Controlled Chaos....

[marz]

Hi..I am desperate for help......
My 8month old daughter slept through (6-7hrs) from about 3 months to five months. Then she started waking up till last week was waking every 2hrs. (before we go to bed though, often she will wake every 20mins and need to be fed again.....till we get into bed and then it goes to every 2 hrs) When she wakes....she wants to be fed back to sleep...although sometimes she drops off within a minute. However, she will not be patted or talked back to sleep....she will eventually scream if not picked up. So last Thursday we tried CC. comforting every 5 mins. She cried for an hr and eventually was talked to sleep by my husband. she woke once and was fed to sleep,. then woke, as normal, about 5.30 am. Friday night she cried for about 1/2 hr and then slept.....woke 20mins later. She then woke every 2 hrs.
Third night, she cried for 1& 1/2 hrs and then seemed to stop crying but was panting and shaking in her cot.....she could hardly breathe and I "lay my body" over her, and talked her to sleep. However, she woke about 20 mins later and I picked her up...I was really shaken by her reaction. I know babes get angry but this felt as if she was in shock/panic....and I felt that thiswas beyond anger.....so we stopped the CC and since then now, she is fed to sleep and will scream as soon as she is put into her cot....so I have put her back in bed with us and last night she cried every time I took my nipple out of her mouth...it is like she has just gone to the extreme of not sleeping on her own, she woke every 20 mins without fail too.....as you can imagine I am really very desperate for solutions, help..I am SO tired and losing the plot.....please someone give me some advice!!
Many thanks, Marz

Marz - can you tell us about her feeding and her daytime naps? Mopsy x

and does she have a dummy? my dd wouldn't have one (they were gently offered) until she was about your dd's age...then my mum gave her one at night to help her sleep when she was looking after her and hey-presto..it's now automatically linked with bedtime (no dummies during the day) and helped no end in establishing her sleeping routine ie getting to sleep on her own, getting back to sleep if she woke during the night. I used to feel quite snobby about them, but now just use them whenever they're needed.

God poor you. We went through some of this and I know how exhauting it is. The problem is that kids need to learn to go to sleep on their own and if she's been used so being fed/rocked/cuddled to sleep then she hasn't learnt this yet. I'm afraid it's probably a case of toughing it out although I know how hard it is to listen to them screaming. You can sit with her and talk/ sing whatever but shouldn't pick her up and shouldn't feed her to sleep. The problem is if she is always feed or cuddled to sleep then this is the only way she knows how to get there, so when she wakes on her own, 20 minutes or a couple of hours later, she doesn't know how to get back to sleep by herself and so cries. We went through cc with our daughter, going back every 5, then 10 minutes etc. She screamed blue murder for 2-3 hours for several nights but she did eventually get the hang of it, and now she rarely wakes us in the night. It's exhausting but worth it - that first ight when they finally stop making a fuss and sleep through is miraculous. Also she doesn't need night feeds by now so if she does wake up shouting to be fed give her water. She'll soon realise that if she's not going to get a cuddle and sh'es not going to get milk, then it's not worth making a fuss for.
Good luck.

Marz - do you have any family members willing to help? My sister had a problem one of her babies aged 10 months who would not sleep at night. She was absolutely exhausted because she would also not eat any solids and fed all day. I took her for three nights with my sister coming to breastfeed her in the morning and evening and I looked after her the rest of the day and night. She ate food because there was nothing else and enjoyed eating custard with her fingers.
When she realised she was only getting me the first night she only cried two or three times. I cuddled her and she went back to sleep. She didn't get up the next night.

No matter how often I read these threads I cannot get to like the concept of controlled crying. Your baby sounds as though she has been traumatised and is associating bed with being left to scream. I breastfed all 4 babies to sleep, took them into bed, fed them when they cried and they all slept through the night ranging from 12 weeks to 8 months.

On the few bad nights i did have when I knew they weren't hungry, I rocked them in the pram, or dh did. The youngest is now 8 and they all sleep in their own beds except for the odd nightmare.

Hope this phase passes soon. Hope you have someone to help.

