Please please please could someone help me - my baby WILL NOT go to sleep without crying and crying EVERY night :(

[Debzarella]

Hi, I wonder if anyone could help me please as I am at the end of my tether :(

My baby is 5.5 months old and is a lovely happy little girl generally. She sleeps very well through the night and has done from birth but our problem is actually getting her to sleep in the first place.

We have tried:

feeding her to sleep - works sometimes, sometimes it doesn't, she tends to wake the minute her head touches the mattress
rocking her to sleep - used to work pretty well (would take about 45 mins to an hour) but is not working anymore, infact I think it makes her cry more now
putting her down sleepy in the cot and using all sorts of mobiles, light projectors, Ewan the dream sheep etc, these all appear to wake her up more (and certainly don't sto the crying)
putting her down sleepy and singing lullabies to her
putting her down sleepy and then sitting by her and holding her hand / stroking her head (doesn't stop the crying at all)

We have tried leaving her to cry for a while once and it made both my husband and I really upset and our baby even more upset so I never want to do that again :(

Our routine is read books and sing some songs at 5.30, bath at 6, put her pjs and sleeping bag on, settle down to breast feed for 45 mins or so (she keeps nodding off as I feed so I stir her and get her to continue as she seems to sleep through the night better when I do this). She tends to fall asleep doing this so at about 7.30 we then put her gently down in her cot but 9.5 times out of 10 she wakes the minute her head hits the mattress and that's it then - she cries and cries for anything between an hour and 3 hours. Once she finally goes to sleep (usually from pure exhaustion) she sleeps beautifully.

Sorry it's so long but I really really don't know what else to do and its really starting to affect my sanity and I'm constantly taking it out on my Hubbie which is mean :(

Thanks in advance xxx

[smile4me]

Debzarella i've just posted almost exactly the same thing on another thread! Am equally at the end of my rope, and probably also approaching hearing loss as the only way I can get my 3mo daughter to sleep now is on my shoulder, jiggling and with much grizzling (morning) and screaming (afternoon) on her behalf. She was a dream up to 10 weeks... fed to sleep of would sleep in frontpack, now only with lots of screaming. Car/buggy have no effect on her at all, frontpack/sling no longer puts her to sleep either, will not feed to sleep except at dreamfeed when we go to bed.

I have jut given up for the evening after over an hour of screaming of shoulder, refused to feed, she gave in a couple of times and nodded off but only for 5 mins then back to full on screaming again. She is totally happy and lovely when awake, just turns into an evil monster at nap times.

And to make it worse, she very rarely sleeps (during the day) for more than 45mins, no matter how much shhing and hand holding I do, just lies there clucking to herself until I pick her up (starts getting pretty insistent after 5 mins). However she is good at night. I can sometimes put her down once she's asleep, but more often than not she's awake 5 mins later, so i essentially have to spend 90% of my day as a bed for her.

So I'm also house bound... can't go anywhere as we get so much screaming!
I'm totally with you on the can't leave her to cry front... also tried it once in desperation and I ended up in more tears than her.

Nerves are totally shot and feel like a total failure.