Misery Loves Company...nope. Still not sleeping.

[ElphabaTheGreen]

Long-term sleep deprivation getting you down?

Join us here for and plenty of sympathy.

Ride the mo-fo out or something must be done - the choice is yours.

And remember the First Rule of Sleep Club - do not mention that things are going well or you will PAY.

living that does sound tricky, does she nap in the buggy where she's strapped down and can't practice her standing? DD1 had one cot nap in her life, we went for buggy naps once she was bigger and then just parked up in the garden, hard if not a ground floor flat but could you park in a park/cafe/library once asleep?

elph so glad you're taking steps in the right direction, even if they're baby steps

attitude good luck with the next step and chocolate hope you're still holding it together!

Hello all, thanks so much for the replies. I am contending with DH and GPs who can't bear to hear her cry ever (sigh) so I spoke to DH about it last night and he did at least agree that something needs to be done. We kept her up as long as possible last night and she fell asleep on me around 8 and we then gave her a bottle at 10 and she went straight back down again. That seemed to work well - she was only up once around 2 and I managed to settle her, and then slept again till 5.30 (am I really celebrating that ). She's gone down now for a nap and fell asleep on me again although I didn't realise how tired she was! I really don't want to swap the bottle for being cuddled to sleep (although I do love it when she does that and mustn't project) so a new regime is going to begin from today.

I rearranged our room, got some dark sheets to drape over her cot and banished all toys and distractions from her sleeping area. I am going to feed her more solids during the day - maybe I am just not feeding her enough? She gets a big portion of mushed fruit and yogurt in the morning, some carrots or whatever I am eating in the afternoon (which is not much as she never seems to want solid food during the day) and then something like an Ella's Kitchen spaggy bol or broccoli and chicken around 6. We also went from 5 bottles to 4 but I am wondering if we need to increase it back again. The sleep was definitely deteriorating from December but it has become markedly worse since we dropped the bottle at the end of January. Although it could just be the teeth. I don't know, I am so exhausted I can't even talk properly and this is just a rambled blergh! Does anyone find i very hard to think straight and figure out stuff? Like our lives are in chaos because it is just one foot in front of another to keep going and we can't even seem to sit down and do basics as our brains are mush.

scotty she does sleep in the pram so long as it is in motion. Same as in the car. She will be out for the count, or so I think, and then as soon as I'm at a set of lights/the till she is immediately awake. So I just walk and walk sometimes it is helping with shifting the baby weight so shouldn't complain but god I am so tired. Does anyone just think, oh just to be able to sit for some peace and quiet rather than wander around all morning long?! It took me an hour to get her down yesterday afternoon and it was lots and lots of crying. It is like she completely resists sleep, she just does not want to sleep no matter what I do. I can see her fighting it.

MIL is taking her for a walk this afternoon so I can get some rest which is a huge help. I have bipolar and am recovering from PND so the lack of sleep is affecting me really badly. DH is normally fab but has had the flu and going back to work means less energy.

Sorry that was rather long. Any thoughts on food and sleep would be welcome :) I am slowly making my way through this and other sleep threads for inspiration. Oh tears. better go!

Do you mind if I join you?

I have an 8mo dd who has never slept well. Suffered badly with reflux and so to survive I co slept part of the night. Well fast forward a few months and she refuses the cot completely (but will nap in it in the day - for 40 minutes anyway) and sleeps attached to my boob all night. The sleep deprivation is starting to destroy me and I'm at a loss. She won't accept DH trying to settle her, it's me or she cries until she's sick. I don't think I have the stamina for cc as her cries escalate, she once screamed an entire 30 mile car journey because she was tired!!

Anyway sorry for long first post! Just wanted to join in for moral support if that's ok

Also who is Ann and how can I find her for baby witchery sleep advice?

Sorry also just to add as well as cot refusal she's also a master dummy and bottle refuser too, despite the fortune I've spent on trying to find one she likes!!

