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,

We're at it again - she feeds, she falls asleep, I put her in her cot and she wakes fully. I'm going to get a fleece blanket tomorrow but other than that I just do not know what is wrong. Separation anxiety? Putting her down too quickly or too late? Regression? She is wide awake and I have far too much to do to sit here with her on my chest.

commander i think its separation anxiety. We all seem to be going thru the same type of sleeping problems so i think its got to be something like that. I went back to work 3weeks ago and ours has been considerably worse since then. Wasn't exactly great before!

I'm just so miserable. I spend every night in floods of tears because she just will not go to sleep and now she's laughing and cooing and won't let me have just 30 minutes to myself. DH is going to be late home and I am getting so fed up with her.

Does she sleep in the buggy, could you just strap her in even in the same room as you so you can get on with things and she can see you?

How about you get cup of tea/wine, some food and take it to bed along with your dd. Then snuggle up with her in bed till she sleeps then quietly sit your self up and drink and eat.
Would that work?? When i have totally had enough that's what i Do. Its not ideal but better than the constant night time cot battle

Thanks lovelies. She's been in her cot about 30 mins now - not sure if it's anything to do with anything but I found a wool blanket and put it on her mattress and she went down without a fuss. We shall see... and DH is back now and providing much needed moral support.

Has anyone read the Wonder Weeks? I have the app and if it's right - and it has been in the past - DD is smack in the middle of a leap and in the worst week. So in theory it can only get better...

I'll google Wonder Weeks, thanks. My kid doesn't seem to have a cold but has a snotty nose which must make it hard to sleep. I don't know why she has it, but she is teething. Do the two go hand in hand or is it something else? I know she's supposed to learn how to sleep by herself but tonight I just had to pick her up and rock her to sleep. My arm hurt so I couldn't wait for her to go into deep sleep and as I lay her down in the cot I had that 'moment' where I don't know if she'll wake up and cry or settle into sleep. I was lucky tonight.

Ok I'm gonna hook up my kindle tomorrow and get that book! Thank you for the tip!

Day 7. No poo. Vultures circling.

Back on topic. I've wrapped DS in a fleece blanket for his going to sleep feeds for ages, then I just transfer him, blanket and all, into the cot so it takes his warmth and my smell with him. Have you tried this Commander and Boomerwang? I wrap him in it a bit like a sleeping bag - he lies on top of it, so it's right up behind his head, then fold it back over him IYSWIM. He's definitely developed a sleep association with it since I've used the same blanket for all naps and night sleeps for months. They even give him a fleece blanket at nursery which he holds while he sleeps there.

Have you started on NCSS yet Commander? I now give him his lovey to hold for every going to sleep feed as well, plus take it into bed with us when we shift to co-sleeping, to further push a sleep association.

Boomerwang read that excellent blog post that blossombath posted about the myth of self-settling. There's no 'should' about it!

This is me with all my sage wisdom, you see. Because my baby is such an amazing sleeper on account of me being supermother with failsafe strategies. He's only been awake five times so far I'm not writing this at 2:10am...oh no...you're misreading that time there...

My DS has started throwing his lovey on the floor whenever I hold it next to him... Think he has sussed that one out. Sleep regression + teething + cold = everyone miserable. Just when I thought we were making progress too, Sunday he managed 2 hours asleep at the start of the night without waking!! The first for a very long time

We had another pretty good night last night. Only 3 wake ups and a nice snuggly lie-in. I feel all odd..like someone who gets sleep... Ooooh..

I have a policy of not getting excited until at least 3 good nights in a row, so remaining calm and expecting the worst.

I can't wrap her in anything. She doesn't even sleep with a blanket. If you put anything over her she wakes up and throws it off. It's a good thing it's warm in her room. I always wonder which of us is odd for using or not using a bedcover. She's always got warm hands and feet when she sleeps.

I don't know if she was up after 1am. If she was then my boyfriend dealt with it. I do know that at 8.30am when she woke me up she only wanted half of her bottle. Now that's very odd.

Oh well. We've already established that we're not exactly the go-to group for effective sleep advice.

On the poo front...success! What an effort, but it was almost enjoyable. (TMI warning from here on). I told him he was going to the GP this afternoon if he was non-productive, so after breakfast we hopped in a warm bath where he got both a tummy massage and boob to get the bowel moving. Following a liberal application of KY to his rectum via my little finger, we resumed tummy massage and leg pumping. And it started emerging...and emerging...and emerging. A rock-solid, unbroken poo log the length of his leg (and he is a very long baby). It was truly extraordinary. He weed all over me with the effort of it all but he's in a very jolly mood now, not surprisingly.

