I can't take anymore......

[DuggiWontSleep]

I have honestly had enough. I don?t think I can go on anymore. My PFB was a much wanted baby and I had visions of enjoying motherhood so much but sleep deprivation is killing me. I actually loathe being a mummy at the mo and I'm sure my DS senses it.
DS is 15months and has a fairly good daytime routine:
Awake 5.30 - 6.00
Milk (8oz offered will usually have 6oz) at 6.30
Breakfast at 8.30
Mid morning snack 9.30
Banana 11.00
Nap 11.30/12.00 (usually 2 hours)
Lunch 2ish
Snack (fruit) mid afternoon
Dinner 6.00
Bedtime routine from 7 onwards (bath, milk, story and cot) with aim of being in cot by 7.45.
Despite this routine he still wakes anything between 3-6 times. I have started night weaning in an attempt to reduce his waking and its had little effect. I am so tired and I'm sure it cant be good for DS either.
Me and my partner are constantly arguing and sometimes I just feel like walking out on the pair of them. This isn't the life I wanted or envisioned. I'm thinking of trying a gentler version of CC-ing but to be honest not exactly sure what it entails.
What im hoping for is advice on the following:

• some hand holding;
• details of routines fellow mumsnetters have for their 15 month olds;
• advice on what gentle CC-ing involves: and
• perhaps the biggest ask of all, whether anybody would be willing to share a copy of a sleep plan they have (if they've seen a sleep consultant - particularly Andrea Grace). Its something I would love to do but currently im out of work and my partner would never agree to pay. He rarely helps - infact he's only ever got up once in the night. I just feel so down and would really appreciate some help. xxx

Ah, I drafted a lengthier reply for you but the system ate it!

Basically, we did controlled crying to get DS to sleep from 6 months as I was breastfeeding and hadn't had more than 2 hours' consecutive sleep until then.

We used this and they have an online forum which helped.

Oh, and get your DH up at night, so long as he's not driving a long commute next day. My DH helped on Friday and Saturday nights but worked 50 miles away from home so needed his sleep on the other nights. your DH not helping isn't on.

Thank you so much for your response. OH travels 70 miles each way per day so no help there...and when he's not driving he just wants to drink beer so obviously cant leave him on night duty.

You say you used controlled crying - did your DS start sleeping through afterwards?

Will have a look at link. x

My DD is 2 now and sleeps through nearly every night. The No Cry Sleep solution helped us. She was breastfed and a nightmare sleeper. I never tried CC as it didn't appeal.

The only other thing I can suggest is moving the evening meal a bit earlier. It might be that your child is still too full to want to go to sleep. We eat at 12 and 5pm which works for us. It does mean DH eats alone in the evenings but a small price to pay for better sleep. DD naps after lunch.

Good luck!

Same as GracieGirl. My DS (13 MO) has been quite a dreadful sleeper for most of his short life (hence my name)....but we turned a corner at about 9 month. He is an early riser - but has to be as we drop him at the childminder at 0715 on the weekdays, so we've trained him that way.
His 'routine' usually something like this
Wake 0530-0630
Milk when he wakes
Little bit of a snack - fruit/dry cereal
Breakfast with CM at - 0830/0900
Nap after breakfast - 45 mins (hopefully?!?)
Snack Fruit/yoghurt/rice cakes - 1000/1030
Lunch - 1200
Milk/nap - 1300 (up to 2 hours hopefully depending on where he is pram/cot etc)
Afternoon snack biscuit/fruit - 1500/1530
Pick up from CM - 1700 and then dinner asap. Usually high carb dinner (pasta is his favourite!!)
Playtime and In the Night Garden at 1820 (??!!)
Bath - 1830
Milk and asleep by 1900
Sometimes he goes without his afternoon milk and I am going to cut this out soon. But milk is his wind down/cue to sleep and helps him chill out - especially when with CM! As it can be a bit frantic round there.
I had to tell myself that my DS could not be hungry at night after eating on and off all day. He was just using it for comfort....so I stopped feeding him. Was horrible. He got cross. But I sat with him. I sung. I rocked. I patted and I sushed. Eventually he got the message that he wasn't getting milk and got bored and went to sleep. I was horrible for a few nights but it didn't take long.
It is hard but you can do it. Well you have to really anyway. So just try whatever it takes in the short term to improve things drastically in the long term.
Good luck.

