To those who've done CC

[Writerwannabe83]

What led you to do it, how did you get through it and most importantly, did it work?

It's not been a very successful day in terms of lengths of naps and I'm feeling a bit guilty now because he's been crying for ages It's really horrible to listen to

We tried CC at 9m and 12m and didn't get anywhere (45 minutes of crying) and did it again at 18m which worked brilliantly in terms of reducing bedtime from 3 hours to half an hour but he's still up in the night most nights. Usually looking for a dummy! So getting rid of that is probably the next step.

He fell asleep tonight after 45m. He wasn't continually crying during that time as he'd go quiet for minutes on end and look asleep (on the monitor) but then suddenly spring back to life. Once he did fall asleep it only lasted for 35 minutes before he woke and started crying again. Due to how utterly exhausted he is I decided to just rock him back to sleep - he so desperately needs sleep that it took priority and couldn't just leave him to cry it out and exhaust himself even further. Within a few minutes of me rocking him he was fast asleep so I popped him back in his cot.

I have so many issues to tackle with his sleeping: unable to self settle, nap refusal, feeding during the night and co-sleeping. It just seems to overwhelming to tackle them all job one go and also unfair to DS especially as he's been put in his nursery for thr first time. It just seems like a lot of change in one go.

I'm thinking of doing CC in the night to get him to sleep but then if he wakes during the night I can rock him back off but not feed him like I usually do.

A few people have told me to address night time self settling before attempting daytime naps so maybe I shod focus on that. I feel like I'm trying to change everything in one go where maybe I should be tackling each problem one at a time.

By the time he woke up at 20.30 he hadn't even had 8 hours sleep since midnight last night because of how CC has impacted on his naps today. It can't be right that a baby has only had 8 hours sleep in the last 20?! That's why I rocked him back to sleep - because he needs rest, not a lesson in self settling.

It's hard work. I'm going to persevere as I know the problems have to be addressed but I think I need to be more realistic and not try and tackle everything in one swoop.

I did it after a year of sleepless nights and DD (now 4) waking up to 6 times a night every night and needing rocked back to sleep each time.
I left her for 1 minute, went in then left 2 minutes, then 3 ...
she finally fell asleep at 30-odd minutes.
I found it really hard but it only took one night.
She still woke up once or twice most nights until she was 3 but I'd just have to go into the room, reassure her and leave instead of spending ages rocking her back to sleep.

Oh gosh Writer, it sounds like you're really going through it.

Without sounding odd, isn't how to tackle things and in what order what your sleep consultant is meant to have worked out with you? Why are you now having to decide this stuff on your own?

I hope you get a better night. DS has been up every hour or so for the last couple of nights and I'm close to breaking myself.

Me and the Skeep Lady discussed what approaches I could take but I told her that I wanted to go cold turkey on everything and just go full force with making all the changes and so we based a plan around that. The plan included me not starting the CC until next weekend so I could first spend a week implementing the changes to his daily schedule and bedtime routine.

At 5am this morning though, after dealing with a crying DS for over an hour, I hit breaking point and told DH that we should go full steam ahead! It's only after seeing how things have gone today that I realise I was probably being a bit optimistic.

Ah, I see. I can totally understand that. Is it worth going back to Plan A?

I think going back to Plan A is best

On the plus side though he slept for 9hr and 15m straight!!!!

Plan A sounds good, sleeping for over 9 hours sounds fantastic -and heartening to know he can do it. It must be very hard to approach all of the sleep issues in one go and if you've formulated a plan with the sleep lady just go with that.
Ds only woke once last night, at 2am and went back to sleep with sshh patting for 10 minutes. He was absolutely knackered after the screamathon the night before so I'm not getting any hopes up! He still wakes up at 5 every day at which point I bring him into bed with me in an attempt to eek out another hour or so- I should probably stop this as it must confuse him but I can't face the crying or starting the day at 5am!

Naps have been much better today!!

For his first nap he only grizzled for six minutes before falling asleep and them slept for 1hr 20m

He's currently having his second nap where he fell asleep after only 5 minutes of grizzling/crying. He's been asleep for almost 15 minutes so far and I'm hoping he will stay asleep until about 5pm