top tips for creating a "good" sleeper

[iskra]

DD1 was a terrible sleeper, I fed her to sleep/bf on demand throughout the night/got up every two hours etc until we cracked at 15 months & did controlled crying.

DD2 is 10 days old. Obviously I know this is far too young to do anything about her sleep, but what are your best tips for the future?

I have the NCSS somewhere in a box (just moved), hopefully that will surface & I can re-read it...

I always thought it was important for babies to go to bed awake not asleep as babies as much as possible sleep in the pitch black. Then if I do wake up in the night they have to the tools to go back to sleep and not start looking around at everything.

My two slept very well. The youngest slept much better after he went into a bedroom with his brother aged 2.

Duchesse we have a similar problem with DS. He turned 2 last week and don't think he's ever slept though without medical help. (teething/cold, not just to get him to sleep!)

He seems to think that 12-2am is the time to be in our bed. Tried everything including the clock Dilys as we have one for DDs. It's hell.

Birchykel could cluster feeding help? Move the bath to 5ish if you can, then cluster feed till 7 and put her down then?

birchy, controlled crying is not recommended for babies younger than 6 months.

Rainbow, my DS has gone to bed awake maybe 5 times in his whole life - he's 21 months now. Doesn't seem to have done him any harm and he sleeps pretty well, and gets himself back to sleep after being wide awake in the middle of the night. :) My personal vote would be for co-sleeping and feeding every time they wake as long as you're happy with it and it works for you (I know it doesn't for everyone).

duchesse, that sounds like classic behaviour when a child is (a) overtired or (b) working on a developmental leap. DS does it all the time when working on developmental stuff, but it always stops again on its own. We co-sleep so I just let him roam around the bed in the dark till he drops off again. He wears a sleeping bag though so he can't get up & wander round the house.

I think some children do it when they have too much daytime sleep too, or for other reasons, but that's never been the case for DS - if he sleeps too much in the day, he just isn't sleepy at bedtime.

birchy please do some research/reading on various ways of getting you baby to sleep without jumping to the conclusion that controlled crying is your only option. there are plenty of options and you need to try and understand how your baby develops and why they do what they do according to their age to work out the best option.

look around mumsnet, babycentre, buy a couple of books(search on amazon, there are plenty of good ones that are easy to find) or post on the sleep board on mumsnet for some specific advice.

birchy if your DD has a routine which results in a deep sleep, at 13 weeks I wouldn't fart about with it.

That said, could you do it so you're doing the feed 8-9 instead?

I remember sitting downstairs with a sleeping baby on my lap all evening, Birchy, and wondering when the hell things would change so I could get back some evening! It does get better. At 13 weeks, my instinct would be to wait and see how things develop. Babies often change their sleeping habits, start sleeping for longer, and become more 'put-down-able' at around three months, so you may find things change very soon.

Thanks for the advice, I tried the routine earlier last night and she fell asleep at 8.45 so put her up to bed but I ended up going to sleep too as was sooooo tired!!! The whole family was asleep by 9 last night. (hubby on early shift).
I wldnt do controlled crying, I'd feel too guilty on her at this young age. I will try to bring the routine forward slightly and see how it goes. Yes three month may be the turn around point....thanks everyone for help and advice. Xx

So.... following my earlier post, I am studiously ignoring everyone who swears that a bedtime routne and teaching the difference between night and say by keeping the lights down/no verbal contact etc (AAARRRGH! I HAVE done this from literally day one!) and still reading this thread and saying silent belssings to everyone who admits it is luck!!! TBH, all this thread has done is confimed that I couldn't have done anything better to help DD (apart from not bf - I would never have considered not doing this!) and so eased my guilt!

Oh, and DD did sleep through (well, dream feed at 10pm to 5am) for a month or two at 2-4 months, so don't count your chickens I am afraid..... my best advice is to go with the flow, something I have learnt! (and keep bf as I swear that bf gives some sort of "not feeling as tired as you otherwise would" hormone!!!!)

Don't recall addressing any part of my post specifically at you timetosleepnow? Feeling defensive?

I think jem you started off your post by saying "Time." (i.e. all babies need is time, not training, they learn to sleep in their own good time - I totally agree btw!), but I guess timetosleep thought that the post was addressed to her?! A misunderstanding!

Oooh yes, I can see how that could cause confusion.

I did specifically mean "time" - as in weeks/months/years (in my case) though.

I followed the Jo Frost bedtime routine. DS has his milk, brushes his teeth, story then bed. If he cries he gets 1 cuddle then thats it. Sounds harsh but he knows where he stands and sleeps through most nights

DS1 has just started sleeping through properly now at 3. He goes through stages of not sleeping through then sleeping through. When he was all new up until about 3m I let him fall asleep on me (suffered with terrible colic) then did the arm flop test then knew I could put him in the moses basket, most of the time he woke straight away as he went from warm mum to cold basket so I used to warm it up slightly with a hot water bottle so it felt the same temp as me, this seemed to help until the next phase of not wanting to sleep/constant waking started then other techniques were used mostly to no avail and just had to ride it out. But earlier this year he went through several months again of being really unsettled (routine had been pretty much the same from 3m) and had tried bloody everything so Googled homeopathic remedies to see if there was something that we could use to help him. The stuff I got was called Serenite Jnr and seemed to work but I didn't want to keep on using it night after night so stopped using it after about 3 nights once sleeping through resumed again. I have also learned to just deal with the fact he can be a crap sleeper and am hoping DS2 (when he decides to make an appearance!) will be a bit better. I tried the day from night stuff too but it made no difference to DS1 either and he only really started having decents sleeps in the day when he started crawling! When he was a baby he'd have no more than 1 hour sleep a day unless he was in the car/pram so was probably overtired.

I envy you and your good sleepers!

I say bollocks to anything that involves witholding comfort from a baby, that is not how they/we are designed to function. I also think parental sleep habits have an effect, I was an awful sleeper as a child as I just wanted to be up and read to etc, I am still an awful sleeper now. DH is a great sleeper however.

DD is actually a very good sleeper, despite our having co-slept to around 11 months, she is still fed/rocked to sleep etc and she will quite often sleep from 7pm till 0530. She is waking more at the moment as she is a bit poorly, but then...so am I! I don't feel great so wake and need a drink or whathaveyou, I don't see why at 13 months she shouldn't.

I think given the number of people on here saying that they have more than one child and have treated each the same and STILL had different rates of 'success' that should be telling those who are still insisting that they created their good sleeper something.

A friend followed Gina Ford religiously (I wonder why BF didn't work out as she hoped long term ) with her two children. Her first is a 'good' sleeper, her second hasn't slept more than 3 hrs on the trot in his 2.5yr life so far. She was really quite 'smug' about GF with the first, but has been quite quiet on the subject since funnily enough.

I agree Ninky about bollocks to witholding comfort. It's a big part of our bedtime with DS he loves loads of hugs and has to sleep with his blanket and tedd. I'd feel really mean witholding any form of comfort to him.

Ha ha Ninky... with you 100%!