Hello again all...entering our third week of general sickness here...Has been a variety of things but now mainly snotty and out of sorts, plus very grumpy if she is prevented from walking around, even for meals! We saw every hour after 1am the other night which made for a fun day at work... We have, however, just about dropped co-sleeping and she is resettling in her cot. Purely accidental as we had visitors last weekend so the spare room was in use. Means she gets a few more minutes sleep when I first get up which is good for her, she used to wake with me when we were in the same bed.

living I'm no expert on bottles as mine is BF but you could always try reintroducing the extra one and see if it's accepted. Would help you rule out hunger at least. I know how you feel about peace and quiet though, at that age pretty much all naps at home were on me and I felt I was never getting anything done or time to myself.

Welcome Youcan, I feel your pain on the DH refusal; at 15 months my DD has settled to bed for him precisely once.

Good luck tonight with next steps Attitude.

Welcome to the new people.
Someone asked up the thread about telling the truth or not if folk ask about sleeping - my parents are convinced that most people lie and make things out to be better than they are as they say in their experience most of their friends grandchildren don't sleep that well and often end up in parents beds....
So either I associate with a load of lying mums or they are abnormally lucky! It gets me down a bit sometimes when everyone else's baby "settles themselves" and a bad night involving one wake up because of teeth is a Big Trauma. So sometimes in these situations rather than say "yep, still difficult, yep, still knackered, yep I know it'll be worse when the new baby arrives and no, I haven't worked out how to cosleep with a toddler and have a new baby, and no thanks, controlled crying doesn't seem the best thing when she will cry so much she sweats and retches"....I just say "oh, sleep is up and down, all par for the course I think" and only expand to those who I know "get it".

Honestly, it should be a rule of being a member of this thread that we shouldn't read other sleep posts, just did that whilst waiting for DD to settle.....some of them have totally unrealistic expectations and are looking for help on issues that would be to totally normal / a good night to most of us! I appreciate everyone needs somewhere to ask questions, but I've learnt my lesson now to stop reading them ;-)

Pleassssse can I join????

I've been looking for a thread like this. I needn't write my situation as its is literally and I mean literally word for word the same as youcan 8 mo had reflux, sleeps on the boob all night, bottle/dummy&dh refuser. I have a 3yo also!

This is Ann.

Through the Power of Ann, DH put DS2 to bed tonight (first time ever, and he was never able to put DS1 to bed while he was still BF), plus DS2 had a forty minute nap in his cot this morning, having fallen asleep there from completely wide awake . Still not much let up in the night wakings but we're plugging on, plugging on...

Hi, new chums! Pull up a

living One conclusion which we all seem to have come to on this thread(s) is that food/milk, or lack thereof, hasn't the slightest thing to do with our DCs' sleep, or lack thereof. You could fill both of mine up with Piriton-laced porridge at bedtime, after a day filled with large, stodgy meals, and DS2 would still be up every 1-2 hours for boob, just like his big brother was while still BF.

Yeah, lilipot. Never read other threads on the sleep board. You will snap and rant like I never have, oh no

Thanks Raspberry & Scotty, so far so good apparently only 10 mins of fussing then he went to sleep. He has not yet woken. Better than I could have hoped for but it's early days. I am celebrating with a small glass of

Glad Ann magic is working for you Elph.

Living I agree with Elph, food makes no difference to my Ds. He has had some great nights when he's eaten very little during the day and vice versa.

Lilipot that sounds like an excellent strategy regarding how much to tell people about how well or badly they're sleeping. Such a shame people can't be honest.

Welcome to all the new people. I hope the baby sleep gods are smiling on us all tonight.

Hello all new people! (I'm newish too so not sure why I'm introducing myself like an old hand).

Glad you are seeing some progress already with DS2 Elph. We had to postpone steps forward for a few days as DS was ill and refusing all solids - seemed a bit unfair on him to go a bit more hardline on night feeds, under the circumstances! Back on track now though and there's a certain amount of crying though not too much. I did let him get himself back to sleep after his first wakeup tonight just now - FIL is staying tonight and probably wondered why it was taking so long! (usually we just plug him with dummy, which keeps him quietish though he can still take ages to go back to sleep).

