No Cry Sleep Solution - anyone want to join in, or tips from your experiences with it?

[TurtlesMama]

My 9 mo dd is a bad sleeper. We had a brief lovely period of all night sleep between 3 & 4 mths and it has been downhill from there! She does self settle occasionally but otherwise its cuddles/rocking and she will only fall asleep with me or dh in the room. I refuse to try cc/CIO and having spent a miserable 10 days doing pupd from the baby whisperer (cue a lot of screaming from her for hours at night and a very miserable mama too) have decided to try the no cry sleep solution by Elizabeth Pantley. Briefly dabbled in it when she was tiny to help with naps, but this time I'm doing it properly, sleep logs, sleep plan and all

Is there anyone else out there also interested in giving it a go? It would be great to have a support thread going - all my RL baby friends allegedly have babies who sleep lol so a bit of help would make all the difference!

Thanks :-)

[MNPlovespumpkincarving]

A thought for those babies that wake within minutes of being put down, you are a 37' heat source, bed is maybe 22', try wrapping baby before putting down so to slow down the heat loss and lessen the shock.

[Mrs81]

MNP- that makes sense. We use a baby sleeping bag at night and he's in it from the last feed before bed. He stays cosy when put down and less likely to ping awake again.

Yesterday DS managed a grand total of 12.5hrs sleeping including naps. Longest nap was 40mins. Tomorrow (today!) 's mission is for a longer nap as well as a couple of shorter ones.

[Heathbaby]

I might buy the book too. My little girl is 18 weeks today and for the past two weeks, her sleep has regressed so she's now waking to feed every two hours (she was doing regular stints of 5 and occasionally going longer). I have no idea what the change is about - could it be the 4 month growth spurt and simple hunger (these growth spurts seem constant!)? She doesn't nap in the day unless in the sling on me - I need to persevere more with the buggy/ cot, but unlike many babies she doesn't seem to get massively grumpy without naps. I'm trying to get her into a rhythm in the daytime though. At night I've been laying her down in the Moses basket after a bath, bf, little song, and seeing if she self settles (I thought it would be good to teach her his rather than putting her down asleep). She generally does but this often requires a pick up or two and takes around an hour. Recently she hasn't tended to be asleep much before 9pm - should I continue? It's good to read about others' experiences and tricks!

[TurtlesMama]

Morning all, hi & welclme newbies is fab to have so many people joining in!

So how were your nights?

Ours was marginally better tho was still up with her I think 5times after 11pm, she was a monster this morn and re-woke about 3 times v early morn before finally staying in bed til 720 - lie in woo!

Settling is v mixed, took ages to get her down last night and just now for nap 1. Does anyone else have issues with very wriggly and biting lo's?! I pick her up if she is crying (or gnawing the wood off her cot, teething rails are on order lol) but she often squirms like anything, bites my neck/shoulder/arm etc but often when I put her down she then cries to be picked up again. Any thoughts?!

live ; lol you're welcome, I was becoming a sleep bore in RL so I figured it was more productive to do it here . Did u find the resettling for naps was worth doing? I know what you mean on rocking, I have a bad back anyway and it was one of the main reasons I decided we had to find a way for her to sleep better! Lol and I also have that app! Altho I do find that I try to put all night grumps down to it, which doesn't work so well when she is meant to be between fussy phases!! Earlier bedtime has def helped us, she didn't confuse it with naps and at the very least it has allowed her to claw back some sleep after weeks of over tiredness and given me and dh some of our evening (& sanity) back!

tinier hi! It sounds like u did a fab job with teaching her to settle, hopefully this is just a temporary blip (teeth/growth etc) & then she will remember how to do it. I do think its easier next time, have now done the teaching to settle twice with unsuccessful pupd (& this is third time, now with ncss) & altho she is nowhere near doing it 100% of the time she does often resettle herself during napz and the night.

