Come sail with me with you're in the same boat...

[IMissSleep]

SLEEP! Not getting enough at night or naps during the day. Doesn't matter what age your DC are.

Share your stories here, solutions or just have a vent!

I'll start...

My DS is 8.5 months. Went through a good stage with night time routine, still has really - self settles to sleep no problem. Feeds at 11pm. But will wake between 2am - 5am maybe 3 times. So I'm up and down a lot during the night! He has slept through maybe a handful of times. Still good with naps, 2x 2hr.

Still would love a full night though!

Argh. I swear everything I have tried to do to improve DS' sleep has just made things worse. At the first hint of him not falling asleep on the boob I jumped on it and have encouraged not feeding to sleep. Now he isn't able to feed to sleep, and is crap at getting to sleep any other way. Just took an hour to get him off, and he was crying (though not really screeming) for about 45 minutes of that despite all my efforts to calm him.

And in reducing night feeds I think he just wakes up more in the night.

Maybe it wasn't really like this, but I think we went through a phase before I started on this 'improvement' campaign of DS sleeping all evening and just waking twice a night for feeds at 12 and 4.

Urgh.

Kitty sorry about your napping disaster. Your post about being like a nodding dog made me giggle, which is just what I needed! Glad she eventually got at least some naps in.

Fingers crossed for better nights tonight all round (and appologies for being such a whingebag today).

Morning all

Kitty - was your night any better? You poor thing, you really do sound like you are having a time of it. My friend was in your position - shocking nights and dreadful naps only taken in motion at 8 months and now at 9 months her son sleeps through and takes long naps in his cot. Getting him to nap in his cot and stopping feeding to sleep are what worked for her and these things seem to be resulting in improvements for us too. I would encourage you just to devote a week to cracking naps. Things are still hit and miss here, but I do get at least 1 nap a day in her cot and even her pram naps are now longer. Down to one night waking still, so I am wondering if we are through are current bad phase. I am not quitting teh boat just yet though as I expect the broken nights will be back very, very soon!

Cot 7.05, 7.45 picked up and cuddled, 8.00 finally asleep in arms, transfered to cot.

Woke 8.45
woke 10.15
woke 12.00
woke 2.15 tried everything. BF at 2.50. Put in our bed, finaly asleep 3.30ish
woke 4.30 imediately boobed, one side only. fell asleep off boob.
up for the day 6.40.

Sod not feeding in the night, it's too hard. And he's got harder to re settle not easier.

Zimm do you want to have a go with my DS, you seem to be far more succesful then me!

Flowery - To be fair I think we are enjoying this good spell for three reasons:

1. We've passed the 9 month sleep regression
2. Break from teething
3. The efforts we have put in self-settling for naps and for going down at bedtime

But I know the next bad spell is just around the corner!

Zimm, you can also take my DD! I'd be prepared to pay...

Last night was another shocker - different from the previous two though. DD was up a lot but just enjoying herself moving around. Her favourite thing is bouncing her feet and legs (and bottom if she can get enough momentum) off the mattress. Fortunately she wasn't screaming like the previous two nights and DH was home so we took it in turns to sit up with her. I don't think she had more than 7 hours sleep in the 12 hour period and she was up at 6.30 (has been getting up at 8) so I was confused for nap times today. You'd have thought she'd be tired and cranky all day but she was happy as larry and again has only had an hour and 30 minutes napping time. She does seem to be learning to sleep with the pram standing still though which is a relief. She is also spending a lot more chilled out time in the cot rather than just crying so I'm hoping we'll soon be able to work on napping there.

Zimm, I had dedicated this week to cracking napping. I just picked a really bad week! She's only just 6.5 months and there seems to be a lot of changes going on with her - I think teeth are just around the corner, we're only just getting to grips with the idea of having food and she's just learnt to roll and seems to like to practice. I'm going to give it another couple of weeks cos I need to recuperate and then we'll try again.

