Misery loves company: anyone want to join me on a support thread for those desperate and demoralised by their 8/9/10 mo sleep?

[Suchanamateur]

Bloody sleep regression. It's like 4 months all over again but worse because it felt (briefly) like we were getting somewhere. Feck. Anyone else want to share tales of woe or is it (a) just me or (b) way too depressing to post about..?

Hi all - can I just say how nice it is to be in the company of people whose babies don't sleep? In the last two days we've seen various friends, all of whose babies have slept well. One of them is only about 3 months old and although his mum kindly didn't tell me exactly how well he is sleeping (she knows a bit about our trials here), it sounded like it was pretty good .

However, night 2 of night weaning gave me a bit more grounds for (cautious) optimism. DD woke and squawked about 9pm but we waited a couple of minutes, and miracle of miracles, she resettled herself (v rare at that time in the evening). She then slept till 11pm and she hasn't done 7 to 11pm without our intervention for I don't know how long! We had agreed I would feed if she woke before 11pm, so I did that. She then slept till 5am with just another squawk about 12.30. 6 hours! 6 whole hours!! Unbelievable.

So DH went in at 5 but she wasn't settling so once it got a bit closer to 6am, we agreed she was probably getting hungry and I fed her again. We then all went back to sleep for an hour or so. All in all, a good night! I really want to hope, against all experience, that this might be a straight line improvement! Imagine if she slept 6 hours on the trot again tonight, or even 7. However I must not count chickens etc etc.

And incidentally her naps have been rubbish today - just over an hour split between a morning and afternoon nap. We always battle to get her down for her first nap of the day, the second is relatively straightforward.

whoop DD had 4 feeds in 24 hours yesterdaY - first thing in morning, mid afternoon, and before bed plus the one at 11pm. I have encouraged her to drop mid morning feed with an eye to returning to work in three weeks. I offered formula but in the end just replaced with a snack. Now to switch afternoon feed to formula....

Yay! Well done half and little half. You give us all hope :o

If it makes you feel better about your friend dd slept 7-8 hours every night between about 3 weeks to 3.5 months, and then without warning decided to start waking every 45 MNS throughout the night) so your friend is probably being sensibly cautious about mentioning how well her DC sleeps :)

Dd usually naps on one of us and naps really well, I am starting to wonder if part of the problem is that she is napping to long. Her general routine is morning nap starting around 8:30 (anything between 30mins to 2 hours) then afternoon nap starting about 1:30 (between 1 to 2.5 hours). She woke up early this morning and then I decided to put her down for the morning nap ( so I could also have a lie down) so she did a 30min nap about 8.15am and then 1.5 hours at about 12:30pm. I'm interested to see if she sleeps better tonight for only having 2 hours rather then the 3-4 she often does.

Well done ouzo!! Roar is right you do give us hope.

I just don't know about naps. Would be interested to see if there was any difference to your night Roar. DD got 25 mins this morning and then 2 hours (albeit with resettling) this afternoon. Put her to bed 3 hrs and a half hours after end of that nap (6.15) and she cried hard on an off for 10 or so mins then settled. Only to wake up 40 minutes later absolutely screaming and screaming. I think that means she was over tired when she went down but I can't realistically get much more sleep than that in te say or put her to ed much earlier. Arghhh...

Or am I over thinking this...? DH keeps telling me that DD isn't a problem to be solved. But I've just read too damn much. Step away from the Internet and books, lady. My dirty secret is no less that 10 sleep books...

haven't had time to properly catch up on nap discussions but just wanted to say such I am just like you - too many sleep books and internet trawls mean I am always looking for the answer which is probably just 'ride the mo fo out'.

Also good to hear success ouzo, my ds is more or less the same age as yours but not so good on eating solids. I need to start replacing feeds with snacks properly as back to work in under two weeks, but popping a boob out is so much easier than food and the associated clean up...

Will go back and read properly how you did the night weaning, and wait with fingers crossed for progress updates.

Yup suspect 'ride the mo fo out' really is the only way, with maybe a little bit of ouzo inspired night weaning. Blah.

Apologies for my dreadful typos. Fat fingers on iPhone..

Ok, so RE naps DS (nearly 10mo) has either three short naps (20-45mins each) or one short and one long nap a day. More often the former, I have never had much success extending naps - once walked for 90 mins and was asleep for only the first 20. I do find he sleeps better if he's managed to get some good naps in, which doesn't bode well for tonight: 2 very short naps today caused, I think, by another tooth combined with nasty cold/cough.

the cough and cold also mean I won't attempt any night weaning stuff till he's well over them, though DH and I have agreed a night split where hea deals with pre2am wakings and I do post 2am, but last night he spent from 1-2am trying to settle DS who kept coughing himself awake. Then I went in at 2am and fed - so a bit of a failure so far but hey ho. Also agreed we'll take turns to lie in on weekends, so hopefully that, plus trying to manage my anxiety, will mean better sleep for me and fewer early morning meltdowns.

blossom , sounds like a really good plan. Hopefully just knowing that you're both in it together and that you will get that lie in at the weekend will help to make it seem less relentless. Good luck :)

My dp looks on tolerantly and makes the occasional supportive noise while I go through phases of stressing about sleeping, bless him. He says we should think of her as a 'force of nature', which is certainly an apt description.

We were talking about the whole 'everyone's baby sleeps more then mine' thing yesterday and he pointed out that when he speaks to people with older kids (say 5 and over) loads of them have said how awful their sleep was when they were dd's age, yet when he speaks to people who have kids similar in age to us they all give the impression of having great sleepers. Make of that what you will [nods sagely]

I would quite like to go to bed but dd is currently stretched out across my bit of the bed and I don't dare move her.

