Somebody give me hope...please?!

[LadySnapcase]

Anyone out there who had a horrendous sleeper at 5/6 months who suddenly and miraculously started sleeping through by about 7/8? (Months, not years!). Getting a touch desperate...we thought he was improving at the beginning of January when we had 5 nights of good sleep, but it seems to have gone tits up again Please tell me good things!

Is he still sleeping in your room? DD went from 4x wakes a night to sleeping through within a week when we moved her. Very very much worth a try if it applies to you!

Yes! However..dare i say this. Both my children slept beautifully through the night within ten days of changing to a bottle. At 5 months with one and 8 months with the other. I was co slept a lot through exhaustion prior to this and they just formed habits of wanting waking for a feed and cuddle...I would probably do the same if I had the choice! Not sure if that is at all helpful to your situation...

Actually, yes! Lots of hard work teaching the little blighter to self-settle, but he's 8 months next week and now only wakes up once a night, unless he's teething, and actually takes proper naps. I did have to stick to a consistent routine, and stop feeding him to sleep, but it worked. (Thank God, because I was cracking up with 3-4 wake ups a night, and two other children to look after!)So, it can happen! Good luck!

Crap, he's already ff and in his own room...

We don't feed to sleep, but he does need rocking/bouncing hello back, meet rod

Elephant How did you teach him to self settle please?

Basically we used the tips from No Cry Sleep Solution to teach him to self settle (mostly boils down to putting him down awake. Though actually we did/do have to leave him to grumble for a few minutes while he's settling down).
I gradually got him used to different sleep cues, so I'd put on his musical mobile, darken his room, feed him to sleep in there. Then gradually stopped feeding him to sleep but kept doing the rest of it, just putting him down when nearly asleep.
If you're rocking him I'd try something similar. Once he could go to sleep on his own I tackled naps & tried to stop feeding him to sleep during his bazillion wake ups.
One interesting thing I read said that once they nail the concept of object permanence, they'll freak out if, when they wake up, they're not in the same circumstances as when they went to sleep. This makes intuitive sense to me & once we sorted that out DS's sleep got way better. Anyway sorry for the essay and good luck.

OP I'm hoping the same thing... DD is 6.5 mo, still in our room and wakes at least 2 or 3 times per night, I am pretty sure from habit rather than hunger as it's always roughly at the same times. She can't self settle at any point and needs rocking or feeding to sleep. Magic solutions have so far failed to materialise!

Elephant how much time and perseverance did it take to make NCSS work? I've failed miserably with it so far. We've got a consistent bedtime routine and I've worked on sleep cues but every time I put her down 'sleepy but awake' she gets very upset very fast. BF is then the only way to calm her. I dread being on this position when I go back to work in 3 months' time but I can't see it changing on its own.

Something I have to remind myself from time to time, overtired baby does not sleep well at night ! My second had to cope with the first child routine and it was too much, she did not sleep/nap well on the move even if it was in the most comfy carrycot/pushchair. Once we tried to stick on her nap schedule and get her to sleep/nap in her cot, nights were less chaotic. We are now housebound, either DH or me for her nap but it won't last forever, 4 years max, I keep telling myself :) there is hope OP !

In brief: Baby Whisperer - pick-up put-down - worked a treat for DS at 8 months (from waking every couple of hours to bf, to sleeping from 8pm to 5am). Read up about it and be consistent.

Thanks Elephant. I need to introduce some sleep cues I think.

Biscuit We tried pu/pd for around a week, by which point he was more hysterical than when we started and I was seriously worried we were giving him a phobia of his cot! Not a success unfortunately

He tends to have 4 naps a day, usually one of 90 min in the morning and the others around 45 each (around 1pm and 4pm). Unfortunately his last one is then 7pm! We put him to bed then but he always wakes 45 min later and won't go back to sleep until 9ish. We've tried keeping him asleep but it just results in screaming and losing even more of our evening, so decided to just go with it. Unless anyone has any baby sleeping tablets advice?

LadySnapcase our DS's sound very similar. Mines 5 months and like yours for naps during the day right down to the napping at 7pm for 45mins! What is that all about? Makes putting a bedtime routine in place very difficult. So this week we are trying to give him a reduced feed at 5.30ish, then keep him awake and do bedtime routine from 6.30ish with the aim of giving him a full bottle at 7-7.30 then down for the night. Simples!

Well the reduced feed went ok, the keeping him awake bit not so good, so he fell asleep from 7-7.45 and started taking his bottle at 8pm, can't wait to see what the rest of the night brings......

We too like you were going with the flow but I couldn't hack it anymore! Have been reading about jo tantums spaced soothing so am going to try him in his own room tomorrow night and give the spaced soothing a go! What's the worst that could happen?

They do sound similar jaysbird, good luck tonight! Let us know how it goes... Ds had had his late nap and is now rolling around giggling. We had a lovely routine going for a while, bath- story-bottle-bed for about 7, but every time he was awake again by 8. Tried putting him down earlier but he just doesn't seem to think it's bedtime until after 9...