My best wishes are with everyone for this evening and a lovely weekend in the sunshine.

I can see and feel the bottom 2 teeth on my DS2, I am sure of it!!! Really worried about bfing with teeth!!! Didn't get this far with DS1. Kitty your DD sounds like a right handful at night!

Can I jump in? DD is 16 months and does not sleep well

She had an operation a week ago and had general anaesthetic/morphine/codeine/paracetomol/ibuprofen and still didnt sleep!!

She never really has though but its getting worse and worse. She tends to go to sleep at 7pm then wake around 8pm then again about 11pm and she has a bottle but then won't go to sleep just wants to play. DH has taken to taking her out in the car to get her to sleep (that's where he is now, driving her around). Then she'll wake again any time between 2 and 4am and then up for the day around 6.

We both work and its getting to the point where i'm at the end of my tether. We've tried leaving her for a couple of minutes when she's been crying but I hate doing it and she just went totally hysterical. We hired a dvd earlier this week and tonight in an attempt to order takeaway and watch it together but both times she's just screamed and foods gone in bin, dvd back to shop I'm starting to get really resentful. We have a 6 year old dd too and its not fair on her either.

Any thoughts?

Sorry I meant to say, when our older dd had a bad night I'd usually just take her in bed with me, not ideal but at least we both got sleep, but dd (2) won't settle even if we try to go sleep. She just starts crawling round the bed and singing.

Camperfan I had a pierced nipple courtesy of DD's first tooth! Couldn't feed from that side for 2 days! She has learnt not to bite now though....
Kitty my heart goes out to you, you must be shattered.
Having had a couple of ok nights (because we've stayed in and had good naps) today we went out and had rubbish naps and crap feeding so although DD went down ok am not hopeful about tonight. She already woke half an hour ago and had to change nappy so had no compunction about feeding her back to sleep!
Hope you all have good nights

Morning all,

Last night DD was up a few times due to the heat I think and DP was also up talking in his sleep a few times! AArgh - I need them both to sleep through!

Welcome brianandhisballs. I don't know much about 16 month old sleep I'm afraid. Sounds rough though. Does your DD self-settle for any of her sleeps?

Kitty I think circa 6 months is a tricky age what we growth spurts and weaning so you are probably right to leave naps a few weeks. My DDs sleep was utterly dreadful when she was learning to roll, I was a total zombie.

canperfan - DD cut six teeth in 3 weeks (late bloomer recently. BF has been mostly fine, sometimes if her latch is a little off I get a but scratched but generally totally fine.

Brian, I don't know much about 16 month olds either but I do know about being at the end of my tether. The good news is that you CAN manufacture more tether. And even though it doesn't feel like it, you will when you need to. I hasn't realised we do this either but someone mentioned it on another post and its true.

I suspect very much that what you need right now is not suggestions on how to make your DD sleep but in fact how to get some yourself. Can you sleep whilst DH is out in the car? the ncss does suggest that sometimes you take a week and don't try to change anything other than just how much rest you get - prioritise yourself, sleep when DD sleeps (or when you can get someone to watch her), go to bed as early as she does and don't restart efforts to improve her sleep until you feel a bit better yourself. If sleep isn't an option (I frequently turn into an insomniac when DD's sleep is bad), is there something you can do for yourself for a couple of hours whilst DH assumes the role of chief parent? I like to go to the cinema alone and lose myself completely in a film. Or maybe even just some quality time alone with your older DD?

I hope you feel better soon.

Thank you for your kind comments, I'm afraid I was a bit on edge when I wrote my post

Definitely think we need to concentrate on getting more sleep first then dealing with dd when we're more 'with it'.

I hope you all have good nights

No posts since saturday?? Don't tell me everyone is busy sleeping...

We're achieving some better napping - almost 3 hours a day for two days and some of those have not required constant motion. However, not as yet seeing any pay back at night time with DD currently requiring constant holding all night (I do get some sleep this way but it comes with a side order of pins and needles).

