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 ...

Christ alive Ruby. One needy sleep thieving baby is bad enough, 2 is an invitation to drown yourself in wine nightly with no recriminations. I'm not surprised you are irritated with your DT arsing about at bedtime. I'm very glad your DH is there to help (even if he winds DT up not down. He's sharing the pain at least)

Is there anything you can do to switch up the bedtime routine and take the wind out of DT's sails do you think? Bottle at the front end of the routine maybe, then bath, naked wriggle time (my DS's favourite) then a story and over to him to settle himself? Just thinking out loud really. What does he do for hours at bedtime if not settling for sleep?

Please may I join? I have a 15 month old cot refuser who wakes in the night for boob. He will occasionally settle for a cuddle from dp but only about half of the time. Sometimes we put him in the cot after he goes to sleep but he wakes up and screams till I feed him back to sleep in bed. I have lots of plans to be more consistent about putting him in the cot and letting dp do more night waking but we have an older dc and I'm at work 4 days a week and we're always so knackered we just go for the easiest option.

Lotis you are very welcome here. The tiredness is an absolute killer - a big hug to you.

Do you have to put DS in his cot at all at the moment? If you don't, and he's not gradually getting used to it, why don't you let yourselves off the hook and go with whatever gets you the most sleep/gives you the least angst for now. When the time comes to make the change you are going to have to commit to the new regime and be consistent, and that will be energy sapping. (Plus it sounds like your DS is a persistent one, like mine, so it may take a little time). Can you focus on recharging your batteries as much as you can (and no beating yourselves up over it!) in preparation?

Thanks milli.

He's getting pretty annoying in our bed - spreads out like a starfish and dp and barely fit. He also wakes up and crawls around the bed if we're not there. There's a cot pushed against one side of the bed but there's a gap at the bottom of the bed and I'm worried he's going to fall out one day. My goal is to get him sleeping in the cot at least until dp and I go to bed.

Thanks for the suggestion milli, it's a good one!! Seriously if I didn't get such cracking hangovers these days, it'd be wine o'clock every time the little buggers finally fell asleep….

I did try milk before bath and bed, but neither DS is keen, annoyingly. They have milk before each nap so you'd think it would be their sleep cue (what I've been aiming for), however they don't seem to want it till they're actually in their jimjams. I'd love to read them a story each night - always thought I would when I became a parent - but if I'm on my own it's impossible, they don't have the attention span together. DS1 actually does love his books, but DS2 has no patience with them

Lotis, does your DS wake up regardless of how deep a sleep he's in? Sometimes I have to leave mine for a fair old while before I can move them, but they're ok then till they wake up for milk. Very, very frustrating though to be faffing around!

And both DS's usually end up in our bed during the night, mainly because when they wake up I bring them into bed for their milk, then I fall asleep before they do after nearly 18 months without a full night's sleep I'm like you and far too knackered to care….

PS my health visitor (who is very nice) told me not to worry about it unless it's a problem, she said that her son slept in her bed every night till he was 5 as he was such a poor sleeper otherwise!

Glad you have a nice hv, Ruby. She's right isn't she? Nothing you do is a problem, until it's a problem for you. I think that's what they say?!

I ended up in bed with DS again last night too. This sodding cough has really upset the applecart. At least I think/hope that's what it is. Wakes him up the whole time and then he's refusing to settle back in his cot. Grrrr.

And Lotis that's a good point. Now mines crawling, I wouldn't leave him alone on our bed either. He's slid off a couple of times already call social services

Yeah I normally give him half an hour before I try to move him and a couple of times he's stayed in the cot for a few hours so I guess he woke up cos he was hungry. The last few days he's woken straight away and last night I cba to try it at all because he has a new tooth poking through which means he'll sleep badly whatever happens.

Hello all, can I please join? DD2 just turned 5months. Was such a good sleeper as a small baby. Sleeping from 10-2. Unfortunately she's not got any better and often waking before 2 now, although that's not my real issue. My real issue is the waking every 45 minutes after her initial good few hours sleep. We have just moved her into her room as she had outgrown her crib in our room. She does have a dummy & this does settle her but she tends to pull it out & then wakes crying again. Due to DS's room being across the hall (DS is 2.5yo & currently waking with nightmares) I'm having to jump up & get to DD quickly before she gets too loud. I do give milk but she's not taking much so I don't think she's hungry, just struggling to get back into a deep sleep. Once again she ended up in bed with me at 4ish because I'd had enough of getting up & going through.

