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..?

After a ridiculously bad night with oh-so-little sleep for me, I've suddenly snapped and decided to try CC. (Please please please don't all hate me. I thought I'd never get to this point!)

I've given her lots of breakfast, lots of cuddles and lots of active play. Then as usual she started rubbing her eyes a couple of hours after getting up for the day. Also as usual, she 'pushed through' the tiredness to carry on playing! So I've darkened her room, put her to bed with a her usual night-time lullabies and Ewan the dream sheep, and then I left her for 5 minutes :( I have a video monitor so I could keep an eye on her and make sure she was alright. I went back in to soothe her with the same lullaby every 5 minutes, and in the end she fell asleep half an hour after we started.

To be honest I'm so ridiculously exhausted after last night that it wasn't as emotionally gut-wrenching as I expected it to be. (More like being kicked in the gut as a opposed to having my arms pulled off :( ) We'll see how long she stays down, but I'm off for a nap myself now!

Will be repeating for her afternoon nap, and the big battle will be tonight. Dreading it already. I'm desperately hoping that being consistent during the day and night, waiting for her tiredness cues before starting, and generally plying her with loads of food, will help this process!

My poor little baby :(

Fish I'm soooooo jealous of the bacon sarnie by the way! Fabulous idea! Wish I had some bread in the house!

Mitsouko hooray for a wonderful DH sharing the load! It won't solve the root problem, but it certainly makes it more bearable!

Elphaba have you escaped from under the sleeping cherub yet?

Escaped at around 11:10. Practically burned a scorch mark on the carpet between the sofa and the kettle. Back on the sofa again now for afternoon nap but this time I have a plate of chocolate biscuits and a brew next to me. Thinking, see.

No judgement from me about CC. Hope it works better for you than it did for me. You're lucky it worked so quickly for a nap. I felt like shit mother of the year doing it for a week, with no effect whatsoever.

Oh, crap. My and have run out

Scream you've got to do what it takes. How was the nap? Have you tried again this afternoon? I would give CC a try for naps but DD will just play for hours before giving up/ screaming so we'd get a 5 min nap, if that.

We spent the weekend with 20 of DHs closest friends in a bug rented house. Xmas tradition. Five hour drive. Sharing a room with both kids. No chance of an early night. Several people there with 7-7 babies. Was fun but not conducive to sleep. So am now even more shattered, kids are wildly overexcited and I am having a massive attack of the green eyed monster. 2 days to unpack, wash and then we're on the road agin for Xmas...

Elphaba yy to feeling like shit mother of the year! Boo to the running out!!

Such ouch to the 7-7 babies! I'm very happy for all my friends with babies (mostly younger than mine ) that are sleeping through. I'm not sure I'd want to be sharing a house with them right now though! Fingers crossed that your LOs are so tired out by all the stimulation over xmas that they sleep better than usual instead of worse!

My DD has been crying on and off since I put her down for her afternoon nap at 2 It feels like last night all over again, she calms down and goes to sleep when I'm in the room, but somehow knows to wake up as soon as I step outside the room. I'm checking on her every ten minutes at the mo, and using the video monitor in between. I'm ready to sob myself at this point though, I'm just so exhausted and feeling so guilty but utterly clueless as to what else I can do?!?!!! The No Cry Sleep Solution is hopeless, and so far "she'll grow out of it" hasn't been working!

Well, I think I would give it a 2 last night. I got a whole 2 hours between 4-6 but apart from that it was awake every hour at best with plenty of back arching and crying in between. I'm afraid that my plan to remain cheerful and calm went out the window a bit and some creative swearing might have been heard

Last night was probably a 5 or 6 - we're going through a phase of just as many wakings (5 or 6 in fact) but at least DD is settling pretty quickly after being fed back to sleep

Sadly I have a revolting cold and am feeling pretty grim so could do with much more sleep than I'm currently getting. And to top it all off, although DD was settling OK last night after wakings, I wasn't - kept lying awake with lists of things to do going through my head. That's all I need, a bout of insomnia...