Hi all, thankyou so much for your responses, I know it sounds silly but I am really comforted by them!!
Dummy...tried her various times on it...she refused.. but maybe will get one for her today to try again...she had colic AND reflux for first five months and is generally a very sensitive baby...which is why I am reluctant to let her cry it out anymore, she has cried so much in her life already....and also..now has had stranger anxiety for the past 3 months already...will not go to anyone except her father or me, even though she will smile and chat to people from on my lap.
Food...she is on solids, 2-3 meals a day, breakfast is not every day yet..I am going slowly on that one. She was exclusively b/f till just under 6 mnths, and now has eaten all food I have offered her, she has slowly increased amounts of this. Eats lunch 11.30-1, generally at about 12 though, and dinner is at 5pm . After dinner she has a bath about 6pm and then feeds to sleep, (or at least used to!) In the past 6 weeks she has often not fed to sleep but will be very ratty, so I will leave her for 5 mins to cry in her cot and then come back and feed her and that is when she will sleep.
Daytime naps. Well.....thay are very irregular, cannot get her to nap except by falling asleep in my arms feeding....and then if I put her down, 8/10 times she will wake. Or...if she does sleep, she will wake after 20 mins.
The other thing is that she has never liked the car seat, or even the pushchair, particularly. The car seat she has cried in from day 1. Now, she will not cry for the first 5-10 mins in the car or pushchair and then will start crying and not stop.....very very rarely falls asleep in either of them, so I have lifted her out of the pushchair and carried her, and as for the car seat, I avoid going too far with her or have to prepare for the screaming.....!
I think my problem is that after having put up with her crying for so many months , I find it so hard now...and will quite happily admit that I probably do whatever is possible to stop the crying, I can cope with "spoiling" her more than I can cope with hearing that piercing cry...don't get me wrong, I just feel so worn down by it all though.
As for family ...well...I had an argument with my mother when she was 6 weeks old (she was telling me to leave her to scream in her cot...) and since then she has decided to "disown" me...husbands family are all out of London and MIL is actually going to try and come down in the next few weeks to try helping out....although DD will not go to her...
Anyway....I am going to the HV today to DEMAND info about a sleep clinic or something....will see how that goes....afraid I have not had very positive experiences with the medical help so far......
thankyou again all for the messages...
Marz

Do I dare suggest that you read Gina Ford ? Not saying you need to do her routines but I do know mums who once they had read the book understood how some things they did one way were actually probably not "the best" way to do it.... and making snall changes really helped.
You can borrow it at the library.

Get on Amazon and order Richard Ferber's ''Solve your child's sleep problems'' It is almost certainly the book your HV will ''prescribe'' ( I have overheard mine doing so and have cousins up north whose hv did so for her). I think it is seen as 'the' tome on such matters - and tho it's very boring and detailed it does really help you to understand about babies' sleep and what you need to do to help.

Poor you! About dummies- our dd refuses those nice orthodontic ones and will only take the big, old-fashioned cherry teat ones made by Tommee Tippee. I don't know if this is okay or a Bad Idea but they reduce the hours of crying for us. Good luck!

I agree with bayleaf about richard ferber. Even if you don't follow the book to the letter it's worth reading to understand about what the waking and sleeping is all about. I did the ferber version of controlled crying initially (it only took 2 nights) and now periodically do my own version of it (involves more comforting and cuddling) when my son's sleep pattern has been disrupted by a cold or a trip abroad. I found that using my husband to put my son to sleep instead of me to break a bad routine was VERY helpful. Also, I was initially quite worried about my son's fitful tossing and turning and sitting up in bed while asleep and squishing himself into a corner of the cot until I realized that my husband does exactly the same thing (except that he squishes me off the bed) and it doesn't seem to keep him from being rested in the morning. Good luck! It does get better.

Hi...hate to be one of these..."been there, done that" people...but I have read Ferber ....and this is what we based our controlled crying on initially.....as for Gina Ford...have also read that too....I am not into her routines but do realise that she has bullied me into this situation and we do need more routine..in terms of sleep. The answer is not in that book!
Anyway, the HV has referred me to the psychologist...in mid July...if we are still alive by then!! She basically said though that I have done everything she would recommend...and I should get into bed and sleep with my daughter in the daytime as I really should get some sleep!
So...my big question is, is this the price you pay for breastfeeding??

No.

Definitely not!

Oh Marz no, don't start to wish you weren't breastfeeding, you've just been incredibly unlucky with your babe - she sounds like a mighty and dauntless sleep resister, with that strength of will she's bound to grow up wonderfully feisty!

Both I and a friend from my antenatal group had very similar experiences of sleep hell at exactly the same stage as you. I did hardline cc and it worked after 4-5 nights; I think we found it do-able partly because we had a LOT of help (4 adults doing it in shifts!), and partly becuase dd's yells were quite clearly pure rage rather than sadness, fear etc, so somehow more bearable.

But my friend, also successfully, did a much gentler version of sleep training, where she sat beside her daughter's cot patting her and talking softly, then cut down the patting, then the talking, then sat further away, etc, till finally she only has to sit there for a few minutes, talking softly and stroking, while dd slips off to sleep. It can take a long time this way, but it is much less traumatic, and I think it's become quite a pleasurably peaceful interlude for mama as well as infant. Might be worth a try?

