2 hours of pick up/put down..

[sushidave]

A special kind of torture.

Decided to try a bit of sleep training with 6mo DD (4 months corrected). Watched her like a hawk this morning for cues and when she started with fists and grizzling, I took her to her darkened room, had a cuddle and some soft words, then put her in her cot.

Crying started as expected, started the PUPD cycle. Pick ups weren't especially calming despite lots of reassurance, but put downs were like she'd been put on a bed of nails. She started getting exhausted around an hour in and flopping her head on my shoulder, but then the putting down only seemed to fuel her hysteria.

I persevered from 9 till 11 as I was determined to see it through, but then cracked after god knows how many cycles, maybe 100?

Now thinking that walking to sleep in the sling wasn't so bad after all.

If anyone has any thoughts or advice I'd love to hear it. What was I doing wrong? Or is my baby just unsuited to this type of training? Transferring her has always been an issue so maybe that answers my question..

I think she's probably too little - she's 4mo in reality - they just dont get it. DTs were prem they were still sleeping downstairs with us in the living room until we went to bed at about 10 at that age otherwise we woud have been up and down re-settling them all evening. They started to go upstairs with a bedtime routine at about 5months actual and took to it so much better - it saved a lot of stress all round.

The paeds always said to us to count development including sleep on their corrected age and only weaning on actual age.

She sure didn't get it this morning. That said, night-times are pretty good, we've had a few weeks of 7-6 with the odd break to feed around 2am, but on the whole she's pretty good at staying asleep. It's the naps I'm trying to crack, at the moment she'll get 2 x 20mins on a good day and ends up horribly grumpy after 3pm, hence PUPD..

I hear you re saving stress though - maybe I'll just carry on walking her to nap...

PUPD didn't work with DS, it just enraged him and upset me. I found using a naptime routine similar to bedtime but quicker (nappy change, quick feed, into grobag, into cot) worked as he realised what was going on. He self settled quite well though by that time through thumb sucking so i knew he could go to sleep by himself.

Ours finds slightly different ways to torture us (mainly through bad night sleep) - usually he settles ok for naps (with a dummy) but sometimes has an inexplicable meltdown. Sometimes though it's because I've misread the signs and he's simply not tired enough so I get him up and play for 10 mins or so which calms both of us down and then often he settles ok at the second attempt. But sometimes I just have to admit defeat and haul him around in the buggy. You're braver than me though - haven't tried pupd yet even though I think we'll need to do something like that soon. I suspect ds will be deeply unimpressed though if we do.