(Gah. Plug DS with dummy... realised that sounds like I meant we plugged FIL, though he is pretty quiet anyway).

raspberry that sounds miserable, i hope the bugs leave soon! There seem to be a lot of nasty ones about atm. living im dreading the in laws coming to stay for a week and the barage of advice, although so far its been restricted to "he should be sleeping more by now" as if we were prodding him through the night for our own entertainment! i know what you mean about trying to work things out with half a brain, my ds wasn't nearly so dependent on bfing to get to sleep until he started doing the nights and nights of hourly wake ups and i was too half asleep to try anything else because i knew bfing would put him back to sleep!
Well i made the mistake of telling my sister about improvements in ds' sleep over the past few days. He took forever to settle and has been up all the time since (i dont know how often, those are the worst nights...) On the plus side, he seems to have dropped the mother-radar that meant he woke up screaming whenever i left the bedroom so i had an (hour long) evening for the first time since he was born!
i dont generally lie about ds sleep, btw! My standard answer to 'does he sleep' is just to laugh, but i need to find a way to fend off the unwanted advice that gives me the rage!

Oh my, just had a look at Ann's webpage and wish I wasn't so bloody skint or we would definitely invest! Did I see that there are some good YouTube videos with Dr Harvey Karp who I read somewhere came highly recommended?

DD was a 30 hour labour and ventouse delivery and then in NICU for the first 10 days with Strep B. I never thought a difficult labour might contribute to sleep problems, how interesting. She naps/sleeps when that happens in her cot always now but not necessarily dropping off there. I think from the day we bought her home we have been approaching it wrong.

elfa raspberry and attitude thank you, you are 100% right about the food thing. We did 3 solid feeds yesterday, which a good half got fed to the dog, and bottle again at 10pm and guess what? Awake and standing up crying at 3.30 am today, bottle at 4.30 out of desperation as she was just howling and still very restless and not sleeping properly. And then I went to make myself a cup of tea to find that DH had drunk all the milk

Thank goodness I am not starving her which is what I was worried about

Although having read through the posts I feel lucky that she does use her dummy to settle herself if she wakes up in the night. Pleased for all of you who are making progress :)

dairy it's like being pregnant and just being a mother in general isn't it? People seem so free to give you rubbish and unnecessary advice, It has gotten so bad here that we are going to move back to our old flat complete with nightmare neighbours because I'd rather put up with them than MIL. You are very brave having them over to stay for a week! At least I have the option of leaving Hope it goes ok.

Thanks for all the welcome!

oneday hate to say it but so glad I'm not alone!

I only lie to one person about sheep because she's so smug about her own Ds sleep that I just can't talk to her about it. So bright and breezy 'sleep is fine' is as far as it goes.

We have had loads to contend with recently - chicken pox, two house move's, teeth, learning to crawl and stand so I get why she's more unsettled than normal (didn't think that was possible) but I'm getting to the point where I need to do something. I think I disturb her as much as she does me. If she would sleep without too many wake ups I'd continue co sleeping but it's relentless, i feel like I never get to fully fall asleep.

Agree not reading other sleep threads, I would literally kill love to have their problems!! So glad I found this thread.

Can I join please? I have a 7 month old that is ebf and needs my boob to get to sleep. And wakes frequently and then needs feeding to get back to sleep. But then wakes on being put in the cot. Etc etc. You get the idea I'm sure.

There's so much more I would like to vent about in regards to (lack of) sleep but for now I'd just like to say.... aarrrggggghhhhhhh Fed up and feel too tired to attempt to read the NCSS book, the irony!

living Harvey Karp is quite good, but it's really only for newborns, I think. It's about easing colic and getting through the fourth trimester. Ann does 'Happiest Baby' stuff, and I followed it on her recommendation with DS2. Didn't exactly have lasting effects, mind, since he still can't fecking sleep longer than two hours at a stretch, but there were bits that helped at the time. It was his stuff that convinced me to use a swaddle I'm starting to think DS2 will still need it when he goes off to uni. The very longest stretch of sleep he'll do without it is 20 minutes. Usually it's more like five minute bursts until the next startle wakes him up.