However I am feeling lucky that DD is currently napping OK (well, with some persuasion for her morning nap) and in her cot. Elphaba well done for surviving the enforced sofa sitting - I would be itching to get up and do something!

Scream looking forward to hearing more about the CC experiment. Fingers crossed it gets some quick results. We're holding off any real attempt to improve sleep till after Xmas as we're away for 5 days and can't imagine that's going to help. So at least 10 days to go.

Scream I read 'no cry' and 'baby whisperer' and the Dr Sears one! All pants and I followed them to the letter making sleep logs like a fool!! At the end of my tether I read 'solve your child's sleep problems' by Dr Ferber who recommends CC or as its referred to in the book progressive waiting. Well we are 2 and 1/2 weeks into it and after a promising start it too is now not working! The only sucess we've had from it is DD left alone for 15-20mins to cry has figured out how to turn her music box on! This calms her for a while. I know she can self settle as she does it at 7pm when we put her to bed but why oh why can't she do it the rest of the night?

I wish I had never read any books!! My mum's advice (as I too was a nightmare sleeper - cheers genetics) was to walk her to sleep in buggy during the day and switch the monitor off at night . She said 'we'd no monitors in my day and I'm sure you didn't sleep the night through, but I only got up if you cried loud enough to wake me' As far as I'm aware I'm not damaged from this 'training', DH may disagree

Hi Scream!

Last night was um, mixed. DD was up 6 times between 8.20pm and 2.30am, at which point I tried co-sleeping. Now, yesterday I was feeling like shit - have caught the virus DD had last week and had a temperature of 38.2 in the afternoon and a v sore throat. I basically had a sort of claustrophobia panic attack and couldn't lie still. I was sweating and panicky and just had that feeling where you want to thrash around like crazy. I swapped DD from side to side of me, then tried having her lie on my chest but all I achieved was waking her and DH up. DH then took DD while I cried, thrashed around a bit and went 'I can't cope, I can't cope'. DH took DD off to the living room because she was wide awake as a result of my tantrum, I calmed down and fell asleep. I woke up at 4.30 alone in bed and discovered DH and DD asleep together on the living room floor. They stayed there until 6.30, when DH had to get up for work and luckily, today was DD's first morning at nursery, so I was able to go back to sleep. I slept like a log until 12.15 when the bin men arrived and the dog woke me up barking at them. So all in all, I got a fair bit of sleep last night, but only because DH took over.

Still, DD napped for 45 mins at nursery this morning, then again from 2.45-4.15 this afternoon. She normally never naps in the afternoon. She woke up in a foul temper, mind you. She then looked exhausted, hardly ate any dinner but wouldn't sleep for me. DH, bless him, got her to sleep in 5 mins at 7.20 after I'd spent half an hour trying. I'm really hoping that going back to 2 naps a day will help.

Keznel I'm so sorry nothing's been working for you. Sounds like you've really tried everything!! I'm in the same boat with genetics working against you - my parents have just told me they used to put me to bed in the attic bedroom and go and have a drink in the sitting room on the ground floor! Apparently I was a nightmare... oops!

Half sorry to hear you're ill, tiredness makes that so much harder. I hope you get better asap!

at Hear's creative language!

I'm happy to update on cc for anyone who's interested. Can I just say though, whether or not it works I'm definitely not turning into an ambassador for it!! I really hoped I would never get to this point. I have tried doing a strict routine for several weeks, I also tried PU/PD for weeks, but none of it worked for me. I have every respect for supermums who can make non-crying methods work - that would always be my first choice!

So as I've mentioned, it took half an hour of on/off crying to get DD to sleep for her morning nap at 10. She slept for half an hour for that nap. At 2pm it took a whole hour of on/off crying to get DD to sleep :( That's been my worst bit (so far). If I hadn't been so exhausted I would definitely have cracked. She fell asleep properly at 3ish, woke at 4 and cried for 3 or 4 minutes, but I patted her and left again, and she went back to sleep. I woke her at 5.

I did her bedtime routine at 8, and she was practically asleep by the time I finished her story at 8.45. I left the room at 8.50, and she fussed for a few minutes but was asleep by 8.55. She hasn't woken yet, but I'm absolutely dreading tonight.

