HOW TO GET 5 MONTH OLD TO SLEEP THROUGH

[smegsmeg]

Really really need some advice.. I'm working 5pm - 1am and DP working 6.30am - 5pm and we're having to still get up 4 - 5 times through the night.

Sorry cath I didn't mean to lambast anyone

I do agree to a certain extent. I was a REALLY experienced nanny when I had my DS,I knew all the tricks of the trade but they didn't work with my DS!

I often read about routines on here and raise an eyebrow too

We did end up using a sleep consultant but what i took away form that at 6months.. are below!

1. he was hungry for solids -i started on avo and papaya with coconut cream... loved it
2. i had no routine.. i was too tired for imposing one. I then wrote down it all for 4 days. turns out i had a vague one
3. he only ever slept for 45 mins . ever. i fed to sleep (no biggie doing this btw)
4. planned for day naps first rather than night as too tired to function... .one always at home of the three a day at this point... in his own cot... then i did all naps for 5 days at home and this allowed me to then flex the routine. and boy did we flex it! travelling to Oz for 6 weeks across millions of flights... and hotels and places... was fine! co slept briefly but confused him more than anything as mummy did not want to play!
5. i ever CIO as he was not suited to this.
6. even at 15 mo i rock him for 4 mins and put him down... and he is wakes i repeat ...
7. Hannah Love was the sleep adviser, not rocket science but like SW or WW i needed to be accountable for routine etc and to have someone to talk to daily for 5 weeks... worked and he is brill. I let the odd 4 am wail wash over me and go and cuddle... it is fine to do this!

Firstly document the days ... it does help!

oh and MOST importatly- stick to one technique and be consistent for over a week... they get confused if you change daily!

I have 2 children. The first slept through pretty quickly but regressed as she got older. She's very active and even now at 3.5 yrs is hard to exhaust. I have to make sure she uses as much energy during the day as possible so she will sleep. Even so she started having frequent night terrors after her sibling was born 6 mths ago. Recently I read about how asking angels can help kids sleep and feel safe. I'm no one to tell anyone to believe in angels but this worked! I told her that she had an angel protecting her each night and printed a picture of an angel off the internet. She now talks to the angel, asks him to look after her while she sleeps and no longer has night terrors. As for the baby, he's a completely different child. As long as I put him in a completely dark room he will sleep soundly.

Cathf, I totally agree that sleep advice given nowadays mostly does not encourage good sleep habits. But are you seriously suggesting that the points you mention are sufficient to get a baby to sleep well? They are the absolute basics of caring for a baby (apart from having the baby in a separate room from birth, which is against SIDS guidelines). If it were that simple all sleep problems would be solved in a trice. Sleep is a bit more complex than "no interacting at night, nights are dark and days are light, all naps in cot."

OP, I can recommend the Millpond sleep clinic book, Teach your child to sleep.
I'd also keep a detailed diary of your daily routine and your baby's sleep times as it can help you detect unhealthy habits.

Both mine didn't sleep through till 18 months or so. I think it's down to the individual child. I tried all sorts of techniques with the first, but none of them lasted very long. Maybe I wasn't very consistent. It's crap not getting sleep but 5 months is going to be sleeping through IMO, though did hear of some babies sleeping through from 2 months. But as I said maybe down to individual child.

Oh I did forget to say that I co-slept and bf'd on demand and we got along like that.

I did sleep training with my DTs at 6 and a half months and it changed our lives. I used the supernanny controlled crying meathod and it worked within a couple of days. I know training is contraversial on MN but sleep deprivation is pure hell. Plus if it doesn't work after a few days you can always stop.

Scrumptious, I agree my points are very basic indeed, and were pretty standard advice when my oldest (24 now) was born.
However, it's very rare they are followed now, hence all the sleep issues families seem to be having.
I have already been accused of being cold, but wishy-washy muddling-through rarely gets the reward of a good sleeper, which I think is the one thing we can all agree we want.
Every time I see a post along the lines of baby 'refusing' to sleep issues in cot, baby 'refusing' to go to sleep until midnight, baby will only nap on me etc etc, I think that parent needs to get to grips with the issue before it becomes a big problem.
No-one seems to recommend grasping the mettle and are making charge of the situation - the advice is always of the aforementioned enjoy the sleepy cuddles or take the lead from your baby variety, but it will he the same mums on here in six months/a year's time chronically exhausef and panicking because they are about to return to work and have a mountain to climb because their baby is the see to being the centre of the universe and her every wish met on demand.
I just find it so frustrating and avoidable.

However, it's very rare they are followed now, hence all the sleep issues families seem to be having.

I don't agree. The points you mention, apart from the separate room, are still given as advice nowadays. My point was that it is not that easy to get a baby to sleep well! If only!
Personally, I think the cause of many sleep issues nowadays is the fact that babies aren't supposed to cry. Because even if you have a routine from day 1 etc. etc. some babies will not be happy to sleep in their cot, sleep at a certain time or whatever. They will cry. If parents don't give them the chance to settle because babies should not be left to cry, not even for a minute, they easily fall into habits like co-sleeping, feeding to sleep etc. which sometimes can become a problem later on.
Did yours never cry when you put them in their cots? Are you sure you never tolerated a couple of minutes of whinging? (I don't want to criticise by the way, I am genuinely interested in how previous generations parented.)