Hello sleepy (or should we call you MrsE?!)

Wow genuinely, I could have written your post word for word (except for the 2.5yo DC) 5 months ago. Some people talk about a 4 and a 6 month sleep regression, for us it was just one bleary-eyed horror story in the sleep department. At 6 months I called in a sleep consultant because it was doing me in. I epically failed to follow her advice (the crying I was told to expect just seemed never ending with my DS and I couldn't bear it) but a lot of what she said was very sound. You might know most of this already, and it's going to be a long post, but in case it saves you the £300....

The pattern is typical post 4 month sleep maturation. For the first stretch, melatonin (sleepy hormone) plus the tiredness of the day keeps 'em down. Between 12 and 2am melatonin drops off and cortisol (wakey hormone) ramps up quickly to meet the start of the day. So by about 4 or 5am onwards (becoming 3am in a couple of months' time) the chances of successfully getting your LO back to sleep without the use of serious sleep props is virtually nil. That's why they say to try and drop any night feeds after 3am by 6/7 months - because it's the devil's work trying to get them back into the cot awake.

For the feeding - she may well still be hungry enough for a night feed (or maybe 2 at that age) but she's currently snacking. For preference there would be a couple of genuine 'hunger wakes' over the night period (like she prob did at about 3 months before the bastarding hormones got involved) and that would see her through to the first feed of the day. My DS was never really that hungry at 7am because he'd been snacking all night.

So the advice was to choose 2 time slots (e.g. 10-11pm and 3-4am) where you will feed your LO when she wakes. Don't wake her at those times, but during either of those windows (or the next wake afterwards) go straight to her and tell her it's time for milk and feed her. Any other time, you tell her it's time for sleep and soothe her some other way (ideally in the cot, e.g. patting, shushing, or whatever she prefers). The idea here is that her body adjusts to the feed times and these become regular (meaning you can drop one, then the other, when she no longer needs them in due course). She no longer bothers to call for you at other times because she knows she won't get milk, but equally she knows milk will come later so she's relaxed about this.

So I came a cropper because I just couldn't find anything other than boob that my DS would accept without a lot of protest, and I couldn't deal with the distress. I my head it makes total sense. In my heart it just felt ghastly.

Hope that helps (you or anyone else reading) x

Hi all, sounds like we're all still pretty tired huh?!

Started my new job yesterday (which is totally awesome, I love it!) But as I'm now full time im definately feeling the effects on my already addled brain!

DD slept through last night but woke up at 4.30am hoping for some good sleep tonight as she's knackered but the message from MIL today is that her maps were rubbish so I might be in for a tough night afterall.

Welcome lotis we have DC the same age, my DD turns 15 months in a couple days. I've had the opposite with the bed though, if she wakes up screaming she wants to be held but screams harder if we try to bring her in with us.

Good luck for this evening ladies, I'm going to crack open the

Good luck for this evening everyone! I had a lucky night Friday went all night until 6am but must have been a fluke as last night woke at 4am for a feed and then came into our bed.

How can someone so small take up so much room haha? Think we need a super kingsize bed!

Loving all the nicknames, cot refuser etc! Mine is definitely a nap refuser and makes for hell from 5pm onwards. yay!

Thanks milli. We've found it harder this time with DD. We did actually do controlled crying with DS and it worked for us after a couple of nights (20 mins tops crying) but we can't do it this time round as any crying will just disturb him & then we have the added nightmare of getting them both back to sleep.

The other night I fed DD at 10 & then didn't feed her again until morning. She didn't cry for milk at all but I must have got out of bed to soothe & put her dummy back in about 10 times & then just brought her into bed with me at about 4ish as I was so fed up. Plus because I'm barely letting her make any noise DH doesn't wake up so I'm pretty much doing it on my own.