Wish me luck!

Joining too if that's ok. My 9month old went down to sleep at 8pm after only 1 30min nap today. No time to post more as we're off to bed before he wakes up again. Marking my place and will share my misery tomorrow.

Wishing you all good night's

Well! We had a not too bad night, down at 7pm couple of wakings til 10pm (self settled for these), then soundly sleeping til 5 when I turned her music on and she slept til 7am hallelujah!! Although I do know its probably just a one off, so not getting too excited just yet! She slept well during nap times yesterday as I had her out for a walk in buggy x3, so maybe that helped? My heart sank when I heard the rain beating against the window this morning - no walking today

We had a really tough night. DD settled down at 7 and did two hours, but was waking every 30 minutes or so from 9-2. We co-slept from 2ish but she still woke up from 4-6, wide eyed and singing and rolling around the bed. Finally, she wore herself out and slept til 8. I think I got about 4-5 broken hours. YAWN...

Keznel, hurray for a better night!

Shite night again here. Lots of wakings, culminating in wide-awake baby at 1.30. I let her play in the living room for a bit, then went and restarted the sleep battle and she eventually dropped off at 2.45 and slept until 4.30. I took her into bed with me and she slept until the alarm went off at 6.30, then resettled until 9, but she's knackered and grumpy this morning. She's napping now - FX it lasts for a while!

Sorry to hear about Misouko's bad night :( Hang in there!

I'm glad Keznel's LO did so well though! That's an amazing night! Maybe she enjoyed it so much she'll do the same today even without the walking!

Last night went surprisingly well here! Between bed just before 9, and waking for the day at 8, my DD only woke four times and one of those was my fault for making noise and disturbing her. Every time she woke I did 30sec of patting/lullabies, and then left her by herself. Each time she cried for a maximum of 2/3 minutes (once only 30 sec!) and fell asleep within 5 minutes. It was heavenly! Plus the gaps between her wake ups (except the one that was my fault) were all over 3 hours! So I actually got some sleep!

The morning nap today was harder, probably because I was half an hour late putting her down for it so she was overtired. Plus she produced a truly awe-inspiring nappy just as we started, so I had to get her back up and change her. Still, she went to sleep in just over 20 minutes after we finished the nappy change. She slept for 40 minutes.

So it's going well here so far. I'm still not advocating cc for anyone else though! It's heart-breaking when she does cry (mainly for her naps).

We had a better night too. DD only woke twice between 7.30pm and 7am - 10pm and 3.30am - and went back to sleep each time immediately after feeding. Fingers crossed for a repeat tonight!

Sorry to hear about your shite nights too and mitsouko. Hopefully you'll get a better one tonight. Peta0, how was yours?

And yay to keznel and SIYSBIS's better nights!

Hmm... I think you might be onto something with this genetics business. The other day my mum informed me that i didn't sleep through the night until I went to full-time nursery...at 3 years old I kind of wish she hadn't told me.

I'm sorry you had such a bad night Too. I have had a couple of very similar ones where dp has had to take dd into the livingroom at 3am. It's rubbish. I hope tonight is better for you.

Well, in a sleep deprived haze i forgot to turn the heating off last night, I woke up sweltering but dd slept in 3 hour chunks rather the the 40-60 mins I had been getting! So now I feel both stupid and mean because while I was getting increasingly annoyed with her she was clearly waking up at least in part because she was cold, poor thing. So today I have gone and got her one of those really padded sleepsuits, which will hopefully keep her nice and warm as she seems to have decided covers are for losers. We'll see if it works tonight.

Six wake ups last night, co-sleeping from 11pm. Awake at 5:30am. Ugh.

Totally agree with scream about CC, although it eventually seems to be working for us, I do not recommend it if you can avoid it, it's heartbreaking . Glad to hear some LO's are doing well, and my heart goes out to those who aren't. We'd an awful day regards naps so am dreading tonight, here's to one full of sleep for everyone

HearMyRoar that's interesting about your DD being cold. i've sometimes wondered whether that makes my DD more restless too. it's not so bad the last week or so, but when it was really cold she did seem to wake more. Hope the padded sleepsuits work out. Having said that, can they be used with sleeping bags? I never know how many layers I should be putting on DD.

