Night time 'bad habits' ... the independent baby sleep - support thread for anyone trying to break baby sleep habits

[Millipede170]

This thread is for anyone who routinely 'helps' their LO to get back to sleep when they wake in the night, would like them to start being more independent, but doesn't relish the thought of CC or CIO. Or maybe you've been there and are out the other side and can share your journey/pearls of wisdom (you could be my new hero). What methods have you tried or come up with? Please share ...

No sooner had I said 'one wake up' than we were back to 2 hourlies last night. Gah. Talk about jinxing your luck. Hopefully it's something like teeth and he'll go back to normal soon!

It's crazy how many phases they go through millie. It's also crazy how much time I spend hoping to get a whole 4 hours solid sleep.

By the way how is work going millie?

Thanks for the advice, 2 days into dairy free now, still spending my nights more awake than asleep but we shall see! Please be the cure I'm looking for! Ha. Does anyone know from there friends with experience which dairy alternative is best for nearly 1 year olds? I was trying to get him to take milk in a sippy cup to attempt to reduce breastfeeding now, but now we've gone dairy free I'm not sure what's best for calcium good fat content. Almond/coconut/soya? Or do you think I need to ask doctor for special formula? Happy to keep some breastfeeding going for a while but would love to not be the only option especially as I'm back to work soon!

I totally agree Teamuncher that every child is different. I see that much clearer second time around. I was really feeling like a failure and that in was my poor routine or breastfeeding habits causing bad sleep in DS2 but I did the exact same things with DS1. I guess for that reason we all need to let ourselves off and just say some people get lucky with 'sleepers', and we are not just getting it all wrong! Xx

Hope your poor teeth are ok Milipede!! And that sleep keeps improving for you mcrstorm as tonsillitis goes. I would definitely ask nursery to implement 2 naps if that's the routine you feel is making a difference. They are there to help you.

Thanks Alex344, my friends son is lactose intolerant, I'll ask what she gives him.
I did ask nursery yesterday and he still had only 1 nap
Last night was murder, he was up at 12 and didn't settle til 3 and then up again at 5:30. I have to be up for 6:30 so no point in arguing with him.

Hi alex, we use coconut almond milk because that's my favourite of all the ones I've tried. It does say it's not suitable as a main drink (for under 1s or 2s, can't remember which) but the dietitian said that was ok as his weight gain was good. The most popular one for df babies is oat milk. Oatly do a chocolate flavour one which usually goes down well!

We use oat milk in this house. DS isn't milk intolerant but I do think it makes his nose stuffy, so I limit to 1 or 2 portions of dairy a day (on the advice of my HV, who said if I gave him none at all he may stop producing lactase and become cmpi, if that makes sense). Oatly is fortified I think. The one to give the big avoid is rice milk which contains arsenic!!

Hi MrsE. Work is alright thanks, although I'm finding it hard that I barely see anything of my baby. Even though I'm leaving work every day at 4.30 (which is a push) we only have enough time for supper, about 10 mins mucking about and then it's bath and bed. I also work in a male dominated environment where it's assumed 'someone else' does the childcare, so I bit the bullet and wrote to my boss to tell him that I'm still breastfeeding and to ask for his understanding that I need to make it a priority to be with him morning and evening. He was very down to earth about it, but it was still cringey as hell!!

Sorry your LOs are giving you so little sleep . It is just a phase but I hope it's one that passes quickly. I reckon weaning onto solids is as individual as everything else baby-wise; some are ready at 5 months, others need a bit more time to mature. Bless them!

What are ppls thoughts on controlled crying? Monster was up every hour last night. I'm slowly losing my sanity...

Sorry to hear about the rubbish sleep people have been having. We seem to be back to two wake ups between four and six hours apart, which feels almost manageable. Naps have become a nightmare this week, though. Yesterday he slept for about 45 mins between 6am and 6pm!! If you saw someone crying in Trinity Leeds, it was me!!

