I'll keep it up for now.

If leaving your DD to cry goes against all your instincts, then I'd wholly recommend giving "no cry sleep solution" a try. IMO it's not fair to you or her to try something that you're not comfortable with, so there's no harm in trying the gentle approach first.

Sorry for the mammoth post - hope there's something useful in it somewhere!

Around 4 months is a classic time for babies to go through a growth spurt and need more frequent feeds, so you may well find your dd goes back to sleeping better in a couple of weeks.

I don't think you need to teach self-settling, certainly not at 19 weeks. If you and your children are happy with the way things are for now, things are fine. When your dd is older, perhaps you will start to feel a burning resentment about being woken up in the night and that's the time you have to start making some changes.

I think you are over-thinking the dummy/thumbsucking. Again, you can get rid of the dummy at some point in the future. Obviously at some point she won't want to be swaddled any more and you'll stop doing that. She may start sucking her thumb or she may not - neither of mine ever did although I wished they would.

x-posted with your postscript

Could you try swaddling with one arm out to see how she gets on? Or do a transition from the dummy to another comforter? DS has a little fleecy blankie that I've put under his head since birth as I didn't want his poor little head on the sheet in case it was too rough When I was trying to teach him to settle in the cot with me still in the room I would take his hand and help him gently rub the blankie against his cheek. He now does that for himself as he drifts off to sleep. You could introduce the comforter while she still has the dummy so she's used to the new item before you take the dummy away

Hey thanks both, they are great insights.

I agree Alarka that I do over-think (in every facet of my life, mostly!) but I find myself going round in circles as I inherently hate using a dummy and so want a thumb-sucker so that clouds my (usually perfectly rational...) judgment! It is good to know she may still thum suck even if using a dummy (although not at same time :))

Bunnygirl - I might read Pantley's book as my SIL is coming out from the UK in couple of weeks and can bring a copy with her. I have had a basic look on the net and it does sound 'nice' if it works. Worth a read now I have time in evenings again eh!

Sorry, just re-read the thread and they're not recommending save our sleep to you, just mentioning it as working for them. Must read more thoroughly in future, sorry!

butternut i totally agree that if you don't want to leave your baby to cry then save our sleep is most definitely not the way forwards.

I certainly don't feel that everything in that book is right - I definitely don't agree that you should be leaving a baby alone to cry from birth, and the BFing advice is odd. The timings for how long a baby can cry for do seem to be plucked from thin air, so I went for an approach of I'll go in to him as soon as I no longer feel ok about what I'm doing rather than watching the clock.

I think alot of her choice of language makes it sound like you are entering into some kind of battle with your baby, rather than trying to help them learn something. But DS definitely has a low level whinge that he does when he's tired and trying to go to sleep, and an all out distress cry when he needs me. For whatever reason, if I try and do anything when he's just doing his tired cry he gets more and more wound up. I think he's decided that if I want to attachment parent then he wants to be completely independent

I resisted any form of self settling that involved crying until I had hit absolute rock bottom. We were in a situation where DS was waking every 90mins and taking an hour to resettle each time, and he was so overtired during the day he was miserable. My relationship with DH was suffering and I was so sleep deprived I was spending a considerable portion of each day in tears. If things hadn't reached that stage then I'd be happily still doing no cry sleep solution as I think Elizabeth Pantley's ideas fit well with mine.

DS seems to have just reached a time where he was happy to be left alone to put himself to sleep. Everything else I tried just led to him getting angry and frustrated. As soon as I put him down and left the room he cried for under a minute, then sucked his thumb and went to sleep. It was almost like he was saying "thank god that crazy woman has stopped rocking/patting me and shoving boobs/dummies in my mouth and left me to go to sleep!" That's probably just his particular personality, and I know that many many babies wouldn't react like that.

Sorry for the essay.......DS's sleep has been an obssession of mine recently and I'm finding it therapeutic to write down my thoughts on the issue.

