Is CC really the only answer?

[lucidlady]

DD is 38 weeks old (8.5 months). She slept beautifully from 8 weeks to approx 26 weeks, as in she would go to bed at 7 and sleep until 5.30/6. Now it's all shot to hell and she wakes up at least twice a night. Last night she was up 4 times.

She naps for 2-3 hours a day. She's weaned and eats plenty of food, plus a bedtime snack of porridge before her last BF of the day.

I have tried EVERYTHING to get her to sleep through. I've had my mum stay over and do the night wakings to try to break the pattern of reliance on me. DH has also taken over. Nothing bloody works. I'm back at work and on my knees. Is controlled crying really the only thing left to try? I have read all about the psychological impacts and am loathe to try it, but we are all exhausted and cannot carry on like this.

Help...

Did you start weaning her at 26 weeks? Is that when the night wakings started? Just trying to work out of there's a reason for them.

It is one answer. Another is time and patience. Many babies don't sleep through at this age, she's not unusual.

Good luck whatever you decide.

I found the No Cry book a load of rubbish - the endless back rubs and shhhhings just kept DS awake for longer and had me pulling out my hair - seriously! It was a mind-fuck.

I had a similar regression at about the same time lucid and thought it was about time he slept through. My answer is not for everyone, but the mind-fuck was so bad I just accepted every feed without swearing and getting upset.

I decided that he should only 'need' a maximum of two feeds, one in the middle of the night and one in the morning. So on nights that I felt up to it, I would feed the two feeds without hassle. Any other wakes, I'd pick him up, remind him I was there and then popped him back into bed with words like 'time to go to sleep now'. Usually he would cry and 2 minutes later was asleep. If he then woke up 20 mins later, I would feed but mostly he would sleep properly. On nights I didn't feel up to it, I would just feed on demand. Months passed as he slowly dropped all the extra wakes, then two feeds became one and I think he went through the night from 14 months. He now sleeps like a stone. Just before bed I say "time to go sleep bbBFG" and off he toddles to bed. So sweet.

No CC is not the only way.

Why is she waking? Is she just unsettled and self waking or is she wante to be fed / have a drink when she wakes?

Does she sleep through in bed with you?

CC is definitely NOT the only solution.

We were in a similar situation to you. I skim-read "The Baby-Whisperer" - didn't have enough time to read the whole book, but got enough of the basics to give it a go.

What I learned:

• there is a middle way between "controlled crying" and "going to your child whenever s/he makes a whimper."
• we were actually helping to keep DS awake by going in to comfort him whenever he made any cry, as our presence was stimulating and interesting.

What the baby whisperer recommends (as far as I recall, this is a long time ago)

• don't go in immediately as soon as you hear a cry, wait a few seconds to establish what sort of cry it is - it took us a while to realise but some crys our DS made were very short-lived "I am falling asleep now" noises which only lasted 5 or 6 seconds - just counting to 10 before going in can help sometimes.
• when you go in, be boring and unstimulating, but reassure that everything is OK, you love her and she is safe and it is time to sleep and sleep is nice.
• don't let him/her cry for more than 1 minute without reassuring (we started with 30 seconds but later increased it, but never more than a minute) but when you go in to reassure, don't let your visit last longer than 30 seconds (aim for 15) - so that it isn't worth the effort of shouting for you.
• the technique for a baby who wants to be picked up rather than just reassured is similar - again picking up for a very short time, and then back down again.

You may need to go in once a minute for 50 minutes, or even for a few hours, at first, but stick with it - the next night it will be less, and the next, until eventually sleep is attained with minimal fuss - and you don't have the horror of sitting outside her room for ages listening to a sad baby crying herself to sleep.

Have you tried/thought about co-sleeping?

I like the no cry sleep solution too. I think every baby reacts to different things. It's because like others said, they wake up for different reasons. I think that's why not all the methods from the different experts work on your baby. You just have to try the different ones and see which one works for you. If you don't like CC, definitely try the no cry sleep solution first. I've heard the baby whisperer being gentler too, so that could be your second method to try.

