I can't keep this up & I've made such a mess of DD's sleeping & eating.

[bagelmonkey]

Where do I start?
DD is 11 months. She's never been a good sleeper. I'm still BFing her. We did BLW & she will only take fromage frais or yogurt off a spoon. She eats well in the evening, but barely eats anything for breakfast unless she's had a miraculously good night.
At around 4-5 months I was managing to settle her without boobing to sleep, but then we moved house etc & it all went to shit.
At around 8-9 months I got her to self settle & night sleep improved a bit too, usually waking only 2 times per night.
Anyway, she got a couple of teeth & a cold, & clingy all at the same time & now I'm boobing to sleep again :(
She's still v clingy & gets v upset if I put her in her cot awake, or sometimes if I just leave the room or won't hold her (during the afternoons especially).
When she cries she gets really angry & has made herself vomit on a couple of occasions after only a couple of minutes of crying. She stops v quickly if I come back or pick her up & often starts giggling/playing.
I can't take much more of so many night wakings & all the BFing isn't helping her appetite for food. I'm back to feeding her to sleep for naps, which isn't helping weaning either.
I think CC would work, but I'm worried she'd make herself vomit.
I can't do PU/PD because she's too heavy & wriggly & turns herself to try & latch on. I'm too tired to do anything other than take the path of least resistance at night & just feed her back to sleep.
Co-sleeping wouldn't work for us. She get v excited every time I bring her into bed, plus the bed is too small anyway & DH squishes me, so it wouldn't be safe for one more!

I'm stuck in a catch 22 & don't know how to break it. If I don't feed her she won't sleep, but if I do feed her she won't eat.
Just to add the icing on the cake, she's usually awake from 5-5:30am & can't be BF to sleep & she's not hungry at all.

So, what would you do?
I'm sure that if she slept better & was BFing less, she'd start eating a bit better. I feel guilty that I've given in to her & compromised her weaning. But how do I undo this mess???

im having a similar prob with my dd who is 6mo, she used 2 take a dummy but now will only settle for my boob 2 get her back off, she has never slept thru and is the same as your in terms of crying when i put her down awake.
your dd sounds like she may have seperation anxiety because of how she is in the day. i completely iunderstand how u feel and have contemplated CC as opposed to CIO and pu/pd the latter i feel would just be too draining for me, im knackered asw it is! most ppl tell me i need to cc and it is the best thing they have done. do you try and follow a routine with her?

Hi Bagelmonkey,
I have a very similar story to you. My DS is 11 months and is BLW but FF not BF anymore.
He used to settle himself to sleep but after teething and a cold now refuses to settle himself. He has also started waking more frequently , although has never slept thru.

Out of desperation i tried CIO which lasted approx 10 mins before he vomited...which broke my heart as i wasnt keen on doing this in the first place. I have also tried staying with him, talking and patting but he also vomited :(

I dont know what to do either....x

How did you manage to get her to slef-settle last time? Could you do that again? Can your DH do some settling for some of the night so that you can get some rest, and she won't expect boob from him!

I stopped feeding at night when DS was a similar age (he was feeding loooads but mainly just to settle himself back to sleep) by offering water instead. I was shocked that he went for it but he was fine with it.

I got her to self settle before by shhh-patting, but now she just stands up in the cot, so no idea how to approach a similar technique!
I think that the next weekend DH is off work I'll start sending him in, but it's not for a couple of weeks, so I wanted to try & make dome progress first if possible. I've been trying to feed DD to sleepy rather than to sleep, but no dice :(

Ds used to hardly eat a thing at that age and I tried limiting his milk (due to advice from hv, dh, my mum, sil, everyone). Guess what, just made him mserable and probably ate even less solids. Around 15 months he just got eating and now eats like a normal toddler totally of his own accord. Still bf loads. So don't beat yourself up about ruining her eating by bf. IME they eat when ready and you can't do much about it but offer good food and keep calm. Some just seem to really love bf too.

Sleep still awful here so can't offer any advice there except catch up whewre you can - lie ins, early nights for you. We have a mattress on the floor so I can co-sleep with ds if needed.

Hi, back again, I agree with Albrecht about the milk.

Occasionally when my DS is hungry but not in the mood for feeding himself I do whip out the spoon and he will happily have a meal spoon fed then the next go back to BLW. If your DD will let you do this and your happy to do it, it may help reduce one of the milk feeds naturally.

Also I've been thinking that our problems kinda started when DH went into hospital for a while, DS was very unsettled. You say you have just moved house...it could be this that's unsettling them and will just need time to readjust?