Well, another night approaches. Have no idea what tonight will bring. DD is either slightly ill or teething. Last night was strange because after waking at 9pm as per usual, she slept till 1.30 - unheard of round these parts. I actually woke up worried because she'd been coughing earlier and I thought she might have been too ill to wake me . However, after that she was back to normal, waking every couple of hours with a long spell of being far too wide awake about 4am. She's been tired today though, and actually fell asleep sitting on my knee watching Pointless before going upstairs for bedtime tonight. Also unheard of! Still asleep now, but I suspect things won't remain that way. I did dose with Calpol though so we shall see.

Good to hear about the good nights - fingers crossed that the little ones continue with the good sleeping. Fishandjam - brilliant news on the two wakings. Long may that continue!

Hello all, catching up on threads after two days of cold and teething which meant DS was a miserable, clingy little soul. Sleeping didn't get much worse, though, which is a blessing. In fact going relatively well, just a few wakings in the 'proper night' (ie when I'm in bed) and mostly settled easily after a bit of food and maybe having his snot sucked out with the little snot sucker thing.

Last night, though, I was awake til 1am fretting - he hadn't woken for his usual 11/11.30 feed and I think my body was missing the sleepy breastfeeding hormones. So in fact it is me that needs feeding to sleep, not him.

Good to hear about postive nights for so many of you, especially SIYBIS and kenzel - cc must be hideous so am really glad it's working out so far.

Elphaba, mitsouko and too, hope you are sound asleep now and remain so for a good few hours.

Oh, I actually meant to comment on reducing night feeds and cold....

Night feeds (elphaba asked about this): we had some success here when DS was about 7-8 months. He had moved to his own room, was eating some solids but going hours without much interest in milk feeds in day, even though I was offering every two hours at least. But waking hourly at night and I fed him to sleep as it was easiest. So I decided that I had to try and cut down night feeds.

First tried to set myself a time limit - if he wakes less than two hours after last feed I will rock him to sleep - but this didn't really work as I would forget when he last woke up and would generally feed him anyway after up to 40 minutes walking round with him wailing in my ear.

But he often settled easily in his first waking so I decided to take it one waking at a time. I focused on not feeding him at the first waking (usually about 10) and then he began to sleep through til about 11 and wake less after that (every two hours at first, now he will sometimes go for two three hour stretches before being up for day). If I have energy I sometimes try to not feed him at the second waking now, but he does seem hungry then. Even at the first one if he cries I feed him quite quickly cos I just want to go back to bed. So basically I'm hoping that we can keep pushing the first waking back and back until it's about 2/3am and then maybe, just maybe, he would wake just once more (or not at all!) which would be bliss.

It does also mean that DH can handle settling him now, which he couldn't at about 6 months when only food and mum would do.

And cold...I think there's something in that, DS seems to sleep better when I pile on the layers of vest, sleepsuit and maybe a long sleeved top. It can't be the only reason though, since he has never been a good sleeper and it hasn't always been cold in his life.

The other day I was so obsessed with the idea that if he was warmer he'd sleep better I nearly bought one of these sleepsuits and this sleeping bag.

My SIL has the sleepsuit for her DD who is a good sleeper, but only 3mo. Still might get the bag as it's not too much more than a grobag, but for now have decided the sleepsuit is too much unless it came with sleep guarantee.

Fishandjam we had a better night last night. DS went down at 8pm, woke at 11pm just as we'd settled down to sleep so DH went in and quickly shushed him. Then he woke at 12pm and I went in. He was screaming, but seemed to calm down when I put my hand on his chest. He stayed wide awake for a while tho. But, then he slept through till 7am which was gobsmacking! So much better than the 2hour wide awake screaming session the night before.

Today has been calmer, and I've tried to wear him out ready for naps. He went down at half 7 and has woken once so far. I'm off to bed soon in anticipation of more wakings.

Oh, and blossombath DS definitely sleeps for longer when he's warm. Altho that means I'm boiling! Think he takes after his dad in that respect!