Sleep Nightmares Part III: At 3am No-One Can Hear You Scream

[CountBapula]

I've been moaning about documenting my 8 mo DS's 'challenging' sleep patterns on MN since he was three weeks old. He's still waking every 2-3 hours at least and the other thread's full, so here's a shiny new one for all you parents of hardcore sleep refusenik babies.

Who's with me?

hi judy bapula and hanbee, thanks so much for the replies, support and advice, I really appreciate it. Sorry it's taken a few days to post back. Sounds like we all got stressed by the darn BW book! And lots of other "angel" babies in RL. I do have one friend whose baby sleeps less than mine but she's still finding it very tough at 6 months so I guess I started thinking it would inevitably be the same for us.

judy I think that's sage advice to not try to "sort" it out at the moment, and see how things develop and try not to stress. I'm sure it doesn't help. I switch between feeling fairly positive and taking one day at a time, going with the flow, and looking ahead to things like a family holiday in September (with DH's fam) and envisaging 10-hour stints in the day with no sleep and a very grisly DS and frazzled everyone else!!

I figured there were good reasons why cc isn't recommended at such a young age, so thanks for backing that up - I'm keen not to do it at all but got a bit fed up the other night. In fact things have started improving a bit in the last couple of days, with him staying asleep in his car seat after we brought him inside (supervised, I know it's not ideal) and going a bit longer at night after being tightly swaddled! I don't hate you judy for saying 3-4 hours isn't bad, having read a lot of posts on MN I realised I should count my blessings!

Hope you all start to get better sleep soon and the teething etc is done and dusted quickly.

Hello everyone.

Bumper that is interesting and great news for you! It sounds a bit like your DD was ready to do it. (Just been admiring your craft on your profile page as a result of your other thread btw. V impressive!)

Louby I thought a lot about your question of "would I have done anything differently" - actually the 2 main things would have been to have a lot more cosleeping naps and also to wear DS in a sling from day dot, as I think he would have slept a lot in one.

Re co-sleeping, I used to feed DS to sleep lying down in the bed, then he and I would both sleep like that. Would your DS do that rather than sleep on you? It ensured that I didn't feel sleep deprived in the early days.

Interestingly enough, I also read the baby whisperer book (when DS was 4 weeks) and felt so terrible that I was doing "everything wrong". I remember trying to shush pat DS after that and he was completely confused and did not know what was going on!

Well, I have decided to try something different following all the night feeding I was doing and for the past 3 nights have only fed DS once and offered water at the other wake ups. The first 2 days went well and he went back to sleep pretty easily. Last night he was awake off and on from 3-5. DP is putting him to bed now and it sounds like a struggle.

Tonight I am planning on not feeding at all. Wish me luck.

Judys how is your plan going?

Good news hanbee - glad things are going well for you. Hope it goes well tonight Raising - let us know how you get on. I can't seem to get past 2 minutes. I was thinking of trying no feeds tonight too but I think DS is teething again and he's woken twice already. My DH is away for the weekend too and last night was quite tough so not sure it's the best time to tackle it.
The plan is going quite well but we're taking it quite slowly - we're only on step 3. At the moment we settle DS in the cot, letting him suck our finger for a count of 5 and then taking it away for a count of 10. He seems to be accepting it and he normally only sucks it 4 or 5 times before he rolls over and starts falling asleep (with our hand on him). He is still waking loads in the night though and I'm going off plan a bit when he does which probably isn't helping. He is waking crying a lot and won't even suck my finger so I've been picking him up to comfort him. I just can't sit there and let him cry but at this step I should not pick him up.
The good things so far though are that DH can settle him in the evening and through the night now and feels more confident in doing so. DS is also napping in his cot all the time now and sometimes goes for 90m without me having to resettle him. I think we're getting somewhere but pretty slowly!

Good news judy's. Keep at it!

Raising let us know how it goes.

Things pretty shit here. DS is waking every 3 hours or so and will not settle unless I feed him. He won't settle for DH and will go to sleep if I rock him but wakes instantly and bashes me when I try and put him down :(

So sick of this. I thought he'd got the hang of it - a month ago he was going until 3 or 4am without a feed and just needing a bit of a pat to go back off. No idea what the hell to do. I have to go back to work in September and there's no way I will cope if he's still doing this :(

