Gradual retreat - how to do it in a tiny bedroom & other questions

[TurtlesMama]

Hi

Am looking for some tips on gradual retreat (gradual withdrawal) please. Dd is 10.5 mo and won't self settle. At present she is rocked for naps, bedtime and nightwakings. The wakings have reached an unbearable level in terms of frequency & length and am ridiculously overtired. Something has to change.

So for anyone who has done it, can you help with my queries? And any cosufferers - please jump in for a bit of coduffering & support

So:

• her room is tiny. Anyone successfully done this? How do you avoid being sat in the door by day4?!
• standing up - how many times do you lie them back down? Does it make a difference if they are crying or not?
• do you pretty much ignore and be v boring, or go all out with patting, singing etc?
• hysterics - what do you do when they won't stop crying? Dd gets hysterical fast if I don't pick her up and is horrid
• naps vs bedtime - did you tackle at once or separately? Dd is bad napper so overtired by bedtime anyway. Am concerned that if I do g r for naps too at same time she will refuse to nap making bedtime even worse

Thanks v much. Am dreading the inevitable crying but something has to change soon (she says cuddlng dd on her zillionth waking while typing one handed

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Hey, I'm not sure of the answers to your questions but the book the no cry sleep solution is brilliant

Seconded the no cry sleep solution or search for aha parenting or anything by babycalm. X

This was me this time last year and I really was at the end of my tether. DS was 7.5 months at the time and I was having exactly the same issues as you. I was totally exhausted and it was making me ill. I had already tried the no cry sleep solution and it didn't work at all.

I was reading a thread on here and someone recommended Andrea Grace's Gentle Sleep Solutions. It worked wonders for us. She gives some general advice but there are case studies where she explains what she did with that particular child. I found one that was similar to my situation and followed it and it did work. It was a gradual retreat method that took about a week and each night bedtime was taking a couple of hours but after that DS was self settling and sleeping through. He is now a really good sleeper although naps can still be a bit of a problem.

DS's room is tiny and by day 4 you were supposed to potter around in the bedroom while he settled and I couldn't do this so I would put his clothes away then sort some washing on the landing where he could see me and keep popping back into his room. He started standing up in his cot and there was a strategy for dealing with that as well which worked after a few days. He also used to get hysterical but there were tips on how to comfort him without going back to the rocking to sleep.

Sorry - bit of an epic post but I honestly thought I had a child who would never sleep by himself and I was amazed by how well the techniques worked.

Hi. Combined experience from DD (trained at 7.5m, now 4 and sleeps brilliantly) and DS (just turned 6m, tonight will be night 5 of training and going fairly well).

I started off humming Kum ba yah, which I'd used before whem feeding to sleep so hopefully it's a trigger. Slowly decrease volume and length of humming along with rest of retreat.

However hard they cried, didn't pick up. They always worked through it in the end.

Concentrated on bedtime first and to be honest neber fully sorted naps with DD but that's a finite problem as they don't need naps forever.

Very much support the recommendation for Andrea Grace.

I just lay DD down as often as it took. I didn't force it though - only if she showed signs of wanting to go down again (although she could pull up she couldn't get down on her own).

Hi

Soooo sorry for not replying sooner, slightly mad fortnight here! Thank you all so much for the advice.

crumpet & hobble thanks for recommendation for ncss. Have tried it recently and though I liked the idea of it, we couldn't get it to work for us.

Rebecca & mrsmalcolm - bizarrely I had just bought Andrea grace before I read your posts and I loved it! We are on night5 tonight. Not yet sleeping through but the change from a week or two back is just amazing so far. Am hoping its not a fluke or short lived! She even stood up crying and got herself back to sleep so fast last night that I hadn't even staggered out of bed (and am used to doing that pretty quick!) Rebecca thanks for the tips on pottering, our plan had night4 as pottering too and struggled a bit as room so small so will try going to the landing too. What did you do about night wakings, did you have any? Am finding that if she does need me in the night she is pretty full on upset although the last couple of nights its been fairly quick, so I have needed to sit with my hands on her to calm her. Did you do this, or do the pottering at night too? Mrsmalcolm, am finding that laying her down makes her more upset, so am just patting the mattress til she does it herself for now.

Thanks again for your help, would definitely be interested in tips on how to deal with nightwakings and how long you had these for once you had started.

Thanks!!

Marking my place as experiencing this myself atm!