Giving people hope...

[ThePippy]

A thought occurred to me today that I hadn't visited the sleep section for a while, which is because my DS is finally getting the knack of sleep, and that actually most people probably also stop checking in here when things start to go well and therefore there are lots of people with "issues" and not many with positive stories to help others see that there is hope....

So my son is now 18 months old and is finally sleeping through the night for about a month now (ok, maybe still a few issues when he's ill, but I can deal with that) from 7pm to 7am, and on a few glorious occasions until as late as 9am!!

This boy has been through EVERY sleep issue/regression I think exists, from feeding every 2hrs through the night for first 3 months, to a huge 4m regression which led to the 4am-5.30am "party" then up for the day at 6am, right through to an early waking habit at 5.30am (once the 4am partying had stopped). It was really tough and contributed to the PND that hit me at 5m and led me to take medication and attending talking therapy.

We did exactly the same with him as we had with my daughter who is a couple of years older, and she had slept through from 2 months old!

I tried many things with my son, and they may have improved him to the "best he could be" but never to the point of him being a great sleeper. Then about a month ago, almost overnight, and oddly after a really bad spell of separation anxiety (which had meant hovering in his doorway for ages at bedtime to avoid screaming and vomiting) he just got it and stopped waking for milk. I am still a little stunned, and know it may sadly pass into another phase, but I just wanted to share this as I think sometimes parents feel like they are somehow doing something wrong, or not trying hard enough at sleep training, but my son proved to me that these little people are just not ready sometimes.

Thanks! That is lovely of you.

Can I ask how did he go to sleep?

(Still rocking to sleep 16 month old twins who ALSO wake in the night and are up at 6)

I have never rocked or fed him to sleep. We kind of liked the baby whisperer approach with both of ours and made a big effort to not form sleep associations from actually quite young, which was tough at the start but once they were used to it we found it helped massively. Oddly enough other than a brief spell where we had to so gradual retreat, he has mostly been really good at going off to sleep from awake on his own - it was the one part of his sleep that was never a problem - just the night wakings that seemed hard to break.

I feel for you with twins and still having sleep issues, I can't even begin to imagine how hard that must be. Hold on to the knowledge that it will end though!

That's lovely of you to post with hope. Sleep deprivation is very difficult to deal with long term and I have felt myself slip towards Pnd with my dd now 9mo. We have made a tonne of progress but she still wakes 2-3 times a night ( from 9-10 recently needing boob everytime!!)

There have been times I wonder if she will ever sleep through. My mum tells me my brother was 3 before he even did it sometimes!

It's great to hear from someone who's cracked it!

I have another success story although am angst to tell it in case it all goes wrong. I was a frequent flyer here up until 3 weeks ago. DS was a great sleeper from 7 weeks, would sleep from 10pm until 8am every night and then we hit 4-5 months and all went wrong. He started waking repeatedly in the night for hours at a time. He was swaddled which was another problem. He began resisting going to sleep at night, required feeding to sleep and rocking to sleep, then started refusing to nap. He began waking early ready to start the day at 5am so we have had every issue in the book. We have used a very gentle gradual retreat method to help him go to sleep on his own and I took away his morning and afternoon bottles (gradually) which seem to have helped him eat more and fill up more and the result is he goes to bed every night at 7.30/8pm. He goes into his cot awake, goes to sleep on his own, sleeps all night and wakes around 7.30/8am. We have had a few random 9am even 10am miracle sleeps. He is one year old and a very intelligent little boy to learn all of this so hold out hope it can all change very quickly.