more than sounds really tough would definitely recommend the book, its on kindle too. We are doing the bit with the 6 stage plan to self settle as we don't have feed to sleep issues as she is bottle fed, but as faith says the book does cover that too - and I think is probably a bit more geared to bf than ff actually so u should find it really helpful.

mrs81 glad you got some sleep. Yes I know, feels like it will take ages to get there.

neatfreak the book recommends a piece of paper and pencil by your bedside. I unrealistically thought I'd be able to remember all the times the next morning. Nope! Next log I will be using the paper!! There should really be an app for this...

pumpkin good idea, I think sometimes dd does wake from cold. But how do u know how many layers to do? Her room tends to drop about 3 degrees overnight, so I dress her towards the cooler end of that (going by the grobag guidance) but am always worried she will overheat in the warmer part of the night. At the mo she is in 2.5tog plus long or short vest and long sleeve top with integral mittens

faith sorry nw = night wakings, I have spent too long on sleep forums recently!! Glad naps are improving, ours have been unusually good for a couple of days too despite the rough nights. Hope it continues!!

Have good days all

[NeatFreak]

My dd had an ok night. Slept in her cot from 6 til 10 then til nearly 1 (unheard of) then co slept with a couple of wakenings. She's had two short naps in the Pram today and is now asleep on my lap after bf.

There is indeed an app for night wakings, think it's called baby sleep tracker but I never remember to do it!

[tinierclanger]

There are quite a few apps you can use for sleep tracking, there's a free one from What to Expect. I've got a paid for one called Sleep Timer which you can leave running and it listens for night wakings. Not using it ATM though as I have white noise playing all night which confuses it!

DD demanded to be fed again before going into cot and then zonked out for nearly 3 hours, then fed again. DH went in to settle her a couple times after that as she was restless and I ended up taking her into bed with me at 11. I thinks she didn't actually feed that much after that, didn't log it though as we were both dopey. I'll have to try logging that second part of the night.

She had a good nap this morning - fell asleep in pram but stayed asleep back home for nearly an hour and has just woken up from about another hour asleep in sling. She's trying to crawl and it's really wearing her out!

[Liveinthepresent]

Hi OP.
Yes I think the effort with naps paid off as now I pretty often am waking DS from these sleeps and there a far fewer short naps which used to throw the day off course and make for a very cranky baby.
Now I just constantly worry he is sleeping too much in the day!

Yes I use a Baby tracker app too. I bought a top of the range one called Baby Connect which is great as I track jabs and stuff there as well ( as my sleep deprived memory is useless!) it has these lovely graphs you can view - so you can see as things improve - or in our case worsen!

Do you think it would be useful if we all posted our DCs ages and current sleep log / what techniques we are currently working on?

I am finding the support from others saying early bedtime has helped very reassuring
I just have no clue how I will move from the phase one techniques to not picking him up.. But am going to keep positive.
I am now trying to resist rocking him in the buggy for daytime naps and this seems doable as long as I don't let him get over tired.

Heathbaby that sounds like you are definitely on the right track so I would keep going it will get quicker and easier over time.
Your DD is almost same age as my DS and we have had similar regression - have you heard of the 4 month sleep regression - it's common you will find many posts on it if you aren't familiar. Be warned you might really depress yourself though!

neatfreak that sounds very promising - what techniques are you working on?

Another sleep bore long post!

[FaithTheVampireSlayer]

I'm currently sitting in the car with DD asleep in the back! Today's naps have been 20 minutes on me (fed to sleep), 20 minutes in cot (fed to sleep). With the latter I tried to get in and resettle her, fed her again, got her back down but then bang! Wide awake. Will persevere. So fail safe of napping in the car to ensure enough sleep today.

DD is 6 1/2 months old. Never slept well, always cried when put down. We do struggle with reflux so got into a habit of feeding to sleep, me holding her upright for 30 minutes so she didn't throw up then putting her down fast asleep.