Hi, Andrea Grace has a book by the way, Gentle Sleep Solutions

The gentler form of CC you mention is gradual retreat I think, which she covers in this book. There are also quite a few threads about it on here if you search.

What do you do in the night when DS wakes up?

I am also wondering if he is a bit over tired, as he does about 10 hours overnight from what you've written. Waking early (5.30) can be a sign of over tiredness, depends how he is on waking / in the morning (grumpy or chirpy?). If you suspect over tiredness, you could try going with a 7pm or 6.30pm bedtime.

duggie does you OH know how you are really feeling? He needs to help you. Yupir dc has two parents and there is no reason why he can not help on his days off (drinking beer is NO excuse). Even if you know you have one night a week if sleep while he looks after dc it might make you feel able to cope.

People above have offered good solutions, keep at it and hopefully it will get better.

Oh just to clarify obviously I don't mean he can drink beer and do the night shift! I meant he could have a night off the beer.

Thank you all so much for your responses. I had a little cry when I saw them all - I've felt so helpless over the last few months and its nice to know that there are others out there who have gone through something similar and come out the other end.

Fire - i will try that book. Anythings worth a try if theres a chance it will help.

Gracie - i will try putting him down by 7 today and see how that goes. He rarely wakes up happy unless he sees either me or my partner on waking. I agree that hes probaby over tired which is compounded as each day goes by. I bought the No Cry Solution months ago when i was still breastfeeding but wasnt that impressed at the time. Will flick through it again and see if theres any bits that might be useful now.

Forced - Thank you for detailing your routine. My DS associates milk with sleep too and its used as a wind down mechanism....i try not to let him fall asleep during feed though. Might try rejigging his lunch and see if i can get him to eat before nap.

Radicchio - I've seen that book mentioned in a few places. Have just ordered off Amazon :-)

HelloBear - OH is just not interested. He seems to think that as im home i should have to 'deal' with it. Even when i tell him a few days before that i'd like him to have DS for night he'll still go ahead and drink:-(

op - I agree with raddichio that your DS might be overtired. Given he wakes 5.30-6am & naps 11.30/12, I'd say his BT is actually pretty late at 7.45pm. So if he is waking frequently in the first few hours after bedtime then he might well be. At that age my DS woke at 5-5.30, napped 11.30am for 2hrs & I always had him in bed & asleep at 6.30pm latest, earlier if his nap was shorter.

Eventually I got sick of the early starts at around 16 months I gradually pushed his nap a bit later & we then settled on a 12.30-2.30pm nap and a 7.30pm bedtime. Moving the nap later worked a treat & he started waking at 7am!

Hi Omama,

Yes I agree that he prob is going down too late. Think bedtimes just evolved into a late process-mainly so DS can see his daddy after work but to be honest I'd prefer a happy sleeping baby opposed to a happy OH!

Will try early bedtime tomorrow :)

You asked for some routines - I'll throw ours in the mix! DD is 17months and has had about the same routine for about 4 months. She is an early riser, but we have made a little progress with that in the last month shifting bedtime back by half an hour, generally gets us half an hour extra in the morning (used to sleep 7pm til 5-5.30)

Mondays, thurs, fri:
Wake 5.30-6.00
Milk on waking (want to do something about this but too early in the morning to have any willpower)
Breakfast 7.15
Snack 9.30 or 10.00
Lunch 11.30/12.00
Nap 12.00/12.30 for usually 1.5 hours
Milk at some point (when she asks)
Snack 15.30 or 16.00
Dinner somewhere between 17.30 and 18.00
Milk if she wants (every other day on average)
Up for bath 18.30-18.45
Teeth, PJ's, story (rule: no teeth=no story)
Bed 19.15-19.30 (aim for 19.30 unless short or early nap)

Tues/wed she is at nursery and eats a gazillion times a day but otherwise timings are similar. Weekends we have tea and toast in bed at about 6.30 and eat a late breakfast say 8.00 and often forgo the snack. Occasionally she will nap early atthe weeken (11.30) and have lunch after.

We did the night weaning / sleep training thing months ago, but I encourage you to find a thread called "what worked for us" by nectarina - it basically describes in detail the gradual withdrawal technique, and you can take it as fast or slow a you want. We did a much abbreviated version.