Hi kitty

3 hours a day sounds fab, as does the weaning off constant motion. The night time payback will come, I think to really reap the benefits you need to work on the self-settling skills at the same time. When DD's sleep was at it's worst I learnt to sleep sitting up in bed holding her!

Things have been pretty good here, DD woke at 1am and 5.30am last night but apart from that she slept.

We are still on 2 night feeds, but have had a couple of nights of just 1 feed and the next one about 6 am so I feel things are improving very slowly. However we have had a few mornings when he's up for the day at 5.30, but I have just been leaving him to it and going to another room (leaving a small person with a master bedroom and en suite all to himself ) and he goes back off eventually. This throws nap times off a bit, but we're quite flexible anyway on that front. I have noticed that the morning nap is getting shorter- less than an hour, but then he is 7.5 months so that would make sense. It's not having a knock on effect on the lunchtime nap yet, but hopefully that will get longer. The teeth are there, but not out yet. Anyone got a teething necklace?

Brian, poor you, I agree you need formulate a plan that you and your DH agree on. In the Pantley book, this is helpfully written down and you add your own comments/strategies. Have you been to GP to rule out any medical causes? Do you have the Millpond Sleep Clinic book? Perhaps "gradual retreat" would work for you? It definitely sounds like she needs to stay in her own cot, but with gradual retreat you are still with her, nit cntrolled crying. But she IS going to cry a lot still! In my experience, at that age sleep tends to get worse if they are not a brilliant sleeper to start with, until you can start to reason with them, closer to age 3, so some sleep training now would be very useful!!

We went through a rough patch trying not to feed in the night. It seemd to make it much harder to setle DS any other time too, and I never actually managed no feeding - always gave up after an hour, the worst possible thing to do. So, we had a few days of me feeling totally ropey and I needed to take a break from obsessing about it (and so MN!) and just doing what we had to to get some sleep until I felt a bit more human. Now we are on a proper no feeing in the night campaign after DH and I have talked it all through poperly, know what we're doing, and that DH will deal with the nasty 3.30am wake up (when he was previously feeding and is a a bugger to resettle then). Last night was the first night. DS was awake between 3.15 and 5.30am, but we didn't give in. Hopefully it will get easier as the nights go on.

Kitty, glad to hear your naps are getting better.

Brian, I really recommend having a plan and making sure both you and DP understand it and are commited to it. I feel much better now it's 'our' plan and not 'my' plan. Plus we have agreed that we will try for two weeks and if there is no improvement we will re think. I realise that two weeks won't solve all our wakings, but I need to know we can stop and try again later or try something different if there is no improvement at all, and I think that a sort of assesment point will help us recognise any improvements and give us the drive to keep going, assuming it does start getting at least a little easier then last night!

back to two 30 minute naps here today. Hmm. Two steps forward, three steps back. The odd thing is, she didn't have a meltdown and she didn't go to bed any earlier - if anything, she went down much easier tonight and so far has been more settled than the last few nights. I'm very confused!

Hi all, well after a few good nights (1 or 2 wakeups, and one amazingly flukey night where she slept 9.30 till 6.45!!!) it's all gone downhill. 30 minute naps like you Kitty and more wakeups at night. DH is getting very good at settling without me coming in with the failsafe boob, but the 4am wakeup is impossible without boob. Even though I don't think she's hungry, she just seems wide awake and milk at least makes her sleepy. Still can't get her to take a bottle so DH unable to help in that respect.

Brian hope things are getting better for you and you've managed some sleep.

Camperfan we have a teething necklace as DD seems to really suffer with teething (since 8 weeks.... ) and although we're very about that sort of thing, I do think it might have made some difference. Could just be all in my head though! She does look like a
cute little cavebaby with it on and nothing else :o

How is everyone today?

2 nights with no milk now. Last night the usual pre 3am wakes, all easy to settle still in cot. woke at 3.10 and settled in cot!!! Woke at 4.20 and was awake until about 6 I think, then slept until about 7.15. Think that's a bit better then the night before, and we're still feeling posative.

