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..?

Is it possible to sort of tether her by tucking a sheet over her horizontally? I used to also tuck the bottom of DD's sleeping bag down the end of the mattress when she woke herself by rolling (can't do it anymore as the problem now is that she wakes as soon as I put her in the cot!)

Gosh I read about all these different permutations of sleep difficulty and wonder when things will improve.

Thanks for the suggestions - she likes to sleep between two bolster skinny pillows and that used to sort of keep her in place but now she just moves them aside, even in her sleep. Will try tucking the sleeping bag tonight though, that might work!

Failing that, will just have to ride the mo fo out - guess that's quickly becoming our collective motto

For some reason I'm clinging on to the idea that she'll sleep by the time she turns 1 yo. Do you think most 12 month old babies sleep better than this?

AAARGH! Projectile vomiting baby! Repeatedly! Might be co-sleeping in pools of puke! BFs to sleep so might make him vomit more! Contagious...? AAARGH! Starting new job in a week! AAARGH!!

elph, I hope you have a waterproof undersheet on your bed, and an extended warranty on your washing machine. If it's any consolation, DS had norovirus when he was 5mo and neither I nor DH caught it.

You should be ok with BF - we had to stop FF as we were advised it could trigger a milk allergy, so DS had glucose water with a bit of salt until he stopped hurling.

I rock and use boob when possible, unless he starts to get very upset and really insists on getting up. If he is totally determined I let him bang about on bed for 5 mins or so then try rocking him or lying him down again. This works 9/10 times. Can take a while tho . Please god let this phase end soon. DS only woke 3 times the other night and really hoped this was The Start of better sleeps. Sadly not the case. Custard week.

Thick, thick custard here. Last night DT2 up x3 and DT1 x5, including up 3-5:30am. Again.

Arghhhhhhhhh!!!!!

I've got 16 months for better sleep in my head... Surely all 16 mos sleep better than this ?!

And deepest sympathy elphaba . Grim grim grim.

I have resorted to strapping stitch in the baby carrier and sleeping sitting up before just to get some sleep when she was having an extra wriggly night!

When they used to put babies outside to sleep in prams they used a 5 point harness clipped onto the pram to stop the baby rolling out. We could all just tie our babies down

Oh Elphaba, that is not what you need. Dd1, dh and I all had noro at the same time when she was 18months old. I just covered the mattress with black bags (too ill to go out and buy waterproof sheet) then put towels down over the whole bed. The washing machine and drier were running almost constantly! Just keep breastfeeding, no food, don't bother with other fluids, breastmilk is the best rehydration solution for him. Make sure you eat and drink enough as you will have more demand for your supply. Plus side, you lose loads of weight feeding an older baby like a newborn. When you restart solids go back to basics, baby rice mixed with breastmilk, mashed potato, plain toast, plain pasta (butter is ok). Look up brat diet (useful post-vomiting as well as diarrhoea). Their stomachs are quite sore at first, and their regular diet can aggravate it and they just bring it all up. At least with noro it is over fairly quickly.

Hi guys.

Well, the worst seems to have passed, and he slept for four hour stretches between each purge.

I thought I'd been a bit PFB by buying four sets of cot bedding before he was born but I was rather relieved last night. It was all folded up underneath him, mind, next to me on the bed rather than in his cot, but it saved my new duvet and bedding several times over.

Right, thanks Stitch I'll keep him on a strict diet of boob today and if he keeps that down, toast or maybe ReadyBrek made with BM...tonight or wait until tomorrow?

If he hasn't vomited in 12 hours and shows signs of hunger try him on a finger of dry toast, if successful then move onto rice (doesn't have to be rice cereal, boiled rice will do) and breastmilk (oats harder to digest). Little and often with the food, if you feed them too much too soon it all comes up again.

Basic foods to start with are bananas, rice, apple puree, toast. Then you can add yoghurt, boiled chicken, other cereals, eggs, boiled veg, baked fish, less acidic fruits like pear if that is successful. Broths made with chicken or fish and root veg are good. Leave cows milk out for a few days along with citrus fruit and tomato based sauces.

Oh gosh elph! All sounds a bit grim round yours. Hope things are holding out and vomiting has ceased.

I am also holding out for 1yr as some sort of beacon of hope despite this rather disheartening stat from the isis site :
'One study investigating infant sleep duration found that 27% of babies had not regularly slept from 10pm to 6am by the age of 1 year. 13% of babies had not regularly slept through for 5 hours or more by the age of 1 year.'

I am definitely custardy today though thankfully dd did sleep slightly better then the past couple of nights when I had only got a few hours. So an improvement there I suppose.

Well, I made him some BM 'rice pudding' (i.e. EBM, pudding rice, apple purée). He thought that was pretty tasty, kept a good tablespoon of it down, and I believe cooking with breast milk means I've now met the requirements for the Advanced badge in Lentil Weavery and Earth Mothering, yes? Next thing you know I'll be extolling the virtues of cloth-bumming, babywearing and Steiner. Hell, I'm already co-sleeping.

Hope your nights all suck a lot less than last night did for me.

Oh that sounds like crappy night all night round for most. Especially elphaba. Sounds yuk.
I was so so custard tired last night that when dd woke at 2am i decided to leave her for a bit as i physically couldn't get out if bed and she wasn't crying just shouting and squealing. So i left her, and left her and left her.....and.... She was still shouting and squealing after an hour. So i went thru and boobed. She fell asleep within 5 mins. So i was very annoyed with myself as i wasted an hour trying to sleep whilst she yelled away.
I honestly thought she would give up but she just kept at it!!!!!

elphaba you'll be fine at work if you can survive a vomiting bug and still be witty on mn :)

^

I wrote this so long ago before the 4 wake-ups we've had so far that I'll post it in case I've x posted with lots, plus I'm just too tired now...

feek, I've left DT1 40 minutes while busy with the others, he just escalates til he pukes. Screaming too, not shouting.

