Is Disappearing Chair/Gradual Retreat supposed to be crying-free?

[MaudGonneMad]

Or am I doing it wrong? Having a bad old time with my 6 month old, who since the 4 month sleep regression has lost her trick of sleeping 7/8 hr stretches at night. I really want to teach her to self-settle, as multiple night wakings are taking their toll on me. Also, if she wakes and I'm on a rare night out, she is inconsolable despite DH's best efforts.

She always feeds to sleep and refuses a dummy no matter how often/how many varieties I try.

I've tried gradual retreat the last few nights, sitting with my hand on her chest or stroking her face, and she just screams and screams and whinges and screams and cries and cries and cries. After about an hour I usually give up and feed her to sleep again.

Anyone have any advice?

FATE not FADE!

Mine woke and fed every three hours or less until she was 14 months. 6 months seems quite ambitious to try to get her to sleep through...could she be hungry? I know how hideous sleep deprivation is (14 months!!) so I really do feel your pain.....

She's on 3 meals a day, plus 3-4 breastfeeds. I suppose she could be hungry through.

But tbh I don't really mind feeding her at night if she wants a feed - but I think she's only sucking for comfort as it's the only way she knows how to get to sleep. I need to break the feeding/sleep connection but I am at a loss!

kellymom.com/bf/normal/comfortnursing/

This is a good read if you're worried about feeding to sleep. Sucking for comfort is very important for babies so don't feel bad about it.

They do grow out of feeding to sleep so don't worry about getting into 'bad habits'. Obviously if you want to change things then that's fine but sometimes you feel so much pressure not to feed to sleep and that they should be self settling.

I fed to sleep and fed in the night as soon as they woke. I fed lying down so I didn't really wake up fully. I found it was the easiest way for us to get as much sleep as possible.

little did your dc just grow out of feeding to sleep then? How long did you feed to sleep for? (Sorry for hijacking thread op!)

At six months (and up to a year) the main bulk of their diet should still be breast milk, maybe try dropping one or two of her meals or giving much smaller portions. Breast milk provides far more nutrients than any solid food you can give her at this stage, I found that dd was waking more when I was letting her polish off just one large meal a day, since I've given a smaller portion and allow BLW snacks during the day her sleep has been much better. Make sure she has a breastfeed within an hour before offering food so she isn't filling herself up with solids that she doesn't need.

Oh my lord people talk awful shite on these threads.
There is absolutely no reason why a 6-month old shouldn't be able to self settle and sleep a good chunk of the night, at least 10-7 or 7-5 I would expect at this age.

Thanks guys. Kellymom was a lifesaver when I was struggling to establish BF, but I had forgotten about it.

silk I was encouraged by the HV to build up to 3 meals a day to try and reduce her reliance on bf Part of the problem I think is that she now associates bf with sleep, and falls asleep within 10 mins of bfing.

Aargh it's all such a mess. Feeling like a very bad mother and that I'm letting my lovely baby down

No no you're not letting your baby down at all.
It's brilliant that she's eating well. Really great news.
Just seems that she hasn't taken to your soothing method. Could you try spaced soothing instead?

As in controlled crying?

We had one night of that. Started at 2 min intervals, then 3,5,7,10. She screamed like I never heard her before, high pitched wailing, almost frothing at the mouth. Continuously. I was crying too. After 1 hour of that I gave in.

Oh god yes there's no way it should be going on for an hour.
What's her routine like in general?

There's a big regression at 9 months.... Also I fed my second dc to sleep but after a bedtime feed (and all night feeds) I would still have to wind her because she always took down air. Even at 9 months! This would massively upset her.

She had terrible tongue tie and even though it was corrected, she had bad lip tie so still took down air during feeds until she fell off a sofa at about 12 months and it broke.

Anyway what I'm saying is that I doubt that you'd make much progress at this stage. It might be worth trying to slowly reduce the length of feeds and give her a wind to check she's not got a bit of air in there.

She was on a rough 9, 12, 3 schedule but has drifted off that since her nighttime sleep went to pot because she often wakes at 5.30/6, but will go back to sleep after a feed until 8.30. Then usually a sleep around 10/11, and another around 2/3. These naps are never in her cot, sometimes lying down in bed with me or on me, rarely in the sling/buggy. She often sleeps only 40 - 45 mins which is why I've started lying down with her to try and encourage her to sleep longer.

Today she woke at 8.30. Nap 11-1. Nap 3.30-5. Started bedtime routine (bath, story, bottle) at 6.20. She's still here in my arms upstairs having had one failed attempt to put her down after she fell asleep on the breast.

