Co-sleeping, attachment parent and losihg the will to live. Please help (and be gentle)

[MummyBerryJuice]

M 16mo DS, with whom we have co-slept for at least a part of the night since birth, is still sleeping really poorly and needing many feeds at night to re-settle. Until recently (clocks-changing) he would go to sleep relatively easily after a bath at about 19H30 (breastfed to sleep) and would wake around 10pm when DH can easily settle him but any subsequent wakings would necessitate a feed. He would then sleep with bf in between (don't know how many or when as co-sleeping) until about 6H00-6H30 when he would wake for the day. He tends to use me as a dummy from about 4H30 onwards and if I try to remove the breast he wakes and screams. (I'm getting very little sleep)

He has a beautifully sunny and smiley personality and has one nap during the day lasting between 45-90mins and either in the cot/pushchair/car.

This state of affairs has not bothered me until I was about 6 weeks pregnant with DC2 (now 16 weeks) when feeding him, particularly at night, became very uncomfortable and irritating. We tried for 2 weeks to night wean DS and got NOWHERE. DH was in charge of settling him back to sleep and, I stayed away for a couple of nights in the beginnning. It resulted in 2 weeks of no sleep for any of us . He would just scream and scream and scream, fall asleep fitfully for a little while and then recommence the screaming.

We gave up and resolved to stay again later.

Recently the above has become compounded by the fact that he now won't even go to sleep before 20H30-21H00.

Pick-Up Put-Down does not work, Jay Gordon's method doesn't work and neither does offering him water, singing, patting, or any other form of trying to settle him apart from the breast.

I HATE hearing him cry in desperation for me and not being able to go to him.

But...

We are considering CC. It goes against everything I believe about sleep and parenting, but I just can't anymore.

I do not want to stop breastfeeding entirely.

Please tell me about your experiences of similar situations.

(I d not want to hear that I should just 'toughen-up')

I am in a similar situation with my10 month old. Google the "no cry sleep solution" (i'll attempt to link in a min - feeding lo at keyboard) I'm just starting with it.....

Have been in similar situation with you. Are you sure that your DS doesn't have any medical problems? Maybe check at GP? My DS2 was like this for months and months and he had a series of infections - tonsillitis 4 times, ear infections etc. etc. Now they're hopefully all cleared up, he is much better.

have you tried offering him a drink in the night in case he is genuinely thirsty? i mean, i know he is feeding, but it's possible that your supply has dropped due to the pregnancy, hence his desire to feed very frequently, and a cup of water or something may help with that?

what happens if you try and settle him to sleep without feeding?

Ooooh you poor thing.

I have been there, only not pregnant at the same time so kudos for this!

The No Cry Sleep Solution helped - it's a good book to read in that it acknowledges your AP philosophy but is realistic about how impossible it can be to cope with disturbed sleep.

I found that teething was the big problem so perhaps you could try to enforce a separation again in another couple of weeks.

In my case night feeds were the last to go at 2.3yrs, but only because I couldn't endure any crying (I think because DS had horrendous colic as a child and his crying seemed to set off an intolerable, physical response in me). I made sure I went to bed in close fitting tops and while I would still automatically feed in my sleep it did stop the latching on happening so much.

Sorry I don't think much of this is helpful but just wanted to say I know how it is, and it will get better one way or another, either because it becomes more tolerable or because you find a way to move on from night feeding.

www.amazon.co.uk/No-Cry-Sleep-Solution-Through-Foreword/dp/0071381392

I second (third?, fourth?) the no cry sleep solution - it wasn't overnight but it definitely helped with sleep long-term. DS has eczema and a breastfeed was the only thing which would settle him back to sleep and stop him scratching. But following an idea from the book I stopped feeding when he'd probably had enough, then roll over. He'd then settle to sleep (if not, more milk). Quite soon he started to self settle more - it was wonderful. Just by turning away I felt I had a bit more control back. But no crying.

Thanks

I have read NCSS and do remove him from the breast when he starts drifting off but it has not improved his ability to self-settle at all (and we've been at it for 4 months!)

thisisyesterday I (and DH) have tried offering him water when he wakes in case he really is thirsty (I get quite thirsty at night) but he rejects it. My supply definitely has dropped and he is getting a smaller volume of milk but his pattern hasn't really changed. It has always been like this. Since birth really. Although more intense when he was a newborn.

I was in a similar situation to what you describe. Feeding to sleep had gotten totally out of control. It got to the point that my DD would only sleep latched on. I could have dealt with it, by going to bed early, etc., but it seemed to me that this could not be good for her, because she was obviously never falling into a deep, restful sleep.

We tried the nice things first NCSS, even Baby Whisperer. When we finally tried CC, it worked much faster and with much less crying than anything else we had tried. I'll take controlled crying over uncontrolled crying any day. There are lots of methods to controlled crying if you decide to do it, read up a bit and make a plan, and be completely consistent. It's not fair to the baby otherwise.

Now that she is sleep-trained, DD sleeps around 12 hours per night, usually without waking, and takes a good daytime nap of over an hour. It's often more like 2. She has off days, and the occasional night waking. Now that I am confident that she knows how to sleep on her own, I almost always go in and get her when she cries. (I have also learned to tell when she cries in her sleep, which does not require my assistance!) If I get her, I give her a feed in our bed and take her back to her own room. Unfortunately, she almost always cries a tiny bit whenever I put her in her cot to sleep, but that's just how she is.

People get very judgmental about CC. No one likes it when her baby cries. I really feel that it helped us tremendously, and it wasn't nearly as painful as I thought it would be. I think people who are judgmental about it assume that the parents are doing it for themselves, but my DD is getting easily 3 more hours of sleep per day now. That has to be better for her.