I do co sleep, it's the only way I can cope! If your bed is too small for all of you, could your DH stay in another room or sleep on a sofa bed or something?

Just remember your not the only one going thru this...I dream that one day DS will sleep and I will feel refreshed!

Look, I don't mean to be patronising but as someone who's been there twice (feeding one to sleep as I post!) you always have the option of doing nothing. They grow out of it all if you can just ride it out. Perhaps you can't wait, which is fair enough, but I generally found I didn't have the energy or patience to do anything radical to change things and always ended up waiting.it out. It will get better even if you do nothing.

I think you have two options: one is ohbugrit's option, and one is to leave your baby to cry, with or without DH (not you, because of the boob thing) going in to offer comfort. If she vomits, he changes the clothes.
I felt I had no choice as I was going insane for lack of sleep. It worked very quickly, though was obviously painful for us both and I had to stick to it once started. I'd say everything turned around completely within 4-5 nights. DD was about the same age.
I realise absoutely it's a personal thing depending on whether you are at the end of your tether or not.

But then don't you run the risk of them associating bed time with vomiting? That's my worry.

I did a shush patting thing with DS to stop feeding to sleep too. The standing up phase is annoying (we had it too!) and made bed time a lot longer for a while but basically I used some advice from this book - just lay them back down once, then keep patting the mattress til they lie down. Then you can do the shush pat thing as before. I did find that DS eventually lay down and went to sleep though it did take a while. It only works if they can sit down from standing though, before he could do this I just kept laying him back down.

Like everything it was a phase and now that he is walking he is no longer obsessed with standing up all the time.

I had almost exactly the same thing. DS hardly ate anything (wouldn't take a bottle or puree, so it was only BFing and BLW), especially in the morning, and was waking every hour at night to feed, for months. Eventually, at 14 months, we did Jay Gordon's night weaning. We did it very gently and started from the morning and worked backwards. So, the first week, I didn't breastfeed after 5am (if he woke after that, I left the room and DH cuddled him back to sleep - we were co-sleeping at this point). He wasn't impressed but it wasn't horrible. He then started eating a little more at breakfast time. After a week or so of that, we stopped feeding after 2am, which led to him eating a little more, and so on. He did really wake up much less (I was completely certain that previously he'd been hungry, he really went for it during the night feeds). It was quite a breakthrough for me, as he'd been waking many times a night since he was five months old. I still breastfed him to sleep in the evenings until he was 18 months old, and that didn't seem to affect his night wakings (he does still, at 21 months, wake once in the night, but that is so easy to cope with considering his record!).

Hope this helps and good luck. It will pass!

Have you got a partner who could do PU/PD with her when he is around?

whathashappened In my experience, she vomited once or twice, but mainly was just hugely pissed off. She needed to associate going to sleep with being alone, ideally, (so the world would look the same when she woke in the middle of the night) and that wasn't much fun. I would never say you must do this or you must do that, but it is there as an option, in my experience worked quickly and in my experience saved the sanity of the whole family. But it depends entirely on your own chid and how close to the brink you're feeling.

Well, what RaisingMrC said about shh-patting & lying her down once then patting the bed seemed to make sense as a plan of action. So: I tried it last night. Stayed in the room, shhhing, a bit of patting, lots of crying (protesting) but asleep in 25 minutes!!!!!!
Intended to repeat it for naps today, but DD inadvertently fell asleep whilst BFing. I don't feel I can put her down without a feed because she's not eating much so I won't know if she's crying or waking from hunger.
Tonight I put her down awake & have been Shhhhhing. No real crying & she started to settle after 15 minutes, but still not completely asleep. Fingers crossed. I'm MNing in her room, still shhhhing, hoping she'll be asleep soon.

Obviously this hasn't helped with night wakings or eating yet, but it's giving me hope for creating change.

Food is fun until they are 1 !

Do not panic

She is a tiny baby

Try and deal with one thing at a time.
For me I would try and work on getting her to fall asleep by herself.The "baby Whisperer" is a lovely method.

sorry just read the last post great keep going

Thanks fidelma I keep reciting "food is fun until 1" in my head at each meal, but 1 seems to be fast approaching, making me feel a bit nervous! I feel guilty that she's 'behind' with weaning.

I'm working on getting her off to sleep with just shhh-patting, which seems to be going ok so far. I'm still feeding her back to sleep during the night, but I feel like I need to get the initial settling done first before I tackle that one. I think the next step will be trying to cut out a night (early morning) feed to give her an appetite for breakfast.

Anyway, one step at a time.

How is it going?