Have got a great bedtime routine in place and have been doing Pantley pull off for several weeks. Last night tried CC I had some misgivings but she cried for a total of 6 minutes (2 minutes, reassured, 4 minutes reassured) and eventually fell asleep on her own. Tried PUPD, ended up with a hysterical baby!

Turtles yes I feed for NW! My hope is to get the bedtime self-settling cracked, then try to get her to the point where she'll have a proper nap in the cot, then stop NW feeding....

[Brugmansia]

Hello again, I've now ordered the book so should arrive in the next couple of days.

In some ways DS has improved a lot over the past few months of his own accord. When he was tiny he was a real nap refuser and would only feed to sleep, then sleep on me and for short bursts. Around 5-6 months he did start napping a bit better and now does 2 okish naps a day on a fairly regular basis of around 45mins-1 hour long each which are in his cot if we're at home. He started doing this when he was sitting well and starting to try to move. Hopefully that will give some hope to those with little ones who are struggling during the day. I can't remember exactly what I did to get to this point, but I do recall it started to become more obvious that he was tired and he needed a nap so I could act. I would still feed to sleep but it also became easier to transfer him then to the cot.

At night he generally goes down to sleep in his cot ok around 7 and has done from around 5 months. He's still mostly fed to sleep but sometimes I can do the put him down sleepy but awake and he then gets himself to sleep. Other times though I pop him down looking on the brink of sleep and then he instantly pings awake pulls himself up and starts bouncing in his cot.

It's the persistent night waking I need to deal with. He's still waking several times a night, generally every 2-3 hours and wanting to feed. He's started to become harder recently to settle back down and has also begun waking properly earlier. I have currently given up on the night weaning attempt as I think it wound him up and made things worse. I'm hoping this book has some other ideas of how to get him to wake less overnight.

[Liveinthepresent]

How is everyone - it's very quiet.
I am at an all time low- been getting DS down eventually at bedtime and think this bit is starting to feel normal.
But the night wakings are more frequent - apart from one merciful 3 hour stretch last night he was up at least every hour. He did settle back quite quickly but he seems to be increasingly reliant on me rocking him back to sleep. Struggling to keep the faith a bit here really.

Any words of wisdom?

[TurtlesMama]

Hi all

Thanks for all the apps tips!

Sorry for quiet weekend, mad couple of days. Dd still poorly so being quite low key on the techniques at the mo, but bizarrely (other than frequency of night wakings) she is napping and settling better with rocking than when I was teaching her to self settle using pupd. And am way less stressed as I don't feel this huge pressure anymore to 'fix' her sleep. She seems happier too. Am still shattered tho so its full steam ahead once she is better.

Live - fab idea to collect the stats together. So my dd is 9mths, we are using the 6stage plan to teach self settling and so far are on stage 1 (rocking then putting down as soon as asleep) Have done one log so far (Monday) - 4 nw's, longest span asleep 2h 25m, total asleep 9h 40m, plus 1hr napping = 10h40m, 3h20m too little for her age.

This has about a 50/50 success rate at the mo, rest of the time she wakes immediately and cries, so I hold her for a bit longer til she is more asleep. On the whole this takes around 10mins tho we have had a few 20-30mins. Naps often take longer than night wakings, and I start with self settling for naps/bedtimes until she wants to be picked up.

How do everyone else's stats look?

live - am sorry you're feeling down with the sleep at the moment. Hourly is horrific, we have had some of that recently. The 4mth regression is horrid esp as they are often sleeping well before that so you think the newborn tiredness is over! Any chance it could be teeth or otherwise under the weather? Is he doing anything new development wise? I think my dd is waking cold sometimes so am starting to dress her warmer even tho she is then too warm when I put her down. Its so hard to know what to do isn't it, 2/3 weeks ago I refused to rock her but that led to being up for 2hrs sometimes for a night waking and naps were so stressful and often aborted as we were still trying 30/45min later. Am not sure I agree with the books that rocking means they never resettle themselves - I think doing something like the 6stage plan gets them there slowly and that's fine. It is hard but it sounds like you are doing a fab job, and with naps and early bedtime sorted am sure the rest will follow. My dd is def sleeping better with an early bedtime And is easier to settle too.