Also - yes, Ann is very much of the belief that birth and neo-natal experiences have a massive influence on the ability to sleep. She says she has a high proportion of clients who had some kind of birth trauma which may have affected the baby's ability to feel secure enough to sleep.

And this:

I think from the day we bought her home we have been approaching it wrong.

In the kindest and most supportive way possible - bullshit. BULLSHIT. Babies sleep or babies do not sleep. There is little - I would even say nothing - that you can do one way or t'other to influence that in the first four months (at least). Technically I did everything 'right' with DS2. Never fed to sleep, put him down 'sleepy but awake', spent every day of the first three months of his life kneeling in a blacked-out bedroom next to his cot trying to get him to nap with minimal help (without letting him get distressed, obvs), plus doing Ann's foundation work since he was days old every single day and he is still a shit, shit sleeper.

We'll have no self-flagellation over babies' sleep on this thread thanks

Fratercula Wow. You're onto getting tough with night feeding? DS2 is being such a stick in the mud, we're still treating a first stretch of sleep longer than 90 minutes as cause for celebration here. Ann's already conceded that the three weeks she originally suggested might have been optimistic and we'll probably have to tack on a few more weeks. I'm just glad he rejected the dummy himself a few weeks ago or we'd have to be getting rid of that as well as the swaddle, which would probably tack on another seven or eight months weeks.

I stopped reading the rest of the sleep board except when I am feeling particularly masochistic.

Finally shaken bugs here but yesterday I felt little bumps that I'm fairly sure are the beginning of molars - wasn't expecting them quite yet. I've also noticed that I'm feeling a lot more tired since stopping co-sleeping so a bit torn now!

Sounds like it's still tough there Elph. Hopefully it'll be one of those thing where you suddenly turn a corner and it massively improves.

Fratercula, how's it going with night feeds? I really need to get on top of this! Have been trying to resettle a milk scoffing DD since 4.45, but since it's now 6 and I have to get up in fifteen minutes I've given up and am on here!

Bad night here, 2.5 hours awake from 3 then she allowed me another hour asleep and then up for the day. Beautiful. BUT she's cutting her top two teeth so I suppose she can be forgiven. I really want to get on and try to move her into her cot but I don't feel it's fair at the minute. That and I'm not brave enough. So for now me and the rod I've made will be soldiering on.

Hi ladies,

Back in Sleep Hell here with molars starting to come through, after 3 weeks of Ann-induced all-night sleep bliss. I should have known it wouldn't last. I've been up for 2 hours + at a time every night for the last week, with a distressed toddler who can't get back to sleep at all now he no longer BFs at night. Wh? me?

Friend meanwhile has emailed me to say that her 7 week old is now 'finally' sleeping through the night....grrrr. Think she must be giving him formula at night, which seems to help, but still.

Someone mentioned the Happiest Baby. I bought the Harvey Karp DVD recently (to make a change from all the sleep books I own), because I know Ann rates him, and we have a new non-sleeper on the way soon, but I must say I just found him a bit creepy somehow. Just me?

Elph - interesting about DS2 being a bit resistant to Ann's strategies so far. I think you're right, sleepers are basically born not made. Unfortunately. He will crack it though!

Elph and Raspberry we are 'getting tough' with night feeding very gently... so gently in fact we haven't actually reduced them at all yet, just moved the timings a bit! Sorry your DS2 is not yet seeing the error of his ways. We're not really getting longer stretches at night here yet either, but DS is currently in his cot (well, half on the adjacent bed) and has been asleep for an hour and a half without me intervening - unheard of. (I'm sure it's a fluke). I even went and retrieved the tape measure from under his cot without him waking up, to measure up the width of our staircase for stairgates. Need to get on to this soon as I found him on the third step from the bottom this morning!

Hmmm. Wrote this earlier and he woke up before I pressed post, but then the afternoon took a dramatic turn... DS's textbook afternoon nap was not thanks to any magic improvement in his sleep but because he was ill... he had a temperature of 40 and suddenly became very sleepy and floppy. Called NHS direct after I couldn't get through to the GP and they sent an ambulance out! (Overreaction on their part and NO I DID NOT CALL AN AMBULANCE [waits to be shot down]) DS perked up remarkably quickly after a good dose of Calpol but who knows where we are now with sleep work...

living and Elph DS was a traumatic delivery too - crash CS under GA - so he certainly fits Ann's pattern.