I found co-sleeping worked for me. I wasn't conformtable with it when DD was very little. But once she can roll and push herself up, I felt ok that's she's safe and won't be smothered by our pillows. She is sleeping in between us, in a normal double. When she was in her cot, she would cry when she woke up at night. But when she lied next to us, she just looked at us, rolled over and fell back asleep again.

However, at 15mo, it's getting to the point though that she's a pain to sleep with (turning sideways and examining our faces at night), so I'll have to train her to sleep in the cot. It could be a delaying tactic that's quite effective, if you don't mind co-sleeping.

Examine = poking, pulling hair etc.

My dd (8mnths) slept beautifully from 4-10 weeks then 3-6 months woke every hour. At 6.5 months we did cc mixed with pu/pd. 8 mins of crying (with me going in every 1 -2 mins) and she's been sleeping 11-12 hours a night. For us cc was the only thing that worked.

Thanks for the responses everyone.

Co-sleeping - we have tried this. DH sleeps like a log whereas I find that I spend the night in a state of perpetual anxiety that DD is either going to roll out of the bed or I am going to roll on top of her. She also spends the whole night trying to get inside my bra because of the sheer novelty of having milk on tap, so I would say she actually sleeps less when she is in the bed with us. Plus I don't want to defer the problem, if that makes sense. You have my sympathy OneLittleBabyTerror. My brother is still trying to get his 3 year old to accept that she has her own bed.

Iggly she started waking up with a really bad cold. Before she slept through anything, even her first two teeth coming in.

worriedwretch She wakes up for a seemingly neverending list of reasons. Sometimes she's thirsty, sometimes she's bored, sometimes she's just decided she's had enough sleep or because DH has accidentally slammed the door after taking the dog out. I cannot pinpoint any one cause for her night wakings - I've tried to eliminate all physical reasons, e.g. checked grobags and babygros fit properly, tried her out of a grobag (epic fail - she spent the night getting her legs stuck in the cot bars), tried her in pyjama separates etc. No use. In all honesty, I think what has happened is that she has forgotten how to self-soothe.

I will go away and read the Baby Whisperer and No Cry Sleep Solution. Really need to sort this out as I am making stupid mistakes at work and am on the verge of dozing off all the time.

lucidlady it might sound like that moving to co-sleeping didn't work, but it did for 6mos for us. DD actually self settled in the family bed. She's put to sleep in the cot. But when she wakes while we are asleep, instead of trying to calm her and soothe her to sleep in the cot, I moved her into our bed. She will go into the bed awake, and falls asleep between us. She'll stay asleep until 6ish in the morning.

I guess we have just moved to the next phase now to retrain her to sleep in her cot. I've tried a little bit of controlled crying before switching to co-sleeping. But I found I was getting very little sleep as she'll wake every 2-3 hours crying.

DD is night weaned, and only doing two bf a day. I can't tell if yours is already. The no cry sleep solution has a method (called Pantley pull off) to stop the baby nurse to sleep. I used that to stop the cycle. Then I used the Jay Gordon night weaning method over a week to stop all the night feeds.

We had similar problems when ds was same age, read no cry sleep solution, which i found very useful. Was told by lovely mum of three whilst waiting at doctors surgery that her boys didn't sleep properly until 9 months, ds slept 7-10.45 and 11-6 the night before he was 9 months, and its got better ever since! He is now one. Sleep dep is terrible, i hope it gets better soon.

You will get there eventually - IME the hardest thing (next to sleep dep) is thinking that you are doing something wrong and that if you could only find the right method your lovely baby would sleep and so would you. I tried everything and really regret trying CC. In the end it was only time that made any difference. I know that doesn't help at all, but all I can say is you will sleep again. And this isn't your fault. I really hope it gets better soon.

Forgot to say earlier, along with many helpful things from the no cry book, ds also started eating lots more around the same time he slept better, think you said earlier she eats well, and in my case, may not be linked, but we started having an afteroon snack arond 2.30 of a small yogurt and half a piece of toast, i had the other half and sometimes another whole one, depending on how the previous night had gone, and it also gave me time whilst he was sitting in his high chair for a cup of tea and five minutes sitting still!
Totally agree with rookery it isn't your fault, she just isn't ready yet. It will improve, and in interim, look after yourself, treat yourself to a bath and an early night, buy a few more ready meals or take aways to save yourself cooking.