I had total fail to get him in his travel cot last night. I ended up sleeping propped up with him (he's bunged up and super snotty, again) ALL NIGHT. Total non sleep for me, makes me so sore as I can't get comfy. I woke dh, who's also ill, to have him when he woke for the day at 6:20 as i literally couldn't make myself get up with him. Feeling a bit desperate about tonight...

Good luck everyone!!

My dp also got up with the baby this morning dreaming due to an horrible night. She woke at 12:30 and didn't settle again until gone 3. On the back of a run of nights of getting around 3 hours sleep I kind of lost the plot a bit. It seems to be tummy issues again as she was farting like trooper on a diet of beans and cabbage. We've decided to try cutting down on any hard to digest stuff in her diet, high fibre and oats and stuff, to see if that helps.

Dd seems to have finally decided to begin the process of dropping to 1 nap and today is the first single nap day. I have been expecting it for a bit but dreading it as the nap dropping period is always horrid until she sorts herself out and settles to a new routine. Today she has only had an hour at midday so we shall see how she sleeps tonight.

Okay we had a good night last night. Went to sleep at 7 WITHOUT any rocking. Apparently at nursery that day she settled herself too so glad to see that repeated. She then woke at 12 and then 5 and slept till 7am. Will have that again thank you.

So ladies, tonight, i am feeling brave and have gone for a bottle of wine. I haven't drank in weeks due to the night time horrors but i don't care tonight. Anyone else??!!

hear how old is your dd?? My dd did 2 solid naps of one hour yesterday and i think it makes a massive difference to her night sleep. Frankly the thought of dropping to one nap fills me with dread. Please do let us know how you get on!!!!

Dd afternoon nap has been getting shorter and shorter so it will soon be upon us!!

We sometimes have just one nap for DT2. He's 9 months and a few weeks now- only about a week off 10 months. DD went to one nap at 11 months. DT1 sleeps so badly I think he'll be on two for a while...

But, breaking news, last night DT2 only woke once at 9pm and I settled him in his cot without picking him up . Now, for either DD or DT1, this kind of outrage would be dealt with by screaming blue murder until they were picked up, but then little DT2 went back to sleep until the morning

Honestly, if DT1 wasn't here I'd have had a whole nights sleep. He was in with me from 11:30 onwards and i just couldn't get him back in his travel cot. Which incidentally is killing my back. It does have a decent mattress in it though for him.

Hooray feek, sounds like good sleeping is just round the corner for you. No rocking. I'm super impressed. I have also turned to wine. Nearly 10 months of resisting, but I have resorted to a very large glass of to cheer myself up :)

Oh dear no such luck. Dd has just woken 40 mins after falling asleep.... Oh fuck. Is it wrong that i have actually developed a fear of night times now??! Lol

Elphaba glad to see he is eating again, how is he now?

HearMyRoar last night sounded rough, hope tonight brings more sleep.

Fee last night sounded good, shame about the wake tonight, hope you get a few zzz at least.

Dreaming yay for DT2 :) Interesting how different they are sleep.wise, are they very different characters in the day too?

Stitch slept 8.30pm to 1am fed then slept until 5am when she decided DH was far too exciting (she was asleep when he got home last night) and decided to slap him about a bit shouting 'dada, dada'. Poor guy was knackered so we decamped to the front room where dd1 joined us at 7am. Stitch then napped from 7.30 until 9am so I went back to bed while DH stayed with dd1.

She is asleep already so I am hoping for a good night again as 4.5 hour stretches are very welcome.

No more voms, thank goodness. And he slept 7pm-2am, unbroken, in his cot that night Not that I slept through all that myself because I couldn't believe he'd managed being that settled for that long without having asphyxiated on vomit, so had to hop up and check a couple of times.

Normal service resumed last night, though. Co-sleeping from 11:30pm, with five or six wake-ups in total. Sigh.

Sorry to see that you had a bad night Elphaba, but great that he is well again.

Feel slightly guilty posting this, but Stitch went from 11.30pm to 7.30am this morning. I am hoping we have reached some sort of 11 month magic sleeping milestone. Am still custard, mouldy custard in fact, but then I am still ill. I was improving, but went out yesterday to get grass for our guinea pigs, got cold and now feel rough.

Just saying...happy 500th post!

Lucky you Stitch! Looks like there's going to be a last man standing competition on here.

Poor elph! Hoorah stitch

Dd was exhausted by 6 and went out like a light. Woke at 8 for a feed, again at 10 when things got a bit hairy until 12 but then she slept till 3 fed and back to sleep till 6. So apart from the 10-12 bit it was a pretty OK night and I had a whole 5 hours of sleep in all. Crazy times!

We've decided to just go for it with the 1 nap and so I took her out for a walk through her usual morning nap time and she is now happy as a bunny in clover. Hoping for a midday nap and another OK night tonight.

feek she just turned 10 months but I have seen this on the horizon for a while now. Dropping naps is usually hell but then we usually just let her get on with it. We have decided to throw off our laid back parenting a bit this time and see if we can push her through a bit quicker. Not our usual style but we are too knackered for messing about and also my mum looks after her one day a week so I want to make it as easy as possible for her.