"Sleep plan" not working - carry on, makes changes ? Need some advice please!

[RaisingMrC]

9 month old DS has always been a bad sleeper, and as a result co-slept with him full time up until about 7 months, when he went into his cot in his own room.

He continued to wake up every 2 hours, sometimes more and I would feed every time - though he would go back into cot semi awake and settle down to sleep. He does have difficulty self settling though - hence his frequent wake ups I think.

Recently I've been trying to semi night wean - DP gives a bottle at 11 then I don't feed again until after 5am. We are trying to do gradual withdrawal, sitting with him while he falls asleep, patting and shushing if necessary.

Been doing this for 5 nights but there are absolutely no improvements. He still wakes every 2 -3 hours, and is very difficult to settle at 3 or 4 am. He is basically crying for one hour every night. And last night, after crying from 3.30 - 4.30, he fell asleep then woke at 5!

Has anyone tried similar - how long did it take to work?

Or can you advise me how I can take a different tack, to improve things? Feeling quite despairing at this point...

I'm no expert but a similar problem with dd in that she could not self settle. I gave myself two weeks and by the end of the two weeks she was self settling most of the time for naps and the naps were extending beyond 40 mins. Night wakings were still bad, I kept doing the same thing for every waking/sleep and by one month she was sleeping through. DD was younger (I started at 18 wks) but I understand the older the baby the longer it will take to turn things around. Hang in there and don't cave in would be my advice.

The only other thing I can think of to say is look at daytime sleep, a friend suggested I try the nap schedule by gina ford, and that night she slept through (it was whilst I was doing the sleep training mentioned above), maybe a fluke I tried it again and it seemed to suit her. She slept through for about 2months like this, on this routine. I have just had a bad 4/5 nights where she has cut a tooth and we have been on holiday and day trips etc...I've been up with her and we so we have all been sleeping in...Anyway yesterday I woke her at 7am despite the bad night and followed the routine (waking her for the first nap, counter intuitive really) but last night I got two lots of 6 hours (we had to do pain relief at 00:30) so I'm sticking with it again today...

What strategy did you use to encourage self settling, Sedgie?

Hi RMrC, I don't have loads of time right now, but probably approached it much the same as yourself.

The ideas I had came from two books the Baby Whisperer solves all your problems one and the the NCSS along with some ideas from others on the 'baby wont nap' thread which I think is still live here on page one or two (about 500 responses) if you would like to peruse it.

Basically I started to wind down more, do the 4 S approach (set the scene/swaddle/sit/shushpat) and tried to get baby calm as possible in my arms without being asleep before settling her in her cot and patting her as she drifted right off. There was a lot of crying for both of us to start with because I stopped dead feeding to sleep but I stuck with it for the two wks and saw a change. I staggered my approach in that my goals were first: breaking feeding to sleep, then getting baby to self settle, then extending the short naps, then cutting down night feeds, instituting a dream feed, reducing night wakings (the latter just happened at the end of about a month as mentioned. Even if baby howled through my '4's' thing I kept doing it for every sleep and finally she got it! Sometimes now she still howls but that's normally overtiredness I think

Having thought about it, I feel if you are breaking feeding to sleep/going to sleep on a full belly habit, it is going to represent a massive change for baby and so its only fair to keep going and give them time to adjust and resist the temptation to try something else and something else if it doesn't work, otherwise baby might become really confused and frustrated (not that I pretend to know much about babies - just my own conclusion) every time you do what you have resolved to do it is reinforcing that 'this is how we do things at bed time' and I reckon it will eventually have an effect.

That is my experience in any case. I found a interesting article this wk which if I get a chance later I will find and link for you. Hope you get somewhere - its horrible doing sleep training, I spent hours and hours and hours at it....but keep going, I kept telling myself I had little alternative I either wait and it would perhaps get harder as she got more mobile or do a CIO/CC thing which I'm not OK about so it motivated me to persist. HTH

When I did CC/CIO with DS I found that coming to pat/sush him every so often was pissing him off even more. Have you tried letting him cry without you in the room? It does sound harsh, it is not everybody's cup of tea, but if your baby has been fed at 11, in theory, he should last most of the night (provided he eats enough during the day).
Now I put DS in bed at a regular time (after a bottle) and give him a dreamfeed round 10/11pm. He is now a good sleeper with the exception of when we are not at home, then it can be a bit hit and miss. Good luck, it is difficult and what works with some people does not with others.