Advice please on Contented Little Baby routine

[susanAM]

I put my 5 week old breastfed baby daughter on this routine at 3 weeks because it made a lot of sense. She took to it very well.
At first I found it hard to get used to waking her at the end of naps ( she was always still asleep at the end of the suggested times) and at 10.30 pm - it went against the grain for me to do this but as I understood the theory I did it and it worked very well, until about two days ago, since when during her daytime naps despite being well fed, changed, in a dark room, correct number of blankets, swaddled etc. she does not sleep, but cries off and on, sometimes for the whole "nap".She will cry for minute, then be quiet for a minute or so, then cry again and so it goes on.
What do you advise me to do?
She feeds well and stays awake between naps. She adheres to the routine at nights. This morning she woke at 7 o'clock on the dot and I falsely thought we had cracked it!
So far I have stuck firm to the times suggested, and have not gone in for a peek or to pick her up.

That means for the last two days she has not really slept at all during the noon- 2pm period. Yesterday morning she did not sleep at her morning nap either.
Last night was the worst. Having barely slept all day I put her in bed at 7 pm and she cried on and off till 9pm till the crying got much worse. I went in to see her, she was lying in a cold and wet pool of sick.You can imagine how terrible I felt. I cuddled and fed her for half an hour( she fell asleep at the breast) and she slept till 2.30, fed for 20 mins and has now gone back to sleep.
I am completely okay about being firm in the early days if it is for the greater good for the baby but we all have our limits and I really don't think it is okay to let a baby cry as much as I have done over the past few days.
Please advise and let me know if this is a phase which is to be expected.

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Hello everyone.
It has taken me ages to get through all your remarks!
Baby is now fine and back in the routine. I think the growth spurt theory was probably correct . I fed her more, and her sleeping is fine now.
I notice another discussion has started about disagreeing with leaving babies to cry and it has turned into a kind if debate about Gina Fords methods.
Some who dislike her ideas ( I completely accept they are not everyones cup of tea)have said in support of their stance you just have to look at the questions on this website about her routines to see mums are getting stressed out about their baby not "getting it right".
I hope I did not give this impression. I was not feeling guilty or anything about keeping to the routines, I just wanted to hear from those who used them if the things we were going through were normal variations, and it seems they were. I was not particularly stressed out so please don't anyone who is wondering about the CLB books take my question as negative. I am very pleased with the advice in the books, and so are several people I know personally , as well as people here who I have just "met".There is certainly a lot of misunderstanding about what she says and I have noticed several inaccuracies in the remarks of some people who are opposed to her methods. It seems they have not read the book, which is understandable - no point spending time on something you don't like the general idea of,however if you are considering folowing the Ford method, please be guided by those who have read the book, and particularly if they have actually tried the routines.
However I have to say it is not a particularly easy book to follow, it does jump around a bit.
take a look at the reviews on amazon ( both the .com and the .co.uk sites) . Lots of reviews and again opinion is very polarised.

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Hi SusanAM - glad things are better for you now.
I think you raised an excellent point about the Ford debate. I agree with you but I tend to avoid such debates as like you I notice a lot of pre-concieved views on Gina Ford from people who may not have read her book.
Why can't people be supportive - why do we have to judge? What is right for one may not be for the other ! I would NEVER criticise someone using any sort of attachment parenting "method" even if they're not my cup of tea...

The Wise One

The subject of the difficulty in being able to obtain a contact list was touched on this thread. For anyone interested you can join and obtain a list of people on the CLBB contact sheet from Nicola Clark at [email protected].

I have been following Gina Ford's schedule for my 7 week old boy. We have a problem that he wakes every morning dead on 5:30am, having fed last at 2:30/3:00am. He isn't hungry, just seems to be over sleeping and wants to get up. It's like he's programmed himself to wake at this time and we need to re-programme him! We have tried re-settling him with a dummy and a re-swaddle, hoping that he'll go down again until his 7:00am feed, but this just doesn't seem to be working.

I wonder if anyone has experienced a similar problem and has some advice for me? As I said, my boy is 7 weeks old and weighs around 11lb 7oz. He is solely formula fed and is currently feeding 6 times a day at 07:00, 10:00, 14:00, 18:15, 22:30 and 02:30/03:00. He sleeps in his own room which we keep darkened.

Hope someone can help.

Hi SarahP, certainly sounds like he's getting enough feeds during the day, he's probably waking up at 5.30 am out of habit, does he actually cry if not maybe you could leave him for a short time to see if he will settle himself back until 7 ? My dd did this and it took two or three nights of leaving her for 5 - 10 minutes after which she stopped doing it.
Good luck. Let us know how you get on.

