7 MO waking every 2 hours in the night.

[nello]

Feeling too tired to even write this post!

DS, 7MO who slept through the night until 4 months sleep is getting worse and worse. Last night went to bed at 7pm and then woke at 11, 1,3,5 and was ready to start the day. Not sure what to try, but have another LO to look after, aged 3 and this sleep deprivation is not making me a very good daytime mummy :(

DS has two naps in the day - 1/2 - 1 hour in the morning about 2.5 hours after waking and a longer nap of about 2 hours after lunch. He eats three good meals a day, plus 5 breastfeeds.

I have no idea what to try. He is currently in a bedside co-sleeper but often ends up in bed with us which doesn't help him particularly. Wondering if we should move him to his own bedroom.

Any ideas?

[RooTwo]

So interesting reading this and your experiences nello and NancyDroop ... I am on day 3 of gradual retreat with 11 month DD but finding it hard and constantly veering in my mind between which is the best route to take ... DH thinks we should do CC but I don't feel that I can quite face it, but having said that I'm wondering if me being in the room with DD doing the gradual withdrawal thing is not the best for her - just knowing that I'm there - I wonder if that just makes it harder for her. She takes a really long time to settle, kept waking last night and I basically had to sleep on the floor beside her cot holding her hand on and off. Wondering if we should just bite the bullet and let her cry a little more. I'm so tired, I don't feel I can go on like this much longer!

[Schweetheart]

Still loads of wakings here (in Fact just feeding dd2 back to sleep now after she went down at about 7:30)

I'm going to try taking a gentler approach and cuddle her back to sleep for this first waking and go from there. I can't do controlled crying yet.

[moomin35]

Still waking in the night here :-(
Goes to sleep fine around 8pm but then wakes around midnight and cries and I end up with him downstairs, I can't imagine he'd sleep if i didn't hold him and calm him as he gets in a real tiz when he wakes

[NancyDroop]

How are the babies getting on? Anyone had any luck with some sleep training?

[NancyDroop]

I don't know about accreditations etc, our consultant was a personal recommdation (Nicola Watson, very knowledgable and lovely sleep consultant).

For night wakings it was more of the same (this was our sleep plan, from memory): wait 3 mins, go in pat, shush/put in dummy/turn on side (whatever your soothing technique is), then quickly leave, wait a few mins, repeat.

Now my little one might wake, give a whine, then just fall asleep: self settling woo!

We were also advised to make mornings quite different: turn on the light/open the curtains, whatever and announce: Good Morning! so the baby learns that when you come in without turning the light on, without talking to them then it's not morning and they shouldn't wake up.

[nello]

nancy - not at all know-it-all! Very helpful. What was the consultants advise when the baby wakes in the night? Thanks

[firsttimemumma2014]

Nancy where did you find your consultant? Internet search or was it a recommendation? Sounds like you found someone who really knows their stuff, but I've heard other reports from friends that aren't as positive and they felt consultant was a waste of money. Do sleep consultants need to be members of an institute/ have an accreditation or anything?

[shushpenfold]

Sorry - another vote for controlled crying here....works miracles for both parent and child. SO lovely when after a very few nights (3 in each case with each of my 3 children) they can self settle happily and even cuter when they start to wave night night at you

[NancyDroop]

So just had a read about gradual retreat. I didn't really sit in the room as I felt it was worse that she could see me but that I wouldn't go to her. So I would go wait outside the door, and go in every few minutes. Yes, controlled crying. One reason I didn't want to do controlled crying when I contacted the sleep consultant is that I thought it would be a permanent way for her to fall asleep And that seemed cruel. But the consultant persuaded me and we then experienced that this only lasted 2-3 nights and now she likes to go into her cot: sleep time!

[NancyDroop]

Hope I'm not being a know-it-all - we just had such a dramatic improvement that I want to share the sleep vibes

[nello]

Nancy Can I ask why your sleep consultant chose this method rather than gradual retreat? Are they that different? Is your method called controlled crying?

[nello]

Loving all this talk - taking it all in…tired this evening after a busy day. Kids are in bed and i'm having a cuppa and off to bed. No boobie to sleep this evening and a little bit of crying. Picked him up once and did do some sushing - think he was really over tired as got him to bed a little too late, so tomorrow will get him to be earlier and hopefully he won't get as worked up.

:) Thankful for having a thread here to chat all this through - would love it if people kept the chatting up

[Schweetheart]

A better nights sleep will definitely make me feel better in the days!!!

I'll talk to DH later and formulate a plan. Thank you.

[NancyDroop]

I think her being in her own room is key (or at least not being able to see you). When DD can see me / hear me she doesn't self settle. So Christmas was a struggle, staying in one room when visiting parents.

Hopefully you won't have to get out of bed much more than a coyple of nights.

And I think a better nights sleep might help the days? Try it that way round?

[Schweetheart]

That's really helpful nancy, thank you. I know what we need to do so I guess it's just a case of manning up to actually do it.

I kind of want to sort our day times first as I know being overtired from bad naps doesn't help all the night wakings.

I read somewhere about the difference between normal stress and toxic stress. Ie getting used to something bit resisting it is normal stress, being repeatedly shouted at is toxic stress. That makes me rationalize some crying.

