This is horrible :( Tell me it will get better?

[catgirl1976]

Tying to get DS 8 months into a routine of sorts. He doesn't get enough sleep and has been staying up with us, falling asleep on the boob or on my shoulder late at night, co-sleeping and feeding through the night. He is tired in the day

So....we have since Wednesday been doing a routine of bath, story, wind down etc then putting him in his cot drowsy but awake and staying with him (in the room, no eye contact etc) whilst he falls asleep

But he is hysterical., DH is with him now and he is breaking his little heart and thrashing about. The last few nights the same although he finally falls asleep and maybe its getting quicker

But it is horrible. Tell me it will get easier, or work, or be worthwhile. And I feel like we are hurting him and breaking the trust

I hate this :(

Thanks everyone

DH and I had a talk last night and decided to stick it out for a little longer. We are right there with him in the room so he knows we are there and we are shushing him and soothing him - just not picking him up

We feel if we change now he will be confused and we will have put him through the last few nights for nothing

If he doesn't start to "get it" after more than a week we will try a different method, but as each night seems shorter we are going to carry on for a little while, just to be consistent

Thank you all for being so lovely and supportive

We've been sleep training for a week or so. Started by trying to get him to self settle. I fed him, lay him down, lay him down again, and again but when it was clear that he just wanted to play I walked out. Cue: angry shouting. I'd leave him a couple of minutes and go back in. This would go on from 7 until half 8. We decided to try putting his bedtime back at which point he started feeding to sleep again, and sleeping so deeply you could do anything without disturbing him.
Overnight I've not been prepared to feed him more than 4 hourly because he's pretty much stopped bfing in the day and is catching up at night. Is rather he fed in the day.
The night before last he fed at midnight and woke again about 2. It took me 40 mins to settle him. It was a nightmare. He slept for 20mins and we repeated the cycle. I vowed to stop sleep training.

Last night he woke and fed at 2 and woke again at 4 and he went back down in 8 minutes and slept until 7. Whoopie!
I kneel by his cot with my hands on his back/front/side and pin him down and say "its time for sleep. You just need some sleep". It seems to be paying off. If I can get back to 1 feed a night i'll be much happier.

Golemmings - that sounds like you are making progress and very similar to my ds

Maybe we should start a support thread! :)

Good luck tonight

Hi I'm going through a similar thing with my 7 month old ds. I do the same thing every night, bath, bottle, story, sing twinkle twinkle and into crib. All of a sudden he has started to roll over! He can be close to sleep then be over and in crawling position so takes AGES to get him to settle back to sleepiness. Anyone else had this? Some nights he needs lots of shush, pat and resettle and some nights its a few mins.

He had started sleeping from about 8 until 5 or 6 but since the rolling thing it can be anytime if he rolls over and wakes himself up. The first time I usually pop him back on his back and he goes back off. If he wakes up after 4 I just put him in our bed and he sleep until between 6 and 7, should I resettle him in his cot instead? I never feed him in the night he has his first feed whatever time he wakes after 6am.

I always aim for bedtime at 7pm but struggle to fit in his dinner and bath and last feed! Is 7 the time they are supposed to go to bed?!

Every child is slightly different and needs a different amount of sleep - our ds1 needed 12 hours, ds2 has never needed more than about 10.5. So ds1 slept roughly 7 til 7 (waking up varying amounts) while ds2 did about 8 til 6. I would also say both mine had many 'phases' of sleeping better/worse, more/less depending on heat, light nights, teething, illness, developmental changes, mood...

There is no 'supposed to' only a wide range of acceptable options. If he sleeps 8 til 6 you're doing great IMO, put him to bed then. You can always adjust in future.

Omg. He's just slept 7-4! Managed to get 2 naps into him today. His morning one is usually 2hrs but he woke after 40mins and then had an after lunch nap (at same time as dd) for an hour which gave us an hour to do stuff and seemed much better for him. Wonder if it will work again tomorrow?

Sugar, we 'aim' for 7 too. If tea hits the table at 5 then we sometimes manage it. On a nursery day when we don't get dd much before 5, its nearer 8. Impressed you have no night feeds though.

Is your Lo recently crawling and therefore practicing when he turns over? If he's just refining the skill it'll probably stop when he's more used to it.

Yes he is recently crawling! I think he turns while he is asleep and it wakes him up and he panics a bit as he is stuck. I think when he has more food and I can drop another milk feed the 7 bedtime will be easier.

I'm also going back to work in sept so our day will start earlier so I'm sure it will all change again anyway!

For those of you who have used pupd, did your lo get more upset when you put them back in the cot before they'd cracked it? We've been using it for 4 days so far for 7 month old ds2. No success at all so far. He now starts crying as soon as you put him in the cot, calms down a bit when you pick him up, but as soon as you move him horizontally ready to go back in the cot, he starts crying in earnest again. We've been doing this cycle for an hour at a time, with no sleep. Then as soon as he next nurses, he falls asleep. Please tell me your dc did this, then just learnt how to fall asleep

Yes Thursday mine did this. But after the initial anger they should start to realise there is no point to them crying as they only get a quick comfort iyswim?

You can then use it with controlled crying if you are comfortable with that to gradually extend the length of time you leave them for, so they get less and less involvement for the crying.

I have to say I don't really get pupd. It seems a bit counter intuitive, tbh. Your baby cries, you pick it up, it calms and you reward the calm behaviour by putting it down again. Dd was ok with it but DS shared my view. I just lie him in the cot with my hand on him and talk to him now.
I am quite proud; I got him to bed at 8 last night in only 10 mins. It's a bit later than normal but we'd been out all day and he'd napped in the car until 4 which usually has a disasterous effect on bed time.
Anyway he had a good feed, and dozed off, woke when I put his sleeping bag on and suddenly sat up awake and ready to play. I put him in his cot, he played with his toys, rolled about a bit but only sat up once or twice. I told him his final bedtime story and started to sing to him. By verse two he was lying still, eyes closed, I pulled up the cot side, he startled and his eyes openness so I kept singing, he rolled over and... That was it until 4:45 this morning when he had a whopping feed and declared the day started!
I think we're getting there.
How did everyone else get on last night?

Bad, sad night! night! Took ds up at 7.20 had story sang until he was drowsy and put him in crib. He kept rolling over and vrying when I laid him back on his back. He was very over tired and crying properly, tried shushing and patting and singing but he kept crying so tried PUPD and he cried even more! Ended up cuddling until half asleep and managed to put him down. I came back down at 8.30 and by 10pm he had woken up crying 3 times. He then slept until about 4 and just put him in with us and he slept until 7.30.

Think I agree with you about PUPD gulemmings, it made his crying worse!