My now 11week old used to do the same at around this time. Being a bf baby I suspected that he ws genuinely hungry and used to offer him a feed, (all in the dark, or dim dawn light from the landing). He might take 5mins and then I'd put him back to bed. Being baby No2 I felt a little more confident about leaving him to resettle. It might take 5mins or 15mins on occassion but he'd then go through til 7am. As your baby is bottle fed, and doesn't appear hungry, I suppose you could offer water(cool, boiled) so as not to put him off his next feed. One thing that made a big difference for ds2 was ensuring that he was awake for longer during the day. (45mins at 9am, 2hrs at 12 and 15-20mins at 4.45pm) Not always easy with a sleepy baby. I found leaving ds2's nappy off in the afternoon really encouraged him to kick about more. And (forgive me all!!) the odd wet wipe around his "bits" often got those eyes open again!! During the warmer weather, being outside seemed to help with night time sleepiness too, all that fresh air! And he would be fascinated by the movt of the trees and the feeling of a gentle breeze.
Something that eventually prodded ds2 into sleeping til 7am without a nocturnal nosh (the past 4days, yippee! at 11weeks old) was bringing back his last feed half and hour and really making sure he was awake for it, ie 10-15mins of chat time before boob!
Hope that offers some help!

all babies, especially at this age, seem to wake around this time. Even Ms ford herself admits it. The thing is to train them to go back to sleep again. Make sure that you are not 'helping' your baby to sleep during other times i.e. dummy, cuddles, feeding , rocking etc. Put ds down drowsy but awake. He may cry for a bit but your actually helping him to learn how to settle himself - a vital thing that you will both be greatful for later. You know how long you can leave him for and still feel comfortable, so go with your instincts. It's probably better for both of you to do this with all daytime and first evening sleep first, no one wants a battle in the middle of the night! Also - get rid of ALL light. I have DOUBLE blackouts at the moment, I've had to hang the piece of blackout I bought for taking on holiday (vital!) over the normal blackout curtains - the window is large and east facing and all these sunny morning's don't help. Also, make sure he's warm enough - the last few nights have been quite chilly for summer. If he learns to suck his thumb that's a God send, too - helps him to re settle without the dummy in, dummy out routine. Finally, rest assured he will learn. 7 weeks is very young and this is sooo normal, my ds did the same. By 11 weeks he was snoozing through, though. Hurrah

As a new member of Mumsnet I am releived to see other people experiencing the exact same problems as me! My son is also 7wks old and doing the exact same things as SarahP. He is formula fed and has around 7 feeds a day (approx30-35-oz).
Wakes at 2.30am, has half bottle, back of til 4.30am, starts wriggling and groaning, v loudly and then feeds again at 5.30 when he drains 6oz, then dozes on and off til 7-8am when he feeds again at around 8.30. I marvel at how much milk he needs, esp as the packet advises 5 5oz feeds in 24 hrs and he is having 7!!! Is there light at the end of the tunnel, because I'm having hard time beleiving that he can drop two whole feeds a day, GF says this is normal, but I'm starting to doubt....The rest of the day goes Ok but as I have a three yr old who goes to playgroup at 9.30 and needs picking up at 12.30 (right in the middle of the recommeded nap times) I am having difficulty in keeping to the daily sleep times.
I'm changing the routine to fit in with us and the book but is not always possible.

The other problem is him sleeping in a totally dark room, he will settle himself in the day, anywhere, otherwise I would be chained to the house 24/7 and have no social life... Is there a happy medium?

Hi Girly, welcome to Mumsnet. I think you'll find that if you browse around some of the threads relating to routines/sleep for babies, you will see that over and over a lot of people say if you are following GF, cherry pick the bits that fit in with your routine and other bits that really work for you and don't worry too much about deviating a bit, after all if you're not happy and contented, then your baby won't be either
Looking back at the last 12 months (my dd will be one soon) I'd say that yes, following the GF routines, are very restrictive, there have been loads of times I have not gone out purely because it didn't fit in with dd's naps/feeds etc, but on balance I feel it has been well worth it as she has been a very happy and contented baby and I have become a happy and confident mum

Thanks for all the advice. I live in New Zealand and we're in winter now, so light getting into the room is not an issue. We have also been very strong and let him cry for up to 25 minutes when he wakes at 5:30, but he just doesn't re-settle. Take this morning for example - he awoke dead on 5:30am. We let him cry for 20 mins. During this time he stopped a couple of times but for one or two minutes only, then he was off again. Finally I went in, checked his nappy, reswaddled him firmly and popped his dummy in. We didn't hear from him again 'till 7am when he was due for his next feed. Thanks for the boiled water advice honeybunny - will try it tonight. I've been OK with keeping him awake during the day - he is now on 4.5 hours of napping during the day only, so you would think he'd be tired enough to sleep through from his 2:30/3:00am feed to his 7am feed. Re: props to help him get to sleep - we do use a dummy but try to limits its use to when nothing else will work. I'm really keen on getting him to learn to settle himself, hence leaving him to cry. We do keep his room warm, but not too warm as we're concerned about cot death and I understand too warm a room has some bearing on this? Anyway, will keep you posted on how things develop and hopefully will have some good news to report soon.