Have you still got the rain hood and wellies Hear? I'm anticipating an extensive backlog now that the stone has been moved from the entrance if the tomb, so to speak.

Well done Elphaba and Elphabababy, a poo of such magnitude deserves a name, poothon?, anapooda?

4 wakes last night between 1 and 7am

Stitch has a bit of a textures thing too and sleeps with this flat teddy thing that someone gave me, if you put her down with her hand or head touching it, she settles better. She also loves her taggies blanket and bunny for the silky bits.

When my eldest was a baby and I wanted to stop feeding her to sleep I used to play her Fisher Price seahorse whilst feeding her to associate the sound with comfort. Then when I started putting her down awake I would play it while I sat by the cot holding her hand, then once she could fall asleep like that I progressed to not holding hands and slowly (every two to three nights) I would move further away until eventually I was sitting outside of the door where she couldn't see me, but I could still reassure her with my voice. She still has that thing in her bed at 3.5 years old, and last night pressed its tummy to play the music while she went to sleep.

Poothon!

Aw that sounds really cute Stitch

My daughter has a raggie doll that she was given at birth. I'm going to start using that whenever she drinks from her bottle.

The poo thing wasn't TMI for me. I have a bit of a fascination with my daughter's poops I sometimes have to help her poop using a rectal thermometer and some KY jelly and I also enjoy guessing the length of the poop and all the different colours!

Ooh just be a bit careful using a rectal thermometer Boomerwang, you can easily cause damage with those things, I prefer disposable gloves and a pinky finger myself.

If your dc's are having difficult poos, banana can be a culprit, it makes really solid poos. I always find prune juice, fresh squeezed orange juice (small amount) and lactulose help.

Arggghhh, teething!

It's the top two front teeth so understandably causing some issues. Poor DS has red cheeks and is drooling everywhere during the day. Last night we didn't get him to sleep for longer than two hours at a time.

Disposable gloves? Stitch, you're a coward

All hail the Poothon! Mightest of the poos :o

I've tried getting dd into a comforter before but she is absolutly uninterested. She is a bit fickle with her toys to be honest and doesn't have anything particularly consistent that she is into apart from a purple plastic beaker that she loves.

ballroom, dd has just had the 2 front teeth come through and they were a bastard! She is so much happier now they are good and through though so hang on in there.

boom dd sleeps in these thick padded 2.5 tog sleepy suits . They are the best as she is also a fan off kicking off covers.

I have bought a fleecy blanket ready for tonight! She woke up a few times in bed with us but settled herself with no assistance, so that's good.

She's also napped for a record 3.5 hours today! Admittedly I had to be present at all times but we can work on that, I guess, once she's in the habit of good day-sleeps.

Happy to report night 2 of fleece blanket and water bottle worked well again last night. Woke up twice between 7pm and 7am. Can cope with that no problem. This is the best 2 nights we have had in a long time.
I am on my knees praying to the gods of fleece and hot water bottles for another good night. however there is an increasing amount of snot so i am praying a cold is not on the way. It will be tho. Just to mess us up again

My kid's room is warm, so putting her in a sleeping bag is just going to make her all hot and bothered, isn't it? I do have one. I used to use them in our old house which was always cold.

She's still up, by the way, at 8.45pm. I took her to her grandparent's house as we were having dinner there. I said that we'd dropped the afternoon nap as she wasn't sleeping at night but the rotten thing went straight to sleep as soon as grandma tried it, making me look stupid.

So, I'm not putting her to bed tonight until she wants to go and if her daddy wants an argument with me about it then he'll face a brick wall. I've had enough today.

boom my dd likes to be far hotter then I would have expected and the guidelines led me to believe. I discovered this quite by accident sometime up thread when I left the heating on over night and dd's sleep was noticeably improved. She now sleeps in a long sleeved vest, one of those suits, plus as we cosleep she is also under all our blankets (though as mentioned these often get kicked off). If I try and remove even a layer her sleep goes even worse then usual. So it might be worth giving her a go in something warmer just in case. What have you got to lose? :)

My suspicions about tonight not being so good have proved justified. After an hour of trying to get her to sleep and her waking and crying just as she dozed off I have given up and she is now sitting on dp's lap watching unsuitable TV...which probably isn't really going to help all that much but there you go, I can't be bothered to stress about it.

Tried wrapping her in a fleecy blanket - she is wise to my schemes. Nooo! Next try - blanket on cot mattress as it's warm from me anyway. She needs easy thumb access so I think wrapping may not be the answer.

Feeling more zen tonight, so if nothing else that's progress!