heath hi! I dont think it can be a bad idea to teach her to settle like that as long as she is not unhappy. If she is going to sleep late could you try and pull your routine forward? It is hard at first but a few weeks ago I pulled our dinner forward to 5pm, bath 530, then bottle at 6 with a few stories after and then settling. Often she is down by 630 which was unheard of a few weeks back. We don't always stick to those times but we are usually within 30mins.

faith that sounds like a good order to attack it in!! And yep we were like that with pupd, I think it doesnt work for everyone and some babies just get really cross/confused with it and don't understand why they are going up and down all the time!

brug sounds like you are in a similar position to us with nals and bedtime not too bad, it nw's still an issue. I don't bf so don't know how many night feeds are normal at that age, but is he eating well with solids during the day too (if old enuf)? Even tho my dd is ff she often has one night feed sometimes 2, and eats like a horse in the day too!!

Look forward to seeing your updates :-)

[TurtlesMama]

Anyone else awake?! Have bn up pretty much constantly since 2330. Just doing the zillionth rock after trying nappy bottle & now 3.5 tog sleeping bag. Arggbh....

[Brugmansia]

Hello, I'm awake. DS hasn't been too bad. He woke about 2.15 and fed to sleep. Woke again dorky after 3 and fed asleep again. He's still asleep, the problem is in now not able to get back to sleep and have been awake for over 2 hours.

Turtles, sounds like we are in a similar boat. DS is 9 months too. He's also a big eater and always has been.

[Brugmansia]

And he's now awake again.

[Heathbaby]

Hi Turtlesmama, poor you - hang on in there!!! The only comfort seems to me to be that these babies are constantly changing their patterns and no stage (good or bad) lasts forever. You are doing really well. Sleep deprivation is awful and so frustrating. I'm doing the third feed of the night - not too bad, but I have absolutely no idea what feeding/ routine/ sort of day precedes a good night of sleep versus frequent wakenings. Development maybe... Hope you're asleep now.

[Mrs81]

oh dear...sympathies to being wide awake whilst babies sleep

I find the ever-changing "norm" with my DS's patterns hard to keep up with sometimes. At the moment (20wks) we seem to need quietening down shortly after 5pm and he's asleep shortly after 7. I've given up on dream feeding and am being led by him for feeds.

One challenge we have is that he's refluxy and 99% of time won't sleep in his cot for longer than 20-30mins, even with all the propping up tricks. He will sleep in a beanbag though (its quite big and there's no risk of him rolling!) so I'm going with that for now

Daytime napping remains the ultimate challenge though!

[Mrs81]

ps: what's the 6 stage self settling plan thing?

[TurtlesMama]

Hi!

Awh thanks for the middle of night support She finally went down at 5am (that was the 5th nw] then up bright as a button at 630. Urgh!! I wonder if she was cold, her room dropped to 18 which isn't that bad but it felt a lot cooler to me. She was in enuf clothes for that temp but I wonder if she just feels the cold more. Ended up putting her in the v thick sleeping bag at 4am and that helped. Will have to think of more layers for tonight...!

Yes I agree constantly changing patterns v hard. I still don't get the rationship between day and night either, I know good naps are meant to help but she napped v well yesterday and was then a nightmare overnight. I am giving in and starting to nap when she does. Seems mad with a 9mo but still. Not sure how I will cope back at work!!!

Awh that's horrid not being asleep when they are, I get that sometimes too. So frustrating.

Mrs81 - reflux too! Poor you! Have heard that they do grow out of that quite fast so fingers crossed. 6stage plan is in the ncss book p147 in mine. Its where you teach them to settle by gradually putting down more awake.

Right off for my nap! Hope u have good days all!

