It's been a while since I've had the time to visit Mumsnet and I've missed it!
I'm so desperate for any kind of help I can't even begin to tell you all. I have a 3 year old and a 6 month old and the 6 month old has been terrible at sleeping from around 4 months (she would wake about every 3 hours from 0-4 months which now sounds like heaven!).
She basically goes down around 6.45/7.00pm, I leave the room while she is awake and she goes to sleep quite quickly. Within an hour she's awake again, sometime she can be soothed back to sleep quickly, sometimes fed back to sleep and sometimes won't go back to sleep, and screams, for 2 hours. This pattern continues for the whole night, ie waking every hour either really briefly, for a feed or completely distressed taking hours to calm.
I am exhausted.
She does feed during the day, 3 meals a day, but doesn't have huge milk feeds. She is breastfed at night (couldn't get bottles every hour!) and when she first wakes up and during the morning she will have a small feed. After lunch I try and get some of a bottle in her, trying to last about 2 hours after lunch but even then she ususally only takes about 2 or 3 oz. She eats a decent tea and I feed her a bottle before bedtime, again only about 5 oz if I'm lucky.
I recently tried the 'Ferber' approach of letting her cry and me going in every 5 minutes but after a week of each time she woke for 2+ hours I gave up as she wasn't 'getting it'. I've also tried a dummy, she won't have it, her sleeping in with us, she just wriggles and gets upset, her cot being in our room, no difference and now her being in her own room. She has a good bath/bedtime routine which never alters. She is exhausted by 6.45pm and I can't seem to delay her bedtime.
She sleeps for a total of about 2.5 hours during the day, is quite OK about going down and some sleeps can be 1 or 1.5 hours.
It's nightimes that are terrible and I'm seriously just about to collapse.
Can anyone spot anything I'm obviously doing wrong?
I tried going to the GP today who is awful (at 4 months when this first starting happening she told me she thought my baby was bored which is why she was waking for attention for 2 hours at a time), today she thought I needed to join some 'mother and toddler' groups, as if that would solve her sleep problem!! I asked her if there could be anything medically wrong and she took her temperature and said 'no'. I walked out in tears and disgust at her crap 'investigation' of my daughter. Can anyone else think of anything medically it could be?
Any advice or help will be a godsend.
Thanks for listening!