Pusspuss He may well revert back to his sleepy ways once this bout is through. DS1 is great most of the time. You might think I've just cursed myself by saying that HOWEVER I'm saying it having just evicted him from our bed about ten minutes ago following a screamathon which inexplicably started about an hour after he went to sleep, so I figure I'm in credit.

To be fair to DS2, he's still making progress in the right direction and, at this point in time, we're not getting screaming. A little bit of occasional fussing, perhaps, but that's all. Added to which, he's also on the snotty, poorly bench at the moment, so no point in pushing things. Ann's just great at tailoring the programme in manageable chunks, acknowledging that (shock, horror!) many babies do need night feeds past the age of six months, and that sleep is a developmental milestone, that they can't be forced towards (not effectively anyway) by leaving them to scream for three days. I'm confident we'll get some meaningful improvement before we're done

Thanks Elph, I do hope you're right! Another unspeakable night here last night, with lots of screaming thrown in for good measure...

I bet Ann will do wonders with your DS2. Watching with interest to see how you all get on, because I'm going to be needing her help with no 2 before long. My DS1 was much older when she worked her magic on him, but I won't be waiting past 6 months next time!

Fratercula, I hope your DS is a bit better now, it's scary how fast they go down with no warning. I think 111 are known for their tendency to over-react on Mumsnet aren't they?

Puss, I do sympathise, we've been there many times with DD1 sleeping perfectly for a good stretch and then not sleeping at all for equally long. Teething is an absolute bastard.

Elph, is DS2 rolling? I wonder if he'd be happier sleeping on his side because he wouldn't startle so much. I know it's totally anti-SIDS advice but DD2 has never slept on her back! She just totally refused and would wake screaming from the deepest sleep no matter how expert the put down/roll/slide and as for trying to get her off from tired but awake - Ha bloody ha. We compromised on side sleeping until she could move herself around and since then she's slept on her front - now with knees up and bum in the air!

Still on mixed nights here. I'm still trying to shift the first feed forward in the hope of stopping the 4am waking which is the hardest to deal with (both because I'm shattered by then and because DD2 doesn't re-settle at all well at that time when she will earlier in the night). It's often the one that disturbs DD1 too.

So the last two mornings have been spent sitting by DD2s cot from 4 am until somewhere around 6 when if in lucky I'll get a quick snooze before DD1 is up. Coupled with at least one wake up before that from DD2 and a nightmare most nights from DD1 it's pretty tiring. But not as bad as it has been so that's got to count for something right?

Sadly DD2 also seems to have had a bit of a sleep regression in that she now won't settle on her own - which she had been cheerfully doing for flipping months! So I'm currently sat just outside her room where she can just see me. Hoping to fix this ASAP otherwise I don't see how night waking a are ever going to bloody improve!

Yeah, he rolls really well. I'm sure he probably is a side or front sleeper, as DS1 is. He's doing OK in a Swaddle Up which is certainly an improvement on the arms being pinned in a full swaddle and is easy enough for even cack-handed DH to get on. Ann and I are aiming to get a bit more consistency in certain parts of his sleep before we try getting rid again. He really does startle at the sound of a snail taking a deep breath, and even when he sleeps on me on his front he'll intermittently kick his legs, which would definitely wake him up if he didn't have a boob in his gob at the same time.

The penny has dropped with me finally that DS1 has been having night terrors. Not often, thank god, but once or twice a month he'll wake up and wail inconsolably as he did last night, without seeming to register or respond to my presence. I've decided he's got a shit sleep bingo card that he's trying to get ticked off

Hi all. I'm joining because I'm so tired my whole body hurts. I've tried to read this thread but my eyelids droop so hopefully can catch up on it if my DD decides to nap at some point today and I can grab 20 mins (haha who am I kidding?).