[EmmaLL25]

Have read most of book and I'm not sure if I'm heartened or discouraged that we are doing most things already!

We have just switched to two naps rather than 3 with a slightly earlier bedtime (about 6/6.30). With a lot of effort we can stretch a pram nap to 1hr 20min in morning and another hour in afternoon.

We are using the pull off method which I think is helping. Always feed and put down in cot. If he stirs too much I'll then feed lying down. Will keep at this until he can consistently be moved to cot and not need feeding again.

Dad is doing first one or two night wakings and a cuddle and ssssh usually works.

We are using side sleeper cot so trying to move myself out the way after feeding back to sleep, still using pull off method in night.

We are using white noise too because our building/flat is noisey and I think that's contributing to wake ups. On Saturday night he woke after an hour but then did 3 hrs and we could hear him stir and resettle. He then did a couple more stints of 2.5hrs.

Last night though lots of wakings due to fireworks and a cough he's developed. Still think we got a few 2hr stints though.

So it seems it'll be a long slow process! After reading the book though I took some comfort in that our wee guy not nearly as much a wakener as some bubs. I keep telling hubs that because I'm sure he thinks it can't get any worse!

[Brugmansia]

Book has arrived. I'm currently trying to have a nap. DS should be napping too. Unfortunately he had just dropped off in his pram when we got home 20 mins ago and woke as I brought him into the house. Refreshed by his 5 minutes of sleep he is now bouncing up and down manically in his cot (which is still in our room)

[Liveinthepresent]

Good to know you are all still there even if sadly it's in the middle of the night. Am off to sleep now for as long as he lets me - I wish everyone sleep and will try to send a sensible update tomorrow.

[tinierclanger]

I have some encouraging news to share. DD had a couple of 4 hour blocks of sleep last night and the night before! Not sure whether this is

• have been putting her in a cosier (velour) sleepsuit
• she's finally starting to crack crawling
• I've started blasting the white noise a lot louder
• if she wakes between 9ish and 11ish I send DH in instead of me
• just because!

Anyway I feel a lot better and she's doing it herself without any crying, pupd stuff etc.

[TurtlesMama]

Hi all

Tinier - fab news!! What have you done to get there? Its fab that she is going longer. Is she self settling to sleep?

Live - did u have a better night?

Brig - glad the book has arrived! I know, how frustrating, the bouncing and grinning at nap time/4am is I think harder to deal with than crying!!!

So we had a crappy night again. Up at 2300, 2330 (I added a layer at that point and really hoped that would do the trick) and then again for 90mins from 310. She settled countless times on me but wouldn't be put down whether I did it immediately or waited til she was really asleep so I gave up and did a bottle - cue the 4am grinning/playtime face when it was done! Finally went back off, was hoping for a couple of hours but she was up for the day at 540 :-( (which may have been the boiler coming on, must sort that). So really don't know whats going on. Am hoping that after the medz finish she will be more settled, am sure the e numbers aren't helping as she has been a bit hyper this week.

How did the rest of you get on?

PS dh beat a quick path to getting head bitten off this morn when he implied that dropping naps would sort her night sleep. Grrrrrr!!Anyone else have similarly helpful comments from DPS lol?!!

[TurtlesMama]

PS Emma yes I felt the same that we were doing a lot of it already and still had problems. It sounds like you're doing brilliantly though. There are still a few things I haven't tried in the books so hope yet. And yr right, there's a lot of much worse cases. Still would be nice to get some sleep though

[tinierclanger]

Well, she did more or less self settle at bedtime last night. She insisted on being fed after her bath again but then finished the feed without quite falling asleep. She went into her cot awake, cried, I picked her up and cuddled her until she was happy, put her back in and kept my hands on her for a minute or so and she went to sleep calmly.

We put her on her side to sleep and if she stays on her side initially she'll usually settle happily, although the past couple of weeks I do need to keep a hand on her while she drifts off. Still feeding back to sleep for most wake ups though.