DS was 9 months on Friday - can't believe sleep is still such an issue - just seems to be never ending. I'm sick of it as well count and am back to work in September too. I have a weekend away at the end of the month with some friends (think I'll just sleep!) and am at the point that I've told DH he can do cc while I'm away. I really don't think it could be done when I was in the house. Not sure DH could do it either and really hoping it won't come to that. DH's colleague gave him this article to tempt him with tales of cc working in one night .
Anyway, last night wasn't a complete disaster. I managed to calm DS in the cot for the first time in ages from mega screaming by stroking his head - I was trying to be good and follow the plan and not pick him up and it worked surprisingly quickly. I also didn't feed him until 4.40am which is a record. I was trying to hold out until 6am but he woke 10 minutes after I settled him and I was craving sleep!
I need to work on the naps this week and start waking him up after an hour in the morning. It just goes against my instincts to wake him and the days I've tried it, it doesn't seem to help. I think the consultant wants us to do it as the lunchtime nap is the one they keep as they get older but I just think the morning nap will get later until they blend into one and he'll be napping at lunchtime in the nursery anyway. My instincts haven't served me too well so far though!
I arranged DS's settling in days on Friday - can't believe mat leave is nearly over. I feel a lot of it has been in a sleep deprived haze as well. I've enjoyed it so much I can't imagine how it would have been if we didn't have all these sleep issues.

Loobylou, I second Raising's suggestion of a sling. Mine was a life saver and DS2 took all his naps in it until he was 3 months, it allowed me to make sure DS1s life continued with some familiarity in terms of playing and meals. I still use it now to get the housework done as DS2 won't leave the Hoover alone if he's on the floor! My only recommendation is that you look at soft style carriers rather than baby bjorn types, at 8 months and 9.5kg I've had to abandon my BB as he's too heavy and kills my back.

Hanbee I'm impressed you managed that long with the baby bjorn! I had a sleepy wrap until DS was about 6 months.

Judys I could never get past 3 minute feeds with DS - he would cry a lot if I placed him down after that. It felt to me almost like I was teasing him with such a small feed. Am impressed by your nap success. DS is still taking ages to settle (50 minutes today) and I ALWAYS have to resettle him.

Count sounds like you are in sleep regression territory. Hopefully once he is through it, he will go back to sleeping longer stretches and feeding less. A PITA while you are in the midst of it though. It will be over before you go back to work though.

The last two nights of no feeds and offering water instead have been okay [tentative emoticon!]. He has been waking up the usual amount (3 times) but settles back relatively easily. I do wonder if we will now just have a situation where he still wakes, but needs a drink to go back off.

Hope you are all ok?

DS seems to have mostly stopped needing a feed in the night now (I think has only fed 1 night in the last & or so), but he still seems to wake at the time he used to feed. Am hoping that waking will just stop as I don?t really know what to do if it doesn?t!

Self settling is still not there ? he varies between needing rocking to sleep, to going to sleep in his cot but with shhhing and patting, and we seem to somehow have developed a dummy habit ? I think that started when he was teething as it really seemed to help then. Luckily he doesn?t mind when it falls out as long as he?s properly asleep when it does.

I?m just at a bit of a loss about what to do next to get him to actually self settle, ie with us doing nothing other than putting him in his cot. We?ve been shhing and patting to sleep for months and months now and it?s not really progressed beyond that ? if you don?t do it, he ends up really upset.

Well, we got DS to sleep last night without sucking our fingers! In fact, he hasn't sucked our finger since Sunday night - he'll now settle if we stroke his hair or chest in the cot. Unfortunately he still woke up 5 times last night - 2 times for 90 minutes of screaming . I didn't feed him until 5.30am either and am worried that's why he was so upset but think/hope it's more to do with teething.
Cosmosis - could you try the wake to sleep thing? I've always been curious to know if it works so you could be a guineau pig. It's where you wake your DS 30minutes or so before they would habitually wake for a few nights and then when you stop waking them they are meant to not wake either or something. I think someone has started a thread asking about it.
Hope everyone else is ok.

Hi everyone

We had a nap break through today as DS2 settled fir both naps on his own! Once in a stationary car and later is a stationary buggy. Not sure if it will ever be repeated though!! Tonight I've managed a whole hour of not feeding/rocking/holding so not going so well on that front!

Knew it would be a nightmare - 11 wake ups between 11 and 7, argh!!!!!

I'm back after a long break - holiday (went well, with a mixture of travel cots and co-sleeping, but it did mean dp slept in another room :( ) and illness having kept me off regular MN.

nights are as they always were (not great!) and now we're dealing with 5am starts too. the babies are still tired at 5am, but see each other and get too excited to go back to sleep. am going to try blackout blinds but also open to any suggestions - we're already cosleeping by 5am, and they feed then, just don't go back to sleep. grr.

