Will it EVER get better on its own?

[peardroplets]

Just had another night of hourly wake ups with my eight month old. I bf her back to sleep and usually give in to cosleeping at some point in the night. Some nights we go to two hourly, and even a magical three hourly stretch on rare occasions and that is cause for celebration indeed. But the average is about every 90 minutes and this has been going on pretty much since she left the sleepy newborn phase.

I'm close to tears all the time through tiredness but really don't want to do any kind of sleep training. The closest I get is is try the Pantley pull off thing, which occasionally works but doesn't seem to have any effect on wakings.

When she was like this at four months I comforted myself with the thought that it will get better by six months, but that hasn't happened and here we are at eight months with pretty much zero progress.

Please someone tell me that it does get better naturally or am I holding on to false hope....If it does get better - when???? xxx

I felt exactly the same as you. Had the worlds worst non-sleeping baby. Think 40 minutes max at a time day or night. To be honest I just did whatever I had to to get through it. Fed to sleep constantly. Co-slept. I didn't ever try to force the issue. One day for us it did get miraculously better all by itself. 10.5 months old he crawled that day (he hadn't even rolled over before then and would just sit in one spot). That night he slept 12 hours straight and has been a good sleeper ever since apart from when ill or teething.

Obviously I can't promise the same will happen for you as all babies are different. I went back to work at 12 months and had thought that if things hadn't changed by 11.5 months that I would try to actually DO something to change things. Probably by first of all trying not to feed to sleep anymore and try gradual retreat.

I remember exactly how it felt and never knowing whether to do anything or wait it out. Once I set myself a deadline for just waiting I relaxed about it a lot more.

It will eventually but not until she can fall asleep without assistance. This could be well into toddlerhood if you just wait which many people do. There are lots of ways, gentle or not so gentle, that you could encourage her to self-soothe if you wish then you may find she sleeps a bit longer.
If she eats well during the day she unlikely needs that many milk feeds at night

Both my dc have been the same. DD2 is 10m now and does about 2-3 hours.

For dd1, starting nursery made a huge difference. She ate more and was knackered. So I'm hoping the same thing happens for dd2.

Just to contradict waiting, dd2 can and does self settle, I don't feed her to sleep for naps or bedtime. It made fuck all difference to her sleep and I'm really bitter about it.

With dd1 we started offering water at night because we knew she had eaten enough during the day. I'm not sure what we will do with dd2 because she won't take a bottle so we can't have that certainty.

My crap sleeper (DS) did magically get better at sleeping himself...but he was 2.5 yrs old! (sorry)

It does get better eventually. But not until 18 months old for DS and 3years old for DD, sorry!!

My 3 DC all became excellent sleepers on their own (from waking constantly in the night). With each of them it only happened around the age of 3, though (and only became secure around the age of 4. I sympathise with the tiredness - I had 7 years of little sleep and was a bit of a zombie (especially the year when DC3 was a newborn and DCs 1 and 2 still waking several times a night). I found co-sleeping was the only way to survive, but that's a decision only you can make (and take care to do it safely).

IMO some DC just need parental reassurance throughout the night, and you have to find a way that all of you can live with. Barring special needs, it does sort itself out in the end, but potentially years not weeks.

By the way, if you are desperate the Millpond Clinic has a very good reputation for sorting out sleep 'problems' (I think the problem is more to do with the way that we like to sleep in modern life which conflicts with evolutionary needs of babies and small children but that's another story).

It will get better on its own but that can take months or years. There are things you can do to change this If you are ready to (gentle and less gentle). You have an object permanence issue so baby is waking up after every sleep cycle as Things are not the same as when she went to sleep.
www.preciouslittlesleep.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-sleeping-through-the-night-part-i/
Jo Frost has a suggested check and return strategy, there is a thread on here called "what worked for us" which is a speeded up gradual retreat.
Or you can wait. (I couldn't. I was losing the plot)

Yes, sleep training failed on my oldest (who obviously shared a non sleep gene with doozy's child.
It did get better. I'm still fantasying about dragging him out of bed come teanagedom

When my DD1 was 6 months old, I'd had enough! My DH works away for long stretches at a time and I was exhausted. I watched The Baby Whisperer's TV series (on YouTube) for tips.

I decided to stop feeding her between 10pm and 6am. I had a pen and paper/clock by my bed and wrote down the times she woke and what happened. Each time she woke, I offered her a drink of water incase she was thirsty, and soothed/cuddled/rocked her. After 15 mins she fell back asleep. If I hadn't recorded the time I'd have thought it was an hour! Did this every time she woke. The next night was better, the next better again. Then she started sleeping from 10-6am every night herself. She was so much happier after a full night's sleep!

She also slept much better in her own room. Both of us are very light sleepers and kept waking each other up.

Thank you people. Makes such difference to hear from those who have been in the same boat. I am so tired I have no energy for sleep training even if we wanted to. I tried PUPD and DH settling but she just went hysterical and we gave up. I guess I just need a miracle! She's not crawling yet so maybe just maybe like Doozy's baby she will start sleeping better then ....live in hope x

It will get better on its own, but it might take a long time. Mine slept through the whole night from around two and a half to three years. Isis (Infant Sleep Infirmation Source, not Islamic State) have really good information about infant sleep.

My DS was like your DD. He is 11mo now and about 6 weeks ago I was at total breaking point. I was crying from sheer exhaustion and we had tried lots of gentle techniques with little to no results. I said to DP that I thought we would have to try something else like controlled crying (which I swore I wouldn't ever do!) because I just couldn't cope anymore. That night DS slept 10 hours with absolutely no changes in behaviour from us. We still co-sleep and obviously have good and bad nights but it's sooo much better. He just started to put himself back to sleep one day.

Somethjng to try is feeding only after eg 2hrs of sleep. And settle her somehow (anyway you can!) for the in between wakings . Then gradually increase the gap between feeds. Or every other wake up or something. Anything to break the feed to sleep every time cycle. I had to do vigour rocking while doing a huge bouncy walk around the room.

Mine also started sleeping through the night when she started crawling. Up until then she was waking at least twice a night, sometimes up to 5 times. I'd done some very gentle sleep training (to teach her to self-settle, and while that freed me up from length bedtime routine it made no difference to her sleeping through) and also put limits on how much I fed at night (sent DH in to settle her at other times - bwah ha ha).

A few days after she started crawling she slept through 7.30-7 and basically did from then on, bar the odd sleep regression, etc. She was 8.5 mo at the time am keeping fingers crossed the same happens for her non-sleeping baby brother, although crawling is a long way off for him