From the times you have described, it sounds like your DS is getting 10.5 hours on a good night, and his naps are sometimes less than an hour. This isn't enough for the average child of his age, although he might be different. I know you know this, but it will be harder to make changes to his routine if you put it off until the new baby comes.

I hope this helps -- courage, courage! (whatever you decide to do)

Thank you

I do think that DS is getting enough sleep for him as he is a really happy child but I'm certainly not getting enough sleep for me .

I think we may try CC when DH gets back from his business trip next week and it gives me sometime to read up about it.

One question though... how does one know when it is a failure. I mean how many nights do you try for? Etc

I would give it a week. Make sure you are prepared with a good plan and that you and your partner are completely on the same page. Your baby has been doing it a different way for his whole life, so there are bound to be some tears. In our case, it was totally worth it.

Oh, and I didn't know my daughter was sleep-deprived until she was sleep-trained. She is a sunny little soul and never complained but she needs her 12 hours!

Of course, probably because I've been promoting sleep-training, she's upstairs refusing to take her nap. . .

Millpond sleep consultants are wonderful.s

We were in a very similar situation - had co-slept with ds since birth, bfing through most of the night, then when I was pg with dc2 (ds was 2.3 at the time) it became agony and I stopped getting any sleep at all. I wasn't happy at all with doing cc or sleep training which involved him crying alone, particularly after our years of co-sleeping - it seems like we were changing the rules on him!
Our solution was for me to move out of the bed to a different room and for dh to sleep with him, armed first with milk in a sippy cup, then with water and now with nothing. It was really hard at first hearing the cries of 'where's mummy?' but I really had to sleep and our rule was that I would never go in during the night, but that he could come into me at 5 a.m. or whenever he woke in the morning and breastfeed and snuggle up for an hour or so before getting up. It took a few nights for dh to be able to soothe him back to sleep every time, but I stayed out of the bed completely for over a month to completely break the cycle. My dh was very committed to the whole process which was lucky.
Our next step was for dh to come to bed with me in the evenings but now he goes through to ds when he wakes at night (which he does, at about 2 a.m., without fail, despite not feeding at night now) and they spend the rest of the night co-sleeping together in ds's room (he has a double mattress on the floor). The 5 a.m. waking stopped of their own accord. I didn't have to give up breastfeeding during the day although I actually did a couple of months later as it was still agonisingly painful and I decided I didn't want to tandem feed.
Hope this helps - I think it's important to realise that controlled crying isn't the only way. We are all really happy with how sleep works at the moment, dh appreciates being the parent who ds calls for at night as he works full time and sees night times as a special time when he does most of the parenting, and I appreciate the sleep! No.2 is due in 4 weeks so we'll just have to see what happens then.

Night we've already tried that tact. It worked initially but then DH had go away for work and it all went tits up from there

We were in exactly the same position as you at that age (in terms of sleep, I wasn't pg). We didn't do cc, but we had a further two years or so of sleep hell. The impact on all of us of every evening being taken up with getting DS1 to sleep andwith being woken up at least once every night was so horrific that I don't think we necessarily made the right decision. I can remember being left to cry as a child so I always insisted I would never ever do it, but honestly had I known how much longer it was going to go on I might have done. There is a chapter at the end of NCSS about it. I do think though that if you go for it you have to be utterly consistent.

As a footnote..... 7 mo DS2 is asleep beside me IN HIS COT as I type. I started settling him in it today, he has always co slept/ been bf to sleep until now and it was easy. He seems a good sleeper, DS1 was appalling and it has been a real relief to be able to say we did the best we could at the time and to stop beating myself up about it

Good luck xx

16 months was the absolute worst point for me too. did bfing, co sleeping, attachment parenting. I did try dr jay's night weaning but i did it much more gently, went from 1am to 3am refusing and explaining then very gradually extended it to 1am to 4am. I did it over a period of 3 months, giving in sometimes but my ds did start sleeping naturally from about 11pm-4am after a couple of weeks in the beginning for alot of the time.

It is a gradual process but imo you are defo doing the right thing. Sympathy to you. My ds has only just started sleeping through on a regular basis. still co sleeping though at 3 and 1/2 and expecting ds2 in 8 weeks!! oh god!

Jay Gordon worked for us, with both boys, around 13 months. You have to persevere though. With ds1 it took just 3 nights and he got the message, ds2 was more like 3 weeks. He's finally just this last month or so (just turned 18 months) stopped shouting out for a drink if he wakes up thirsty (he has a beaker in bed with him, it was like he just couldn't be arsed to find it!). It was around that time they started sleeping in their own rooms too, although we do still cosleep sometimes (even with 7yo ds1).

Night weaning doesn't have to spell the end of bfing either, ds2 is still going, and I bf ds1 until he decided to stop at 23 months.

Good luck.

Thanks. All perhaps I'll give a gentler J Gordon another go.

No, I'm not going to stop feeding him in the day (currently still on-demand), I think it is his choice to stop feeding if and when he wants to, but I do need him to stop at night.

i was in this situation when ds1 was 7months and i was a few weeks pregnant. the afternoon nap was impossible and night time was even worse, i tried everything, read everything and in the end got a health visitor to come out and help me to a 4 week self settling plan. it was a bit like cc which i was really against but i was desperate and exhausted and needed him to sleep all night in his cot sooner rather than later. it took a couple of weeks of worse nights but ever since he has slept brilliantly. slight blip around 16months (ds2 the same, what is it about 16months?!?) and we did slip back into co-sleeping every now and then but as soon as we got disturbed nights we were straight back to self settling and ds knew exactly what was expected so it didn't take long to get back to a full nights sleep.

I used to explain to him in the evening 'night time is for sleeping, so when you wake up mummy will say no more milk and we will just cuddle ok, night time is for sleeping' then i used to repeat this when he woke up