Judys well done! it's a slow process teaching them to sleep on their own, eh? I think my dts have same birthday as yours, as they were just 9 months last Friday too :)

Cosmo, can you shh/pat, but stop when he's calm, then start again when upset? or go from patting to just placing a hand, perhaps by patting progressively more lightly? I have gone from pretty much holding dt1 down (what someone called "firm pressure") and rubbing his back to a still hand, to a light touch, to a hand hovering over his back to (now) no hand at all. all little steps. doesn't mean he wakes less often but last night he did wake and go back to sleep after I came in the room, but without needing to be touched (I normally still use a hand on his back to resettle because I don't want him waking dt1).

Count so sorry you've hit a regression, your ds was doing so well when I was last here. there are two months till September. this are bound to be different by then (as I go back then too, I have to keep believing this).

Sorry, am not fully caught up with everyone, but Bumper you give us hope!

I'm back after a long break - holiday (went well, with a mixture of travel cots and co-sleeping, but it did mean dp slept in another room :( ) and illness having kept me off regular MN.

nights are as they always were (not great!) and now we're dealing with 5am starts too. the babies are still tired at 5am, but see each other and get too excited to go back to sleep. am going to try blackout blinds but also open to any suggestions - we're already cosleeping by 5am, and they feed then, just don't go back to sleep. grr.

Judys well done! it's a slow process teaching them to sleep on their own, eh? I think my dts have same birthday as yours, as they were just 9 months last Friday too :)

Cosmo, can you shh/pat, but stop when he's calm, then start again when upset? or go from patting to just placing a hand, perhaps by patting progressively more lightly? I have gone from pretty much holding dt1 down (what someone called "firm pressure") and rubbing his back to a still hand, to a light touch, to a hand hovering over his back to (now) no hand at all. all little steps. doesn't mean he wakes less often but last night he did wake and go back to sleep after I came in the room, but without needing to be touched (I normally still use a hand on his back to resettle because I don't want him waking dt1).

Count so sorry you've hit a regression, your ds was doing so well when I was last here. there are two months till September. this are bound to be different by then (as I go back then too, I have to keep believing this).

Sorry, am not fully caught up with everyone, but Bumper you give us hope!

Hi everyone. Sounds like our babies are still giving us all grief in the sleep department!

Mama - sounds like you're heading in the right direction!

Cosmosis we are the same with self-settling. We're basically either rocking or feeding to sleep - ie we've completely gone backwards

I think I've sorted DS's insistence on feeding for every waking, though. It's really silly and I'm a bit about it. Basically, last week I was panicking a bit about going back to work and settling DS with the CM, and thought I'd see how long he'd go between day feeds if I didn't offer as frequently, seeing as he is now eating loads of solids. I am crap at expressing so was hoping I could get the day feeds down a bit.

Almost instantly he dropped two feeds - the mid-morning one and the lunchtime one - so was basically only feeding first thing, mid-afternoon and bedtime, plus one night feed. After a couple of nights of him insisting on being fed every 3 hours at night, DH put two and two together and realised DS was reverse cycling. So I've been feeding more in the day and though he's still waking very frequently which I think is regression-related, he will now settle without a feed again, which means DH can help with some of the wakings.

Silly me

PS judy - well done on the lack of finger sucking - fab news! Keep us posted.

At least you've worked it out Count! When he starts cm you could try offering more yoghurts etc in the day?

Welcome back mamachoc - hope you're better now.
Count - I feel the same about day weaning before I start work but was also worried about how it would affect his sleep. I alternate between worrying he is having too much milk in the day to worrying he is having too little. I feed first thing, mid morning, mid afternoon, bedtime and one night feed now. I'm pretty sure that's what some books say you should do when they are less than 6 months old though!
I had a call with the sleep consultant on Tuesday and she said that if I felt DS was hungry in the early hours I could give him a feed between 4am and 5am. I feel a bit more relaxed about things now as I was worried he was getting hungry - hopefully I can push that to morning over the next couple of months.
DS is still off sucking our finger which is great. DH and I are now taking turns to settle him which was one of our goals too. Unfortunately on Tuesday when it was DH's turn, DS's naps had gone a bit wrong so he cried for an hour at bedtime. Thing is he then slept from 8pm to 3.30am .
Last night I settled him by having a hand on his chest with a little bit of rubbing and he was asleep in 5 minutes but then woke at 11.30pm, 12.30am, 1.30am and 4.30am. Not the worst night we've had and there was no long spells of crying but I was still disappointed. Things are definitely improving though and I do think last weeks' awfulness was down to teething - his four front top teeth are all broken through now so it's no wonder he was miserable.

Welcome back MamaChoc glad you had a good break! Although annoying from a sleep point of view, it sounds so cute that your DTs see each other and get too excited to sleep!

Judys excellent news about your DS going to sleep without sucking!! Out of interest, what did your consultant person say about nap times, bed times and what time he should wake for the day? I sometimes get really lost with DS's patterns! His naps are all over the place at the mo.