I don't know if this is in Ferber, so apologies if you've done it already

Hello, Marz, I'm sorry to read that you are having such a rotten time, but bottle-feeding wouldn't help, believe me. Our dd is formula-fed and still has a nocturnal bodyclock at nearly four months, and also has a wind problem that keeps her awake, often very distressed, sometimes for most of the night. I blame myself for her tummy problems ( because of not breastfeeding) and feel such a failure, and lack of sleep is horrible when you've got one massive guilt trip too. (I have posted on mumsnet about this before so apologies for going on about it!) My point is that by breastfeeding you are doing the absolute best for your dd and eventually, when this passes, you will be able to look back with pride at what you have done for your little one.

I have also just posted recently about a book called "The No-Cry Sleep Solution" by Elizabeth Pantley. The gentle ideas in there might be better for your dd, although the book does say that results aren't instant. It might make night-time less stressful at any rate as I've found some of her ideas (such as using tapes of relaxing music, or repeating soothing phrases) quite relaxing. The book is available from Amazon.

With daytime sleep, I find it helps to get into my pyjamas! I agree with your hv that having your dd in with you might help, my dd sleeps best during the morning and I often put her on top of the bed in her daddy's place and sleep with her.

I hope that things improve for you all soon.

Good luck, Marz.
Keep smiling xxx

Oh dear, you must be exhausted. I found it helped with my ds (also 8months and for most of that an awful sleeper who woke up every two/three hours at night) to phase out the night feeds BEFORE trying cc. At first I stopped doing them after midnight until 5am - my dh went in regularly to cuddle him back to sleep so ds knew milk wasn't available (& I got lots of lovely rest . Then I stopped doing night feeds after 7pm until 5am. When that was established and he was eating more during the day (which happened v quickly and I do think your son is old enough for breakfast now) we did the cc and it worked like a dream - only 20mins crying at a stretch and now he nearly always sleeps through. I read Ferber and he said it was too much to try cc and stopping night feeds in one go, and to cut out night feeds first. He said the very act of feeding a baby keeps them awake by causing hormone releases to the brain and waking up the digestive system that should be shut down at night. It's a good, interesting book and I do recommend it. we didn't do the cc by the book at all, just let him cry really, but it was tired, cross crying not full-volume stuff. Another point: when I stopped feeding at night, he very soon started eating a LOT more during the day, and for a few days wanted to breastfeed all day to make up for the time apart during the night, but that has passed now. So I'd first try a combination of not feeding her at night, a dummy and more food and milk during the day, before giving cc another try. Good luck, I do feel for you.

PS Is she teething??

Marz,I got the" No Cry Sleep Solution" on ionesmum's advice, and I strongly suggest you get it! It makes a whole lot of sense and I'm sure its going to work for us. The author is strongly opposed to cry it out sleep training, and has a selection of very gentle and positive changes you can make to your baby's sleep habits. I've only just started with my dd, but we've already noticed an improvement, even though slight. Pantley talks about the "pull-off" which involves removing the nipple when the baby is sleepy, but not asleep, to get the baby used to the idea of dropping off without a nipple in her mouth. It does work, even if you have to do it several times, over and over again. Last night my dd spent a lots less time awake and feeding, even though she still woke the same number of times. The book is £10.99 from Amazon(plus postage), and mine arrived Saturday morning, when I ordered it Thursday night! By Saturday afternoon I was lot more cheerful.

Good luck

I have read the no cry sleep solution....it was the first book I tried, and although we got her to fall asleep without the nipple in her mouth, for example, we could never mnove on so that she would be comforted by dh instead of me, or be put down to sleep on her own, it just felt as if we could not move on to the next stage. She has a comforter too, which she plays with but when she gets upset, she refuses to have near her. I have to say though that this past few days we have 'let up' on everything, she is sleeping with us again and seems to have at least settled into waking 2 hourly...which I can cope with at the moment. She will not sleep in her cot at all still, last night was the first night that she even slept in our bed on her own until we came to bed. It really feels like the less I resist and fight her, the more compliant she becomes....!
Anyway, I will probably continue with the no cry sleep techniques but without aiming to getting her to sleep on her own through the night as this has just become something I feel we are so so far away from......and I just end up disappointed when it does not work...
Thanks for all the advice though....I think the process of stopping the night feeds before tackling the sleeping through seems like a very good idea though...I had not thought of it like that, but will definitely work towards that.....
Also..am very reassured that bottle feeding would not necessarily have been the solution....I have had enough of everyone telling me that!
I may just get into pyjamas too...have not tried that...and it might trick my head into sleeping!!
Thankyou again everyone....Marz