Mcrstorm I'm in the same boat, some nights I get every 2hrs, some nights it's every hour (and 3 x 30min naps only in the day). BUT I wouldn't resort to CC, I don't think either will sleep and the build up of cortisol on both sides is not good!! Do you bf? I have just resolved to co-sleeping and almost sleeping through the feeds, out of sheer exhaustion. But I am just about coping... just! Much better than when I fought it. My next battle is to get him actually IN the co-sleeper crib and out of my bed 🤔

mcrstorm we did controlled crying with our DS (now nearly 3) when he was about 9 or 10 months old. I had gone back to work and we were getting no sleep whatsoever. He would fall asleep easily but then wake a couple of hours later and would not go back to sleep. We tried me sleeping on the floor next to him and lots of other things to no avail. I spoke to the health visitor who talked me through it. We had to make sure he wasn't ill or in any pain before we attempted it so having eliminated them as a cause of the upset we started controlled crying (not cry it out). It isn't for the faint hearted but we never let him cry longer than 15 mins. So 2 mins, sooth & settle then out of room, 4 mins, sooth & settle, 8 mins, sooth & settle and then 15 mins. First night we did get to the 15 mins, second night it took him 5 mins to go to sleep and 3rd night he was asleep within a couple of mins. We found that he then started to sleep through the night as he was settling himself back to sleep if he woke. We haven't done it with DD yet just because we don't want to disturb DS (not that either of them let me sleep at the minute).

millie sorry to hear you're finding it hard not spending much time with little one in an evening. We found that DS was shattered when her first started nursery and would need to be in bed at 5.30/6pm. That gradually got later although we are cutting his nap now so is back to a 6.30 bedtime. I also found it made weekends all the more important to spend quality time together.

alex just catching up with the thread, I feel for you. Your nights sound horrendous. I hate that feeling of knowing you'll just start to doze off to be woken again. I don't have much advice, just sympathy. However you should not feel like a failure. Do whatever you can to get through the bad days/nights.

Thanks MrsE. I think DS should be in bed by 6.30 latest at the mo but as it stands I can't get away from work in time to have him home before 5.45, then I need to make his supper (always prepped but still takes a few extra mins) then feed him, let it settle a few mins, bath and bedtime routine. He's never down before 7 and the last 2 nights he's fallen asleep at the boob or in my lap straight after his feed. I do think he's overtired because he's waking at stupid o'clock (5am this morning) but there's not a huge amount I can do about it :( Like you say, roll on the weekend x

mcrstorm I tried CC for about a week and it just didn't work. By which I mean the "soothe and settle" but that MrsE refers to in her post didn't happen. DS couldn't be soothed without the boob (he would regularly punch DH in the throat if he tried to cuddle him when he woke!) and if I tried to put him back down when he was still awake, he'd just start screaming again. So it ended up that he would basically cry for 2-3 hours and I'd be popping in to 'reassure' him every 5/10/15 minutes but actually he just got more mad and screamed to exhaustion. It wasn't linear either, so he didn't cry like that the first night, then less the second, third etc ... He would simply scream until he passed out or until I comfort nursed him back down. It was totally awful for both of us (he was like a different child in the day too, so unhappy) and I got really cross with all the advice to "hold my nerve" and be consistent, and if I had a quid for everyone who told me "it's a battle of wills at that point" I wouldn't have had to go back to work. I'm just utterly convinced that it was the wrong technique for my baby, who just needed time (and the mobility to get himself comfortable for sleep - crawling changed things overnight, literally).

But that's just my experience. I guess if it's the right time and your LO is ready for that nudge in the right direction it can be amazingly effective. For what it's worth I would just say if it's not going well and it's stressing you out, stop.

Catching up on the thread here, thank you so much everyone for the advice on dairy milk alternatives. Managed to get some oatly. I do slightly worry about what your health visitor said Milipede, if I've got it all wrong and his mad sleep is nothing to do with dairy then could I wind up causing cmpi by eliminating it??! I guess I'm just going to try it for 2-3 weeks so it shouldn't cause too much problem over that time span!

Thank you for your sympathy MrsE, honestly just a bit of support is amazingly lifting!