Dreemagurl, sorry things aren't getting better. I think they test you - a few nights where you feel things are improving and then some horror nights to really test your nerve in whatever you were trying to do/not to do. Aren't they darlings!

Well I have had 2 good nights too, don't want to gloat, but might give people hope. Through no sleep training or reducing feeds, we have had another 2 nights of only one feed. He's gone through til 4am both nights without waking, 15 min feed then back to sleep til 7am! I am happy to feed at night if it is one feed, for another couple of months, at which point I will have to what you have done flowery, well done - it looks like you have got there!!!

The teeth have not sprouted yet and we have not had any grizzling, but I may get a necklace today.

Any news from you, Brian?

Crap couple of nights here - and we were doing so well! DD has learned to pull up to sitting from lying so this is all she does at nap time - hence is totally overtired by night time and does not sleep well. Am pretty stuck for solutions other than strapping her down! Got her weighed yesterday (she is 10months and not been weighed since pre-weaning!) and she has crossed into another centile - now on 91st! HV said "OOooo she likes her food" - No, I said, she likes her night feeds! HV had no useful advice, unsurprisingly. But then they are a bit thick round here - I heard her advising the previous lady to try and drop one of her DD's breastfeeds - her DD is 7 months and on 5 a day - hardly a lot!

Is it legal to strap children down for naps?? :-) :-) ;-)

Well done Camperfan that definitely does give hope! DD has also done similar nights so hoping that'll return for us.

Zimm that sounds awful, not looking forward to DD reaching that stage! I'm sure it's fine to strap them in as long as you haven't been smoking, drinking or taking drugs, and the room is dark and cool.... ;)
Seriously though, does she continually do it and you have to keep rescuing her? Have you tried leaving her to it? (not trying to tell you what to do, just remember when DD started crawling it was all she wanted to do in her cot but once we left her to it she soon tired herself out and went to sleep.... Mostly....) Easy for me to say, I know. Hope you get some solutions (and some sleep!) soon.

Oh and well done Floweryboots, I wish I was that brave. I keep telling myself I'm not going to feed her at night then somehow realise I'm sitting in the nursery at 2am with my boob in her mouth...! Hope you're continuing to get some results :)

It's really hard to know when is the 'right' time to reduce or cut out night feeds. We have done it pretty gradually over the last 7-8 weeks and DS is 10 months next week. I think we've had the guts to keep going this week because we're doing it together (me and DH I mean) so we're really keeping each other going. I just hit a completet brick wall last week because I'd been saying I was going to not feed then not sticking to it because an hour of being awake and putting up with crying was as much as I could take, so I was completly nackered and without realising it had PMT too (first AF after DS arrived yesterday) so we HAD to do it and stick to it this week! I didn't want to spend any more days sat in floods of tears because of feeling like a failure!!!

Going well, night 3 and we had usual mulitple pre 3am wake ups but all bar one he settled himself without us going to him . woke at 3.10am and settled in his cot with a bit of patting. woke again at 5am and calmed down with a cuddle from DH then came into our bed, burbled for 15 minutes then dozed of till 7.10am . Think we're really getting there. When we've totally cracked no feeding I think we will start gradual withdrawl, though he does seem to be getting better at settling himself now, and it's taking less time for him to go to sleep at bed time too - only about 15 minutes last night. Still can't leave him to get on with it just yet, but the time is improving slowly. So guys, seems it can be done! Fingers crossed for the rest of you.

Can I join?
ds2 is 10 months and is so sleep resistant.
He can survive on 2 x 40 min power naps during the day and last night is an example of where we are most of the time:
7pm put to bed
7.45 eventually went down
10.00 woke up bf
12 ds1 woke and woke ds2, he settled back down until
2.30 bf
430 up for the day.
Im back at work this week and just feel like a zombie.