Artemis: NCSS worked for me and took 2 months at age 6-8 months.

Thanks Rhododendron. I've probably given up on it too soon - after a couple of weeks of no improvement and some nights that were worse than ever I've lapsed into old habits. Will get the book back out and have another go...

Artemis: "a couple of weeks of no improvement" Hmm. I did see improvement week by week, which encouraged me to keep going. But all babies are different!!

DD found it easiest to fall asleep at bedtime; the most helpful tip I read was that this makes it the best time to work on sleep training (I was thinking it would be the least useful!). And that a strong bedtime routine really helps explain to a pre-verbal baby that it's sleep time.

I decided the key problem with DD was reliance on bf to sleep. So I fed her expressed bm in a bottle at bedtime instead of a direct bf. This meant pumping every day, which was a nightmare but not a patch on the sleep deprivation. At first I still bf'ed back to sleep in the night, but once she'd cracked bedtime I coaxed her down to a bottle of ebm in the night, then a bottle of water, then rocking, then nothing.

I let her cry for a few minutes here and there, but I never pushed her too hard and at each stage if she really insisted then I gave her what she wanted. But week by week, she accepted less - result! :)

Ok so some of the 'plan' worked, some not so much! The good news is giving him a reduced feed at 5.30 pm and a full btl a couple of hours later has not affected how he is overnight, so still woke at 11pm, 1am, 3am and 5am.

I cannot however keep him awake after 6.45pm his eyes are rolling in his head but he sleeps at this time and wakes around an hour later screaming for a feed. So getting a set bedtime routine is still a work in progress........

I think DD was around 7/8 months when everything fell into place although she was easier to get on a 4hourly feed routine, so she took 4 feeds a day at DS's age. DS is more on a 31/2hourly feed and wants 5, hence the half feed to try and make it work! Like I said work in progress, but will report back if I manage to figure it all out!

Hope things are going well with you LadySnapcase

Hope you have some luck soon jaybird! DS has always been a grazer, he eats little and often through the day. It's been rubbish for any kind of routine! Doesn't seem hungry when he wakes in the night though, think it's just habit now tbh.

Well last night DS did his usual 7pm nap and 9pm bed, flaked out mid bottle. Then he woke at 1.30 as usual, wouldn't be settled in the cot so I picked him up and he quietened down but was still awake, after about 10 minutes I gave in through sheer knackeredness and put him down drowsy, which is usually a recipe for screaming, but he actually writhed around a bit and must have gone to sleep as next thing I knew it was 7am and he was still asleep! He woke up about 7.30. I am under no illusions whatsoever that this is likely to continue, but it did give me some hope that it might not last forever!

Tonight he was knackered at 6.30pm so napped until 7.15, then was actually crying with tiredness about 8.15 so put him down, took about 30 minutes to get him settled and he's still asleep now. Wondering if he's having a growth spurt, he's necked a ton of milk today and had some serious naps. So will see what tonight brings!

Well Lady how did last night go?

Not great, unfortunately! He was up at 11.30pm, just briefly till I'd put his dummy back in, and then 1.30 until 3 with a bout of 'argh I'm being murdered' screaming. After that he did sleep till 7 though...

Today he has been a bugger to get down for naps and was awake from 5pm till 8pm, tried to get him down earlier as he was clearly tired but he wouldn't have it. So another totally random night ahead I'm sure. Would love a bit of consistency!

Well pretty crap here, we are back to going with the flow too! Maybe it's boys! DS hasn't settled well in his own cot but hoping tonight will be the night he decides it's a good idea...........

Here's hoping! I have two friends with boys, both allegedly sleep 12 hours a night

I fear one day they're going to find me curled up in a corner with 'this too shall pass' scrawled on every wall, a la The Shining...

We ended up co sleeping last night through sheer exhaustion on my part. DS woke every hour from 10pm -2am, when I lifted him into spare bed with me. I don't see co sleeping as a solution either as I get very little sleep doing it . But yes I fear I have that many rods for my back I should take up fishing

Hope last night was better for you. We often used to co-sleep from around 4am, but since he went into his own room he won't actually settle with us, so we've pretty much lost that weapon in our sleep arsenal! Kind of relieved, I didn't like doing it either.

Well I don't know if it will depress you or give you some hope, but DS has had two pretty good nights. The first one he went down at 8.30 and didn't wake until 5.30, at which point he was up for the day. DH got up with him but I woke up too and was so excited he'd slept through that I couldn't get back to sleep! Last night he went down at 6.45 (he was exhausted but wouldn't settle downstairs so thought I'd chance the cot) and he woke at 7.45, but resettled, then 10.45 for about 20 mins, then slept till 5.30 again. I spent an hour getting him back down (think he had trapped wind) and he slept till 7.30am, so not too bad overall. Definitely an improvement over waking at 1.30 and 4! Can't seriously imagine it's anything other than a blip though, we've been here before and it lasted 5 nights before normal service resumed. But here's hoping...