Controlled crying and dummy?

[RockChick1984]

Hi, apologies if this has been done to death, but I'm at my wit's end and possibly going slightly mad due to sleep deprivation!

DS is 11 months old, and has never properly slept through the night. He hasn't had a bottle during the night in months (other than occasionally eg if unwell and been off his food) and is now bottle fed so I know exactly how much milk he's having.

Our bedtime routine is 30 mins 'quiet time' eg tv off, lamp on instead of big light, quiet toys rather than noisy ones. Then get changed for bed, story, then to bed with a bottle which he usually falls asleep with. If he doesn't fall asleep on the bottle he will self settle with his dummy about 50% of the time, or we will have to sit stroking his face until he dozes off if he won't self settle (again, with dummy). He also has a lullaby cd which we put on when he goes into the cot.

Problem is, he is waking still a lot through the night. Sometimes it's just a case of going in and putting his dummy back in, but sometimes he's really awake and I can be up for between 30 mins and 4 hours with him. He's not unwell, he's not teething, this is just normal behaviour for him.

He has recently adjusted his daytime naps, rather than 2 shorter ones he now usually has 1 longer nap of approx 2 hours around lunchtime. He sleeps perfectly for naps if either in my arms or in the pram, but if I put him in the cot once he is asleep he will be awake within 15 mins. He won't re-settle in the cot once he is awake, but will doze off again in my arms.

Sorry for waffling on, just wanted to make our current situation clear! I have read up on controlled crying and want to try it, I'm happy that he is old enough now and that it's simply bad habits that are waking him up. Just a few questions I have, and also maybe a bit of moral support from anyone who has successfully used CC in the past!

1. Should I stop him having his dummy to eliminate having to get up and put it back in when he disturbs in the night?
2. How long is it likely to be before getting him sleeping through? DH tries to help but his job involves a lot of concentration and he's struggling too.
3. What should I do about his naps? It's taken a lot of struggling to get to a point he will nap at all during the day, can I keep them as they are or will that just make night time harder?

If there's anything else I'm unsure of I'll post again on here, TIA.

Crikey, that really was a long post wasn't it?!?

Hi rockchick

I'm no expert, and DD is only 7 months, but I wanted to share my thoughts as I think we dealt / are dealing with a similar problem.

I started from thinking that I wouldn't do CC until DD had learnt to fall asleep without the dummy. Otherwise it seemed too harsh to me as she really needed the dummy to fall asleep anywhere. In the end breaking the link with the dummy at bedtime seemed to fix the night waking (touch wood) so we didn't have to do it.

I read No Cry Sleep Solution and started doing a number of things to break the dummy habit. It's not a quick fix, but a series of gradual changes. These are some of the things we did:

No dummy in the pram for naps (this was hard on day 1 but got easier really quickly)

Removing the dummy at night moments before she dropped off (this is called Pantley removal technique or something). For our DD this means counting until she gets to ten breaths between suckings and then popping the dummy out. The theory is they get used to falling asleep without the dummy. Now she often pops it out herself before she falls asleep.

We made other changes linked to night weaning, feeding to sleep, and her routine too, but these aren't relevant to dummies.

At some point we realised we could put her down without the dummy and she would settle herself (after 3/4 weeks?). But during this time her night waking improved as all the incremental changes we made took effect.

Once she learnt how to settle herself in the night, I realised how useful a dummy as a sleep association is, as long as that's not the only way they have to fall asleep.

One last thing that really helped my sanity was that the book said not to worry about daytime naps. Do what's required to get them to sleep well in the day and focus on the first falling to sleep of the night. This really helped me stay sane as before that it seemed I was spending hours getting her to sleep - day and night - and having no time to enjoy her.

I'm sure someone will be along who went cold turkey on dummies - I remember reading several successful posts about it when we were deciding what to do with DD. I might have taken a different approach if she was older/less attached to the dummy.

Good luck!

Fab, thankyou so much for your advice. I tried not giving him his dummy during the day today but had no joy, so am now thinking of letting him keep the dummy and doing cc but it's so hard listening to him when he is obviously getting upset and so am I! Dh is just as bad as I am, but we keep each other strong when wanting to give up.