No sleep, no naps, no sanity

[thecattleareALOHing]

How did this happen?

Is DD not any better then?

Have you tried Calpol - just to rule out whether she is in pain at all?

It does seem a lot of wakefulness in a 10 month old!

Has anything else changed recently in her routine?

Sorry- also meant to say, many sympathies

I'm not too bad on little sleep, but no sleep is a different matter altogether!!!!!

She's had loads of illness - teething, vomiting, a succession of colds - so it doesn't help. But she's ten months old now and has never slept all night. It get depressing. And she will never nap during the day (and spends every spare second trying to get up the stairs), so I can't do anything in the house. Ds gets a big marginalised, but he's so lovely about it and so in love with his naughty little sister.

Stairgates????

Have been there with kids that don't sleep. Be kind to yourself & have some treats. I liked good coffee, newspapers & mags for the few mins I could read. Best wishes

Have you tried Aromatherapy massage with say something like Lavendar oil? My son used to be medically hyperactive and slept for about 3 hours every night for just about nine years - I started massage with the lavendar oil and did find that it helped a little.... at the very least is relaxing for baby.

We are Calpoled and Nurofened and Mediseded! Trouble with stair gates is we have hall with stairs up to bedrooms, but also a small flight of stairs down to the kitchen & office, and when you get to the top of the main stairs, another flight of stairs. We have stairgates to keep dd in the kitchen and at the top of the stairs but it's the mini-stairs that are the problem. We'd need six stairgates!

Last night was a bit better - she stayed asleep from 9ishto 5ish before waking for coming in with me for a feed - she goes back to sleep but I have little feet drumming against my back which isn't wildly restful.
Dh has taken her to work with him this am!
I really wish she would nap at home during the day, but she won't. She is completely hysterical if you leave her in her cot.
So she doesn't have a routine of any kind. She sleeps when she is out.

Oh and she has a shocking cold atm.

I know it will end one day, but it's so limiting. We darent' go on holiday, to visit friends...

I preface this with 'you might not want to do it but'....
Ds is 7 months he was starting to wake every day at 5am - and wake his sister too who previously slept until 7am, and obviously needs her sleep to be a happy girl - as does her mother.
SO..
I let him yell one 5am - for an hour (obviously checking him)until he went back to sleep.
The next morning he woke up at 5am, chatted to himself and then went back to sleep until 7.15, he's been pretty good since then.
Maybe you can't face it...
Have no advice on the daytime sleeping as ds has no routine either.
Hope you get more sleep soon - I know that it all does come to an end but it's bloody awful when you're in it.

I really sympathise with you Aloha. I am in a similar situation with my dd, although she's a bit younger (7 months). Her inability to sleep is extraordinary and many days (like when she has 2 X 15 minute naps and wakes 7 times in the night)I really despair.

I know exactly what you mean about it being limiting - I find it almost impossible to visit friends and have to time everything to ensure that dd isn't massively overtired (e.g. always telling visitors to come in the morning instead of for lunch because dd is a wreck by 1pm). It also gets a bit lonely when everyone you know has babies who sleep through the night and have 2 hour lunchtime naps!

How do you feel about sleep training? (We have only done the more gentle stuff so far and it hasn't worked).

I think I would probably be thinking about trying some sort of routine/sleep training.

My second child (ds) was a fantastic sleeper but my first (dd) did not sleep regularly through the night till she was around 1 (just as ds arrived!). I went back to work when she was 4 months and I thought I was going to die from tiredness.

Have you tried regularly putting her down at the same time (after lunch say) in a dark room for a nap? Apologies if you've tried it all before.

oh and much sympathies. That tiredness feeling is awful - like your head is in a cloud!

I think I would need to do something. It is definitely a sleep pattern and not because she is poorly. DD has a bad cold and there was one night where she couldn't settle and slept with me - terribly fidgetty and banging heads etc but she slept through the next night.

She is 18 months though - she only infrequently slept through at 10 months - although it was bearable because it was just for a feed between 3 and 6 am and she did have daytime naps.

To me though it sounds like it is really affecting your family life. I think I would choose one aspect to tackle - naps or bedtime or during the night and work on that first. How much time does DH have off after Christmas? Would that be a good time to start some sort of sleep training?

Aloha - almost exactly the same problem here. DS is 10 months on Friday. I've given up on trying ot get him to daytime napping, the only way it works is to leave him until he is so tired that he can't do anything but fall asleep. I've been doing this for a while and now he sleeps for a short time around 10 am and 2pm, sometimes it almost looks like a routine ! It was really hard work to start with as it took a lot of energy to entertain an overtired grumpy baby. The other positive thing is that he now goes to bed at 7pm instead of 10pm !

Still no solution on how to stop him waking during the night and sometimes early mornings.

We only have one stairgate on his bedroom door, but he never spends time there alone so its pretty useless. We have spent quite sometime teaching him to climb off the bed backwards and are trying to teach him on the stairs as well. he seems to be quite safe with them now.

By this age ds was sleeping 45 minutes every morning and two hours plus every afternoon - and sleeping all night!
Dd is hysterical if put her in cot. By which I mean she screams wild panicky screams, tries to climb and scramble out of her cot, then after much screaming, falls asleep, her face pressed against the bars, making marks on her tear streaked face, only to wake after 20 minutes in exactly the same shaking, sobbing, shrieking state. Ds was never like this! She sleeps during the day in the car or in her pushchair, but will not go in her cot.
She slept relatively well last night - went to bed quite late but stayed asleep until 5am, had a feed, and went back to sleep with me.
I really do think that she will never nap during the day at home.

could you bear to do cc? iirc, you resorted to this with ds? otherwise, sleep clinic, maternity nurse a la the celebrated ms ford?

do you think it is the cot? the room? would she fit in a moses basket or one of those hammocky things still?

I know I couldn't do cc for naps. I just couldn't. I have tried leaving her and she has gone to sleep briefly but in such an awful state! And for such a short time

Maybe you could work on the nighttime sleeps then? How does she go down at night? Is her cot in her own room? Does she spend time in there during the day?

Or a travel cot? Or a mattress on the floor? Do you think she has a particular aversion to her cot?

i hesitate to suggest this - but you could always give gf a call...

either that or it's house of tiny tearaways for the aloha family

If I put her in the cot she is OKish as long as she can see me. But if I go out of sight she is instantly incredibly upset - really, really hysterical. We normall get her asleep downstairs then put her down in our bed, lifting her to her cot when we go to bed. As I said, she then slept until 5am in her cot, which I can live with. She then comes in to me for a feed and goes back to sleep. She goes to sleep quite late usually though, which leaves dh and me with a really short evening.

i do think it might be something to do with the cot itself - if not originally then by now it must have v. negative associations for her. if you could find another place for her to sleep that might help... do you have one of those musical lantern things? perhaps that would distract her sufficiently not to cry and enable her to doze off more peacefully?

I don't think the blessed tanya sees babies though!
And gf doesn't do house calls any more!

have you tried putting her to bed earlier? perhaps she's overtired?