Last night was spectacularly bad. Crying even after a feed, furious to be put in his cot, being comforted back to sleep only to wake again within 10mins again and again for hours on end. Wound up in a huge row with DH with him desperately demanding we do CC for 'the good of my health'. So we started trying it at 4 in the morning, exhausted, not prepared. By 5:30 both me and DS2 were in floods of tears, DH was apologising and oh we woke our DS1 up in the commotion! What a mess.

So very interested to see people's comments here on CC. We definitely did it wrong last night! But it seems like it all depends on the individual baby from the varied accounts. I'm not sure I can stomach it at the moment, or at all, I don't know, but after last night it's been called off for now.

Feel for you with the 5am starts on a work day Milipede! Early rising is a tough one to break too. I had success with 'wake to sleep' with DS1. We set our alarm and the went in and semi woke him at 4am, 1 hour before his habitual 5am start to the day. The idea is it resets the sleep cycle and body clock. Risky tactics I know but really worked for us back then!

Good luck all xxxx

For previous posters whose DC are lactose intolerant, we got special formula for Ds until he was 1 or thereabouts and then we transitioned to a lactofree milk by Arla. Its available in all the supermarkets although whole milk is harder to find. It is normal cow's milk but with some lactose removed and lactase enzyme added I believe. It is so much better than soya milk etc which tastes foul and isn't great for cooking. We all use it in our house now as and tbh I feel better for it.
Consultant i saw not in favour of oat milk and almond milk etc.

I found HV to be pretty useless at knowing what is out there if you are lactose intolerant, and I can't believe the advice further up thread about keeping up some dairy portions if DC are lactose intolerant. You don't become allergic to cow's milk by cutting out dairy!

alex I hope you're having a better night. That's frustrating what your husband said about demeaning you do controlled crying in the early hours of the morning, when you're all already stressed and shattered. I'm not surprised it didn't work. I think others are right in that it works for some but not for others but def one to do when you feel ready not just your husband. But again don't be hard on yourself, i think we all do things in a desperate bid to get some sleep. I can't remember a night when DD didn't end up in our bed!

milli could your childminder feed him before you pick him up? Nursery feed DS. When he was in the baby room he had his tea at 4pm. Now he's in the next room up, he has his tea at about 4.30.

game I was also shocked about the avoiding milk causing cmpi! I think people get very confused between lactose intolerance and cows milk protein intolerance. Lactose is the sugar found in milk, and as far as I understand it breastfed babies won't be lactose intolerant as there will be lactose in breastmilk. However, if you avoid all dairy (as you would with a milk protein intolerance) then your body will stop producing lactase (which is needed to digest lactose). Once you start having dairy again your body will make it again.

Haribo and game, it's probably me paraphrasing that has confused the issue. My hv likely knows what she's on about but, DS not being cmpi, I might have got the wording wrong. I think the essence of it was that when I stop breastfeeding, if he's not having any dairy at all, he won't continue producing lactase and that could be a problem.

Currently sat in my rockin chair with md in ny arms, desperately wishing he would sleep more than 3hrs.
Cc isn't working, he starts screaming the moment we leave the room and I find it too upsetting.
I'm really trying not to put him in bed with me but it does seem like the only option for me to get any real sleep

Thanks for the info about cmpi. I am booked to see the hv so I'll ask for more info. However don't have huge faith in our hv as last time I had a query she wasn't sure and asked if I'd googled it!! Ha.

Mcrstorm sorry you're having a rough night, the emotions that go with tackling these sleep problems are tough. I'm finding some nights total exhaustion takes over and I just have to do whatever gets me through, like bed sharing again, and start a fresh tomorrow. Good luck whatever you do tonight xx

DS awake on the hour every hour last night 😩.

It started off so well, with 3 x good naps (for him) in the day. He's been having 1 x bottle of formula at lunchtime (new!). AND he went to sleep actually in his crib (with a dummy) at about 6pm 🎉 But then...

DD came in and any little noise (let alone a 4yo Tasmanian devil) wakes him. So I fed him after DH had brought him in to say hello to DD, and then could not put him down! He slept in my bed from 7:30 and woke every hour! Argghhhhhh! I'm beyond exhausted. And can't help but wonder what would have happened if he wasn't woken up... 🤔