No Cry Sleep Solution - tips & advice for a very tired family pls!

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4 month old DS had been sleeping really well (even right through a couple of times a week), but around 3 or 4 weeks ago this went totally out of the window because of teething pain. Now lucky to get an hour or two between wakings. We are exhausted with a capital E as you can probably imagine.

Spoke to the health visitor about it this morning and she recommended what is essentially the No Cry Sleep Solution - no more coming into our bed when we've had enough at 4am, as this is what he is aiming for by waking all the time, put down sleepy but not asleep, etc... We are trying it for the 1st time tonight.

As I type DH is upstairs trying to settle him a bit, and I can hear non-stop whinging and crying. What the eff have we got ourselves into?! Will he eventually just get too tired to stay awake and zonk out? Will we ever be able to sit down and eat our dinner?

ANY advice or tips or opinions or anything really would be most welcome - please! I think I just need my hand holding as I know it's only going to get worse before it gets better.

Thanks in advance to any kind people who might respond.

Does he sleep well if he's in bed with you? If so I'd probably stick with that.

What is your DH trying to settle him? Were you feeding to sleep until now?

Thanks for replying Rita.

He sleeps wonderfully in bed with me, I however do not, as I'm always very conscious of him being there, and DH even worse as he gets relegated to the sofa.

DH is holding/rocking him, it clearly is not working and I'm going to have to go up in a minute. He isn't fed to sleep as such, although his last feed before bedtime does generally lead to him falling asleep. He isn't fed to sleep throughout the night, or for daytime naps.

We are going through exactly the same with our 20 weeks old DS but think we are ahead by ca 2 weeks...for the last month DS wakes up every 45mts and was extremely difficult to settle at nighttime. Think due to general 4 month sleep regression plus teething. We also started co-sleeping which seemed to be the only thing that worked to calm him down. As you however, I cannot sleep when he is next to me....so...last week we tried to reduce the time gradually that he is in bed with us and for the last 3 nights he has slept only in his cot. Also, whilst he still wakes up 45 mts after we put him down he is now getting increasingly longer stretches of sleep thereafter...We also used some of the NCSS techniques, have not fed to sleep, put him down sleepy but not asleep, but think what helped most in last week was to be really quick when he did wake with soothing him back to sleep (ideally when he is still in his cot-we literally spent a couple of nights awake sitting next to his cot so that we helped him get into the next sleep cycle without getting too upset / awake - this actually seems to be working and Ive now watched him a couple of times waking up but finally being able to fall asleep again by himself. Its early days but I have the feeling that we are on our way out of this nightmare (fingers crossed). Just to let you know you are not alone and hope this helps! Good luck tonight!!

Hi Sam, thank you for your reply, it is encouraging to know that this method does produce good results, ie, a good night's sleep for him and us! It's interesting that you've spent a couple of nights just watching over and settling straight away, this is something I might suggest to DH to do over the weekend.

Tonight is going quite well so far - took over an hour to initially settle him, but now that he is down, he keeps waking, but 5 mins with him seems to do the trick. I do hope that this will work for us as well as it seems to be working for you!