Well, we had a pretty crap night but we do have another tooth. Whoop!

Ah, teeth. The tombstones to my sleep. DS has had four massive lumps along his top row for about a month now and you can see edges and tips if canines desperate to get through. This is one of the many things that people have cited as a barrier to him sleeping - 'once those teeth are through, he'll start sleeping' along with 'once he starts crawling' and 'once he's at nursery full time'. That's quite a to-do list.

Mind you we've passed the 'once he gets past four months', 'once he starts on solids' and 'once he moves into his own room' guarantees of sleep with no change whatsoever, so forgive me if my optimism has long since dried up.

God, there's two narky sleep threads going on in AIBU and Breast and Bottle Feeding. I seriously need to keep off those things. They turn me into such a bitter martyr-cow.

I like to write massive long ranting replies to threads like that and then not post them. All the satisfaction of telling them where to go with out any of the resulting arguments :o

I was just wondering if anyone has tried camomile tea? After all camomile is basically the active ingredient in teething powders and I had read that tests had shown it helped babies with colic. Since dd seems to be suffering with both teething and terrible wind I was thinking it might be worth giving her some as her drink with dinner. Any thoughts?

I have to stay well clear of those threads. My bl

Balls. My blood pressure can't take them.

I think camomile is worth a shot- certainly shouldn't do harm. Have heard fennel tea also good for wind.

IME teeth makes the wakings more screamy and loud but I have my suspicions about them being the root cause of sleep problems. And they'll be teething for at least another year so its too depressing if that's the case.

I bought a box of chamomile tea for the purposes of drugging DS into a stupor assisting DS to sleep but haven't yet been brave enough to try. Should we make a pact?

Off to practice NOT hitting post...(except for this one)

Hear, hear - I've really got to stay away from those threads as well!

I pretty much just stay in here, or in "High Need Baby Support" thread. Any of you who haven't popped in there yet, please feel welcome. It's full of lovely people and I've received some great support in there over the past year.

It's a deal on the camomile tea! Pretty sure i have some left over from when I had terrible pregnancy insomnia. I give dd a sippy cup of water with her dinner so will just swap this for tea tonight. We can compare notes in the morning. :o

I think she might have got 2 through (front top) but she is a squealy monster if I so much as look at her mouth let alone have a poke about so can't be sure.

Camomile tea? That's something I hadn't thought of - will be interested to hear if it works!

Slightly misplaced optimism yesterday. I've definitely proved to myself that DD doesn't need feeding at night. Again she went from 9.30 till 8 (!) without a feed. However, she didn't settle nearly as well last night - awake at 1 and DH settled her after about half an hour. Then awake again at 3ish, but this time would not settle. DH is leaving her in cot and sshing her, as we've found when he picks her up she tends to scream at night, but she was dropping off then waking up as he left the room. We took it in turns to sshhh till about 5am when I finally picked her up and she went straight to sleep, but without feeding. In hindsight, I don't know why we didn't pick her up earlier, but I think we had a plan fixed in our head, and were too addled by lack of sleep to change our minds! Anyway, once we were all back to sleep she then didn't wake up till 8 so we caught up a bit.

So I'm really hoping that we haven't solved one problem (feeding) just to create another one (not going back to sleep). Ah well, we shall see. Today she's had better naps so I'm hopeful tonight might be calmer. I'll report back tomorrow.

Hear - glad the tooth has broken through, hope your little one is happier now. Elphaba I took a look at those threads and now really wish I hadn't - just annoying!

One of the many, many problems of a non-sleeping baby is you find yourself so desperate to keep entertained in the mind-numbing wee-small hours that you end up reading shit like this. To summarise, most babies sleep through the night by six months and the ones who don't are all breastfed boys with depressed mothers. As it's the Daily Mail, it's probably the fault of immigrants, New Labour and the EU as well.

DS took a few sips of chamomile tea. This is the sound of me not holding my breath...

dd is camomiled up and tucked up asleep so we will see.

Have you seen the Isis site www.isisonline.org.uk it's my favourite and I always go look at it when I'm depressed about dd not sleeping.

... And I forgot to say. Step away from the daily mail. It only ends in tears. :)

DD is only 6mo but another parent told me that things were supposed to calm down and get easier after this point.

it appears from this thread that that it's NOT the case. DD has bern getting worse and worse since 4 months.

6mo growth spurt is currently whipping my butt

Same here MamaCam, same here.

J'adore The Daily Fail, HearMyRoar! I NEED to know what Kate's wearing on an hourly basis and how my hard earned taxes are being squandered by single mothers and Poles!

Awake!

Ho hum, I forgot to click the 'make stuff links' think. Try again www.isisonline.org.uk

I just managed a whole bath without being dragged out by the screams of a waking baby, which was nice. :)

Sorry to be the bearers of bad news for you mamacam, 6 months came and went for me with no noticeably improvement. I've decided to assume that she isn't going to sleep until she is about 4 (according to my mum this is when I finally slept through) that way I won't be constantly crushed by disappointed every time a milestone passes and she is still waking every 2 hours [sob]

God damn it, I did it again! www.isisonline.org.uk

Hi ladies, may I join? (I may had joined before but I'm so tired I forget)
DD is almost 8 months. She hit the 4 month sleep regression hard and never looked back! On a good night she'll wake 6 times. We feed to sleep and after bringing her into bed during a holiday a few months ago, we have never managed to get her out again!
She is sailing through milestones without any progress to her snoozing. It's maddening. Must have bought every sleep training book under the sun, all piled up waiting to solve our problems but DD is just far too demanding and I'm just too darn sleepy to make any sense of them.

Is gets better right?