We did gradual retreat with dd1 at about 7.5m when she went into her own room for getting her to go down, but tbh once she was asleep she didn't wake much. I don't know if I want to put dd2 in her own room when she's up 3/4/5/6 times

[NancyDroop]

Sorry for typos

[NancyDroop]

The sleep consultant we used cost £80 for a phone consultation/advice or £200 for that consultation plus sleep plan and on call advice for 6 weeks (which we went for).

Was it worth it? Totally Yes best monetly ever spent! However, in one way the advice is so simple I'd say save yourself the money and just try the things I wrote above (and I'm happy to be your cheerleader!).

The reason it was so worth it for us is that we didn't know what advice to take so by getting a sleep consultant we were in a way just saying: ok we will take her advice now. We will trust it and follow it because we don't know what else to do.

My DH and I are both super gentle with DD so we went to our consultant saying: please no crying, we can't do that! But she convinced (very gently) to try a little bit of crying and BAM! the whole situatio was transformed.

Like I said above I now feel bad for enabling DD's fragmented sleep. A couple of hoeling sessions for now unbroken sleep was the right thing for us.

[NancyDroop]

nello congratulations for getting some sleep! Well done for breaking the boob cycle, that's very important. The first few times you do something different like that the will cry bloody outrage but our surprise was how quickly that stopped. A couple of nights in my LO would start to howl the second i put her in the cot (rather than being comforted to sleep on the boob, our previous technique) but then quite quickly stop and just go to sleep. It was magic. It's like she just understood: oh yeh this is where I sleep now. I'm going to do that.

So the principles we followed are

• no more bf'ing to sleep
  
• instead wind them and put them in the cot
  
• they will howl at this change of routine so go in every 3 mins, pat them once, say night night, walk out. They will eventually fall asleep.
  
• the first few times they will howl for a while but then the surprising thing (and merciful) thing was how quickly it changed.
  

We now put her to bed with a cuudle and kiss, put her in the cot, say night night and walk out. If she wakes in the night, which is rare, we help her turn on her side, say night night and walk out (unless she's pooed, but that is a totally different tale of woe .)

What I now realise is that the picking up, shushing, bf'ing, etc etc was actually keeping her awake when she wanted to sleep. I think she thought she needed to go through all that before being allowed to go back to sleep somehow.

[Schweetheart]

Also nancy - do you think the sleep consultant was worth it? How much do they cost?!

[Schweetheart]

I feel your pain too - we're in exactly the same situation. Dd1 is 3 and dd2 is 6m and has never slept through and last night was probably up every hour or so. She's a nap-resister too.

Thing is know that as soon as she can self-settle it'll make huge improvements - but - I'm too tired to teach her to do so. She won't settle/calm if DH goes in, she's a proper booby monster and that's the only thing that soothes her. During the day I rock/walk her to sleep in the buggy or go for a drive... But even that us becoming less effective. Gaaaaaaah.

salmon interesting you get your ds to bed at 6pm as dd2 has, ever since she was tiny, generally been totally over it at 6pm. But how on earth do you do dinner and bath etc for your toddler if you're getting the baby to bed that early?

[nello]

I got some sleep last night!! :) He slept from 7.30 - 11.30 (feed) and then until 4.50 (feed) and then 6am wake up. That is a great night for us so feeling much better. Amazing how one night of sleep can make you feel so much better after 2 weeks of hardly any!

What I did differently was a combination of your suggestions - I breastfed him before his story and putting him in his sleep bag so he fell asleep on my boob but then i woke him up to burp him and read and get him in sleep bag. He was very cross with me and cried a lot, but I stayed with him shushing him and patting him and picked him up a couple of times as he got really worked up but kept putting him down. Eventually i patted him to sleep rather than fed him to sleep….I wanted to not pat him, but i had to. Not sure if it was that that made hum sleep better or not, but will try again with it tonight.

Beachgirl - DD doesn't get woken by DS as her room quite far away from ours and he doesn't cry loudly. Also we live abroad and have noisy air conditioning which buffers noise between bedrooms. Sorry - not much help.

[NancyDroop]

Let us know how you get on nello. If trying the non pick up method it is good to start a night where your DP can share the load and some zombie parenting the next day. 2-3 nights in and I'm sure it will be a lot better.

Fingers crossed and good luck!

[nello]

Thanks all. Your messages have actually made me cry! Thanks for the support. Going to get a cup of tea and read them all through again.

[SpawningSalmon]

I could have written your post. Right down to the toddler and cot side bed. I am finding that the best thing for us is to get DS (8 months today!) to bed at 6pm on the dot. Any later and he wakes up loads. We missed it on Saturday by 20 mins and he woke 6 times between 6:30 and 5:15 when he got up for the day. Last night, bed at 6 and he woke twice - 10 and 3 (still bfing at these times) and got up a bit before 7. It has taken me a while to realise that he needs to go down so early as you assume an earlier bedtime means earlier rising (and he has been waking early a lot- horrible, just horrible) but it really does seem to help. Thank god, as I have been on MY KNEES with tiredness.
Also, my DS does self settle so that isn't a factor for us.
Hope things improve for you soon.

[NancyDroop]

If you need help justifying controlled crying to yourself - there has been FAR LESS crying overall. My LO woke up crying every 1-2 hours. A week after some controlled cryong she was sleeping through. I think 2-3 nights of crying, going in and out of her room every 3-5 mins until she settled was totally worth it for both of us