I so sympathize with those of you having horrible problems getting your babies to settle and sleep. DS was a nightmare and we didn't crack the problem until he was 15 months old. I found that the best thing was to try and crack "bad habits" ie: falling asleep on breast or bottle or refusing to settle in the cot etc during the day. Somehow these things were easier to cope with during daylight hours. Obviously night feeds you can crack at night but it is probably best to save other stuff for the day. Once you get your baby to settle in the cot or settle without sucking during the day then you know that they can do it at night too and it is just a question of keeping on trying.
Ferber was our saviour, but I appreciate that sleep training very little ones is not a happy experience. At 15 months we were so exhausted and DS was big enough to be braver about it. I also used to go in every 2 mins initially as he could get so worked up if I waited 5 mins.
I wish you all the best and lots of sympathy

Marz,

Don't know if you,ve tried this but a friend had success with putting one of her nighties in with the baby. It was the smell of her mum more than her mum she wanted. Only drawback was that her dd kept the nightie as a comforter for a few years and was distraught when it disitegrated. At least they got sleep for a few years though

I agree with mears post from Thursday - I have never had to get involved with controlled crying. I breatfed both my children, let them fall asleep on the breast and kept them in bed with me for the first few months. This worked for me as the kids were never left to cry and settled immediately after the feed, so sleep was disrupted for a minimal amount of time. Once they started to sleep though the night/most of the night (around 4 months) I moved them to the cot with no problem. I think the point that I'm trying to make is that all kids are different and that what is right for one isn't necessarily right for another. I followed my gut feel and it worked for me.

Ionesmum, my dd only likes the 'cherry' dummies too. I also, like bundle used to be snobby about them and also only use them for sleep times now, it has been invaluable for me. DD now often refuses it of her own accord.

Marz I really do feel for you. I know my dd used to be a bad sleeper the first few weeks but that's also because I never put her down. I also used to let her fall asleep on me and she would be fine, however she did used to use it for comfort then and to be honest every time she cried I would put my boob in her mouth. She often used to wake if I took it out.

It sounds definitely like your dd wants to use you for comfort. Have you tried the old fashioned cherry teat dummies, these can be got at boots or Sainsburys. They are big and round and my dd hated dummies till I found these.

Sounds like you've got a good bedtime routine I guess you've just got to start putting her down awake and perhaps distracting her by putting a mobile on or reading her a story or something and then leave her. My dd was cuddled to sleep initially and then we gradually eased off it and she now does go to sleep on her own. It is very important for your sanity. I do hope it gets better xx

Marz, I know what you mean about letting things go. Our dd is still coping with her poorly tummy and in addition gets really upset if she awakes in her cot and finds that we are not there, as happens if we put her down early in the evening. She has set herself back onto her newborn bodyclock and so we go to sleep anytime between 1.30 and 3a.m. I don't see the point in us enforcing a routine on her until her tummy is sorted. So I agree with you that sometimes you just have to take your lead from your baby. I'm sorry that the "No-Cry" book didn't help, perhaps it might be worth going back to at a later stage. Pantley says in her book that some parents took two months or more to see an improvement, it seems that some babies have to take thing slowly.

Tissy, I'm so pleased that you have seen an improvement.

Tillysmummy, I'm so pleased to find someone else using the cherry dummies, my dd is the only one at under-ones with them. Our Boots doesn't sell them though, I have to go to one of those old-fashioned chemists to find them. I also buy Avent dummies and use the covers off them to keep the cherry ones sterile, it saves on too much sterilising (although not cheap!)

ionesmum,
I think you have a very good point....I think I have been too impatient with the No Cry book...!!
And Java...I think this is what I keep coming back to, the fact that my gut feeling is always right...and I just need to trust in that a bit more! I think I end up so tired that I trawl through the bookshops thinking that the answer to all my problems is in there somewhere...so whilst I get to read lots of interesting things, none of them help too much and in the end, I go back to plan 1 which is mother her and love her...and she calms/changes somewhat!
Mears...she has a "cheap" version of a cuski doll, it is exactly the same, but a bit smaller and cheaper, and I wore it for half a day in my bra! She likes to throw it around but won't take it when upset.....for some reason!! (I swear she knows what I am up to!!)
Have been looking for the cherry teat dummies....no joy so far,but will keep persevering!
Thankyou again all for the support, it is great to feel like there are people out there who know how I feel!!

Marz, if you have no joy in finding the cherry teat dummies in an old-fashioned chemist let me know as I'd be happy to buy a pack here and send them onto you, they are £1.99 for 2.