WRT feeding in the day - my DS is a couple of months older than yours, Count and Judys. At around 10 months he really stopped feeding as much in the day - generally just a morning feed (he has a bottle before bed). So yours will probably reduce of their own accord too before they go into childcare (will they be about 1 then?).

Cosmosis we are in a similar situation to you with DS's night wakings (though he wakes 3 times not once!). Its only been a week since I stopped feeding at night but those wake ups seem persistant. A few nights ago I didn't have to go in for one of them - he went back to sleep on his own. But then last night he woke 3 times and was crying, whereas the night before he had a bit of water and settled straight back to sleep. So all random as usual.

I am trying gradual withdraw (just sitting near the cot and the mo and not touching him) but I find it really had to stick to when he is crying, and a bit of stroking helps him to go back to sleep.

re day weaning, my dts are still feeding every 1-2 hours I think because they only get one side each and aren't eating that much yet. I remember with ds1 he did cut back quite quickly once he decided he wanted more food. definitely by the time I went back to work (he was 11mo) he was having a wake up, morning, evening and bedtime feed.

DS only gets one boob - well, one and a half - because the right one doesn't really work anymore :)

Raising - it sounds like you're doing really well with the gradual retreat. I'm quite nervous about reaching the hands off stages as well and have told DH I don't think I can just sit in the doorway if DS is screaming his head off.
I've not been doing my naps properly - I'm meant to wake DS after 45m in the morning but he's started doing 1.5 - 2 hour naps then and I just love having the time to myself! He's then meant to do a 2 hour nap at lunchtime but he tends to do an hour. I find if I do wake DS he still doesn't do much longer at lunchtime and if he does I have to resettle him once or twice.
He always wakes by 6.30am but I think we're meant to wake him by 7am - lately he's been getting up at 5.30am.... I'm actually going to email the consultant today to see if we should try a later bedtime. We can't get him to sleep past 5.30am on the nights where he's only been awake for a few minutes at a time so I'm wondering if he just doesn't need that much sleep.

Judy DS goes to bed between 8 and 8:30 now, and wakes at 6. He seems to only need 10 hours (ie if he goes to bed at 9, he sometimes sleeps until 7).

He is also doing the long morning nap and, like you, I can't bring myself to wake him. Apparently (according to Weissbluth) it's a biological thing - the morning nap is the first to develop, followed by the afternoon one. Wakeful/active/fussy babies reach sleep milestones later than other babies, so ours are probably doing that morning nap now rather than at six months! DS has also, in recent weeks, started to go for longer (up to 1.5 hours) in the afternoon. Again, this is entirely random and not a result of anything I've been doing.

When I say he goes to bed at 8 and wakes at 6, I of course mean that he wakes several times in the night and is up for the day at 6

But you already knew that, I'm sure

Hello everyone, just checking in. It's been a couple of weeks since my last post and, briefly, nothing's improved!

TBH, I haven't tried that much yet as I'm scared it won't work and I'm in a bit of a fantasy world where I think DD will eventually learn by herself. She's now waking every 3 hours for a feed and is nearly 9mo. We haven't gotten anywhere in the last five months.

Just reading the comments from CountBapula and JudysDreamHorse about weaning and going back to work and bfing. I'm due to go back in November and am very worried. We're doing BLW but I'm not sure she eats that much. She's wanted to feed from me all day today so she may be teething I guess but we've had a terrible time with a GP misdiagosing eczema and giving her medicines that have made everything about a 100 times worse. Nights are now some sort of endurance test. Even though she's only feeding twice (!) she wants to be cuddled and held for hours. I'm such a softie too - because she's so uncomfortable with the itching I think anything that helps her sleep is good so I do end up holding her far longer than I should.

CountBapula - you also mentioned timed feeds during the night. I've added this to my list of things to try when I'm brave enough, including gradual retreat and just handing her over to DH!

Has anyone tried The Sleep Sense Program by Dana someone? I thought it sounded good but I'm wondering if it's just cc wrapped up in a bit of a lecture about the parent being in control. Would be interested to know if anyone has had any success with it and whether it is cc.

Welcome back Missrose (though sorry that you still need to frequent this thread!). I've read the Dana Obleman (I think that is how you spell it) Sleep Sense Program. It has 2 approaches, CC and gradual withdrawal. TBH all sleep books have one or the other or both. I can send it to you via email if you want it (I think you have to pay to get it otherwise).

Count is the Weissbluth book worth a read? I didn't like the way he came across in that webchat someone posted awhile back...but his book is mentioned here often.

Should I add a new sleep book to my collection?