I'm desperately hoping she's going to grow out of it soon esp as DS was close to sleeping through at this age (until everything went to pot at 9 months when crawling, teething, starting nursery & illness all hit).

Good luck to everyone for tonight. Fingers crossed for a decent nights sleep!

We ditched the dummy around that age because I was out of bed to replace it every 45 minutes. I knew he was months away from being able to find it himself and I just couldn't stand it any more. I tried CC too but he cried for hours. Either he wasn't ready, or it's not the technique for him, or I'm too soft. Or perhaps all of the above.

Have a good night everyone xx

Thanks Mili - yes, I put a tshirt of mine in the cot while I was moving her over and it did work wonders! Leaving the light on a bit helped too, I think.

Your last post is very interesting. I have been trying to do exactly that, but after about 2am I seem to go bonkers and am epically failing... basically I keep waking up with DD in the bed, having put her in with me at some random point in the night.

Argh!

Good luck everyone

Shocking night. DD woke at 11.15, then 11.45 so fed her. Woke crying at 1ish and again at 1.40 so she ended up in bed with me. Then disturbed every 30 mins or so for the rest of the night! Hope others had a better night.

Not great I'm afraid. Ds opened his eyes when I attempted the cot transfer so I gave up. I am weak willed. He woke a lot in the night, probably because of his new tooth. Then our four year old woke us all up at some ungodly hour of the morning demanding cbeebies and breakfast.

Another crap night here, up twice for dummy then up for the day at 5:30am

Gosh it seems like we're all suffering this week! Glad to see I'm not the only one to co-sleep! Dd is in the habit of waking up sometimes in the evening between 7 and 11 and saying "mummy" until I go up and lie her down. If I don't go up she cries. She also wakes once or twice in the night just sort of whimpering, not sure why. Sometimes she sits herself up and taps my face til I wake up and lie her down. I took she's just gotten into the habit now because I think she's old enough to self soothe now. She's 20 months.

Hi everyone
Great to have some company on our sleepless nights, but hope things start to turn around soon!
Took ds over an hour to settle last night, after crawling round the cot, pulling up, then banging his head and crying. Up at 11, then 1 for a feed then 4.30 and awake for an hour crawling, standing etc all over again till he crashed at half five, I'd tried to sleep next to him on the floor but he's practicing talking too!!

How's the cough Milli

And MrsE, hope you got some rest overnight, it's so tough. I always feed , probably shouldn't

Decidedly average here too. Up at 11.45, 2.45 and 4.45 but to be honest I should be happy because that's about as good as it gets.

Can I ask you all about naps? My friend has 2 DDs (bear with me) who are amazing sleepers who seem to just adopt a progressive napping routine as they get older. Her DD2 is the same age as my DS (10mo) and is down to one 2-3hr nap over lunchtime, reliably, and can manage the long waketimes and do a 7-7 day no problem, sleeping thru every night. For me, naps have been a nightmare of trying to spot unreliable sleepy signs, trying to stretch waketimes, cheating and going out for pointless drives in the car etc. He's always knackered by 6pm but fights an afternoon nap. It just never feels 'right'.

Currently we do a nap at 9/9.30 depending on how early he woke, then another around 1pm. Neither is a reliable length tho and if the second nap is short, the afternoon is a real struggle. How do you all manage? Do you just go with the flow, stick to a timed routine, what??

Also my DS learned to crawl. Literally today. So I imagine things are about to go to a ball of chalk again sleep wise...

scottish the cough is awful still. Just aborted nap #2 after 15 minutes (head in hands)

I'm sorry Milli, but I can answer your nap question fairly easily!
Absolutely no pattern or routine I'm afraid, if he's not had any sleep by 12/1 then we'll go for a walk or I'll take him in lounge with curtains closed, white noise playing and try to persuade him to nap on me. Generally we have one morning nap and one afternoon nap, either on me or in pram and try to have him awake at 4.
But don't ask me, ds doesn't sleep at night, maybe take my life as a "What NOT to do " guide

Naps here are also few and far between, she used to nap like a dream but now has decided to go cold turkey on her afternoon naps and I'm sure it is making her sleep worse!