Very quickly as on phone but I think his bedtime is too late or his nap a wee bit early. Basically overturned. Also consider wonder weeks and development leaps as possible causes of night waking? Speech and walking are two bug thugs at thus age.

DD is two and wakes 3-4 TIMES A NIGHT and we have been advised by a sleep psych to do very gradual retreat, CC and CIO are now considered detrimental long term and also in an older baby or toddler quite cruel. That's from the Dr btw.

I feel for you OP, sleep deprivation is the worst. A friend recommended Tizzie Hall to me when I was desperate. No-one's heard of TH here but she's huge in Australia. I'm a total convert, here's what she says and I did after 3 or 4 months of no sleep (my pain threshold must be a lot lower than yours cos that's when I cracked):

Tizzie Hall's self settling method in brief:
First learn to tell the difference between an emotional/ hungry cry (waa waa waa waa waa continuously) and a protest cry (wa wa waaaa pause while listening for Mummy - wa wa waaa pause whilst etc etc). Protest crying can be ignored, the other kind can't. Protest crying can go on for a while, especially if baby is expecting you to come in as usual. DS went on for 1hour 9 mins the first time I left him (morning nap), 9 mins the second time (afternoon nap) and didn't cry at all in the evening for bed time, it was that quick. We were lucky and I was prepared to stick it out for 2 or 3 days before seeing an improvement, so I was impressed.

Make sure you put baby down dry, well fed, no wind, good temperature, happy and with a cloth comforter that smells of you - the old stuff it down the bra for a bit trick. I attach DS's to the cot bars with plastic loopy links so it can't fall out.

Choose a day you're feeling strong. Make sure you've done all of the above , give baby a short hug/kiss/say 'nap time' and put baby down in cot and walk away quickly, shut the door if you normally do. And stay away. No going back in after 5/10/15 mins because this gives the baby mixed messages and leads them to expect comfort from you when the whole point is you want them to self settle.

When baby wakes, even if they haven't been asleep long, go and get them and have a much needed (for you!) hug.

This method can be quite draining at the beginning but works quickly so I suggest start in the morning when you feel at your strongest and keep busy during the crying. I also bought a video monitor before starting as I knew this would give me the reassurance I needed. Best money I've ever spent!

This is a book review I did for the NCT mag:
Tizzie Hall: Save Our Sleep

As with most baby sleep books, you tend to reach for them when you?re at your wits? end. The great thing about this book is that you can read the whole thing if your sleep deprived mind can cope ? or you can turn to the 2 pages that lay out a routine for your baby?s age and just follow it! If you?ve really had enough, (like we had after 4 months of naff all sleep) pp71-78 cover how to teach your baby to self settle. Reading about ?protest crying? as opposed to ?emotional crying? gave us the confidence to let our baby get on with it and I finally stopped rocking him to sleep in my arms (which was causing me to slowly wither inside).

If you?re lucky enough to read this book before having your first baby, then it?s a very thorough guide to milk feeds and solids, health and illness, settling and sleeping, whether for single babies, multiple births or premature babies.

The main message I took from this book is that once the daytime sleeps and routine are settled, the night sleep will gradually fall into place. Tizzie Hall?s daytime routines may seem a bit strict, but having a routine can make it easier to get out and about. Also, the routines are for the baby ? not for us! We can eat, sleep, go out when we like!

The routines are set out according to age and have times for milk feeds, solid feeds if baby is ready, sleep/nap times, a dreamfeed and bed. They start from about 1 week old and continue until 2 years old. The daytime sleeps are pretty much set in stone but the writer recognises the importance to parents of getting out and about, so she?s keen for the baby to sleep through shopping/coffee out etc. One of the ways she recommends babies be taught to self settle is with a cloth comforter which can be used wherever the baby is sleeping ? cot, pram, car seat etc. I hadn?t bought these before as I hadn?t realised how much of a comfort they are but having seen them in action, I?m convinced.

Tizzie Hall has a website where you can shop for the products she recommends in her books and they do seem to be good quality. You can buy many similar items on the general market, sometimes quite a lot cheaper, but it?s good for ideas:
www.saveoursleep.co.uk