Sorry bunnygirl I shouldn't have said anything. I'm hardly in a position to talk as I don't have a solution - my son wakes every 45 minutes overnight and I am locked into feed to sleep - I'm almost at your rock bottom but I have nowhere to go with it as can't bring myself to try anything else so have just got to keep going.

Hmmmm, same issue here though DS only tends to wake a two/ three times at night. I am very doubtful that DS is hungry when he wakes at night because on the odd occasion i leave him to it he goes back to sleep. Don't get me wrong, i'd never let him cry himself to sleep with that full on cry but i know that he tends to whinge/ moan/ almost cry sometimes which i think is more about him trying to re-settle himself than being hungry. He's 19 weeks and i don't think he's going to be a thumb sucker and he doesn't have a dummy. The trouble is, although i know that leaving him to it works sometimes i feel bad about it just in case he is genuinely hungry. But then when i revert to feeding him when he wakes he doesn't seem hungry and i feel like i'm wasting my time! I know i'm being inconsistent but i can't bear the thought of doing something that might be damaging him.

I am coming to the conclusion that DS might be the kind of baby who just needs to be left alone sometimes. He can and does settle himself, i just don't know if he's yet ready to go through the night and needs a little guidance or whether he still genuinely needs those night feeds.

No worries butternut You're right to point out that if a solution that involves crying is not what you want then save our sleep is not the way forwards.

I have a friend who used it with her baby from birth and when she told me she was leaving her newborn to cry for up to 40mins at a time my judgypants were pulled firmly up to my armpits Even though it has worked for me now, I don't think it would have been appropriate to try it when DS was younger and without trying other gentler solutions first.

Hope you find a solution for your DS soon. I know how hard it is when you're struggling with little sleep but still not wanting to let them cry.

Got to say I bfred my son back to sleep in the night til 12months... I felt EXACTLY the same as you about all the training and found it made me feel awful to think about it.

He did stop waking after my milk dried up... after about a month.... He then slept throught the night. And does now (mostly) aged 25 months.

But I did dump the dummy at 5.5 months as I felt it had been a mistake giving him one. He woke so much for it. He did cry then but I learnt to rock and use the pushchair etc...

But its not a straight path. I have read some advice and tried controlled crying for a toddler - though I hated it.... HATED IT.

But I longed to hear a story of the sleep being sorted without 'training' and obsessed and couldn't work out what to do and eventually my son and I worked it out together really with no crying. Or none that I couldn't bear! He was one though and I had had enough of night comforting.

You will get there. Read and listen and reject what you don't like.

Do try the No Cry stuff as essentially that's what I used, without meaning to.

Thank you all. Have asked SIL to buy me no cry sleep by Pantley as it's only £5 from Amazon (and is $30 in New Zealand!!!) so even if I don't like it, I don't have to read it and can sell second hand :)

It is so freezing here all of a sudden at night (hardly any houses in NZ have central heating so get a lot colder in winter!) that the thought of getting out of cosy bed every hour is a bit disturbing now, after last night.

It's such an individual thing, how we parent, isn't it. It's not a wonder I get put off by reading the literature when it always seems like it 'should' work for you. Hence the pressure I feel, I suppose.

Will see how we go and good luck with your babies too.

kiwi this is totally off the point of this thread but have you ever used book depository You only pay UK prices and it's free shipping worldwide. I get most of my books from there now rather than paying the overinflated prices they charge here in Oz

The nights here have suddenly got cold too - we've gone from running the air con full blast 24/7 to wrapped up in 1000 layers in a period of about 4 weeks.

I've steadfastly ignored all the books that say that if you don't teach your baby to self-settle the moment the umbilical cord is cut then you'll end up with some sort of non-sleeping monster. Especially the ones which call feeding/rocking your baby to sleep "accidental parenting".....I actually fed/rocked him to sleep on purpose as that's what I believe tiny babies need to feelv secure. I think babies will learn to go to sleep independently of you when they're ready - this is probably the real reason why the method I ended up using with DS worked in less than a day.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do

Thanks bunnygirl for info on books.