Scrumptious, I think you may have it in s nutshell there, and I had no idea that babies were not supposed to cry nowadays! That explains a lot, thank you.
Following the 'rules' does involve baby crying, and I can now understand why so many families end up in a mess if they don't allow baby to cry!
My children are 24, 12 and 10, and the difference in attitudes towards caring for baby between dc1 and dc2 was marked, and it had shifted even more by the time dc3 came along.
Back in 1993, in general baby was expected to fit in with the family and the emphasis was on routine and getting back to normal ASAP. Banning visitors and sitting in state as the queen bee who had just given birth would be considered very weird back then.
We were encouraged to get baby into an easy routine as soon as we could - nothing was baby-led' apart from feeding on demand, but even then, there was an eye on the clock and putting baby down for a nap.
I despair of the modern trend of napping on mum, sling wearing and co-sleeping as I can't see how anyone can function as a human - as opposed to a mummy - like that.
I suppose my beef is that it's no use doing all the woolly nonsense if you actually want to sleep decently at night, and that's what people seem to struggle to grasp.

MN is not really the best place for sleep advice. It's all very baby led.

With my first I was baby led. I regretted it.

With my 2nd I was much more stern. Naps every 1.5 hrs whether the baby wanted it or not. Started doing Shhh Pat at 4 months and feeding no more than every 2 hrs during the night. Really focused on getting the baby to fall asleep without being fed to sleep using shhh pat. Waited 5 mins after baby had woken to see if they would self settle. Lots of white noise and I never ever changed a nappy at night unless it was a poo nappy.

The baby became a much more relaxed sleeper and slept through quicker.

But I got a lot of those tips on American sites. They are much more pragmatic about sleep as they don't get maternity leave. Here the attitude is "don't do squat for 6 months as they're only tiny" and "it's part of the 4 month sleep regression, just give in to it for an indefinite time to come" - but gentle training takes weeks, and maternity leave ends before you know it!

And it becomes even more important if (like me) you have a small gap and have a tiny terror who's dropping naps. No sleeping when the baby sleeps!

I definitely think by 5 months not only can you start to create good sleep habits, but you should.

Elspeth, I can see a kindred spirit!
I believe there often has to be short-term pain for long-term gain, but some on here struggle to grasp the fundamentals of this.
I wasn't a cruel mum, I loved my Babies just as much as anyone here, but I also valued my sleep and my life and I was not prepared to sacrifice it all on the whims of a tiny baby.

We've done the same as Cathf (though baby was in our room until 4 months old) and baby has gone to bed at 6:30, dream feed at 10 then goes through to 7am and has done since 10 weeks old. She has womb sounds white noise and a small Muslim square as a comforter, no dummy at night, she weaned herself off it thankfully as she'd wake when it fell out.
I also dot a bit of lavender oil on her sheet (not the one she sleeps on)
We've roughly followed the Gina Ford routine but tweaked for us and baby

She's also learned to self settle as if she whines we leave her to see if she calms and only go to her if she's upset, she gets a cuddle, no talking, then back in the cot and we hold her hand until she calms down, though rare we need to do that now as she gets herself off to sleep.

Great to hear I need wine. Things will change, baby-led routine-free woolliness will become discredited, because everything does to make way for the next thing to come along.
I just think our way makes so much sense and the current thinking makes so little sense.
I am glad I am not a MIL yet!

It was certainly the best thing for us and she took to her routine very well as we started at 10 days old, don't know if it's helped but we didn't have the 4 month sleep regression

cathf, I think it's somewhat naive of you to assume that babies were almost all sleeping well in 1992. I can assure you that many weren't in the 80s, when I was born. I learned from many many many family and friends who provided sympathy and shared their own experiences when my own baby didn't sleep either.

I appreciate you mean well and are genuinely trying to share advice you think will help. Honestly, though, telling parents struggling with sleep that it's basically their own fault for not doing what you did is not as helpful as you might think. Especially since much of what you did is basic common-sense sleep advice that new parents are still being given now.

You say you can't imagine anything worse than broken sleep for 3/4 years. I'm dealing with just that myself, and let me tell you - it is indeed hell, but what's worse is going through that hell and having people pipe up with "oooh you should just do bath/book/bottle/bed and then not rush in at every little squeak!", like basic bedtime cliches had never occurred to me.

Some babies don't sleep, and many many babies aren't sleeping through the night at a few months old. That was true in the 90s, it was true in the 80s, and I've read a lot of parenting advice from the 1800s and 1700s and it was true then. There is plenty of scientific research into this - someone already linked you to the ISIS site, which looks at infant sleep research spanning different countries and cultures.

There probably are things the OP could do to try to encourage less waking (although I bet you she's tried many of them already), and of course those are worth suggesting. But soapboxing about how you have got sleep all cracked and the problem is mothers today bringing poor sleep upon themselves is not kind, and it's not helpful, and it's not even accurate.

(ps - no, this is not 'flaming' you.)

Meanwhile, smegsmeg - I'm really sorry you're dealing with this, it's so bloody exhausting. Things I would suggest, and feel free to discard if you've tried already or know they wouldn't work for your circumstances:

• white noise. Magic, magic stuff.
• co-sleeping if you don't, and sleeping separately if you already co-sleep
• you can try 'shush-pat' (Google it) or their methods which are about encouraging your baby to go back to sleep in the cot - sometimes that helps
• get a thermometer in the room where the baby's sleeping and check the temperature when the baby wakes - sometimes a smallish drop/raise can make them uncomfortable enough to wake

What got me through the toughest points was co-sleeping with a bedside cot. It improved the baby's sleep a little bit, but the main advantage was that I got a lot more rest because I didn't have to get up and out of bed for every waking.