Thanks for your kind post btw.

That's really poor advice from your health visitor (not surprisingly)!

There's some good bits on kellymom about weaning too.
Are you on any of the breastfeeding groups on Facebook? It can be hard as so few people breastfeed at 6 Months so it's difficult to know what 'normal' is.

You're not a bad mum or letting your baby down. Everyone has got to do what is right for them. Trust your instincts and you will be fine. Whatever you do, remember it will just be a phase, they change so quickly at that age.

Theducks - this thread is good for growing out of feeding to sleep by themselves.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/sleep/2848823-has-anyone-breastfed-their-child-to-sleep-and-they-ve-self-settled-eventually-without-sleep-training

Mine did grow out of it themselves but it was very gradual and in phases, so stopped feeding to sleep for a week or two then fed to sleep for the odd night then started feeding to sleep for a couple of weeks solid then stopped again!! It just got less and less over time but was also at the point where if I didn't want to feed to sleep, I could say lie down and go to sleep.

Ok I'd start working on naps in the cot first and then night sleeps. I can imagine her consternation if she has you lying with her for naps and then you try and get her to sleep alone at night. Babies don't know the difference so she'll just be all confused.
I would choose one soothing method and stick to it absolutely religiously.
At 6 months you are looking at around 40-45 mins sleep in the morning then 2-2.5 hours at lunchtime plus an early bedtime around 6.45.
If she can't manage the long lunchtime nap yet then you can do a short power nap at around 4-4.30 to keep her going to a 7pm bedtime.
If you prefer a gentle and hands on method then @fatedestiny will give good advice.
Personally I am a fan of spaced soothing as it is very effective but I know it's not for everyone.

HV also told me that I should come downstairs to the sitting room for nighttime feeds, to avoid baby falling asleep on the breast . Not sure how baby would understand that, she'd just fall asleep down there instead.

Have you got a good bedtime routine? E.g. Bath, pjs, story, feed.
If not, I would start by establishing this, then once you have been doing it for a while, either stop feeding before she falls asleep or wake her up a bit before you put her down. Once you have been doing that for a while, change the order and do bath, pjs, feed, story. I'd also introduce something else for comforting her, if she won't take a dummy then a blanket or bear. I don't think gradual retreat works that young, you could try pick up/put down but it didn't work with my comfort sucking DS1!

www.isisonline.org.uk/how_babies_sleep/sleep_training/research_evidence/

This is an interesting study about sleep training in general. It basically says that sleep training does work in the short term but in the long term (after 6 months) there is no difference in the sleep of the babies that were sleep trained and those that weren't.

Everyone does things differently though and you've got to do what you feel is best for you and your baby.

Maybe have a good read about feeding to sleep and sleep training and decide what you want to do.

Coming downstairs for night time feeds is nonsense and dangerous as you could fall asleep on the couch holding the baby.
Do you feed lying down?

Yep TwoMinty she knows when it's bedtime and is happy to be zipped into her growbag and just wants boob at that point. I think PUPD would drive her even more crazy!

Thanks little I'll have a read of that. I have done a lot of reading - prob too much - and my head is spinning with different approaches.

Re feeding at night: yes, I feed lying down, we both drift off to sleep and when I wake an hour or so later I transfer her into her bednest (she'll be too big for that soon). She then sleeps on there for another few hrs happily enough. HV made me feel like that was exacerbating my feeding to sleep/lack of self settling problem

I know how you feel with the reading everything, I did with my first and got myself all stressed out over her sleep.

With my next 2, I did what you are doing, fed to sleep lying down and fell asleep. Once I'd accepted that it wouldn't be forever and it was working as it got us both back to sleep quickly and easily I was so much more relaxed and found I slept better.

I stopped even waking up properly as I wasn't up looking at the clock thinking 'it's only been 2 hours since they last woke up,do they really need milk,etc' Most nights I couldn't have even told you how often they woke up!

It's only a problem if you think it is - if you are happy to cosleep/feed to sleep then carry on and ignore HV. If you want to try and work towards self-settling then pick something that works for you. The methods which work quickly will involve crying. I did above approach plus a bit of CIO with my DS1, he only ever cried for 20 minutes before settling though. But he screamed at every wake up during the night and sometimes woke every 40 minutes so I was desperate! Just feeding lying down and cosleeping didn't work, I definitely noticed how often he woke up because he screamed in my ear each time and I couldn't get back to sleep because my nerves were jangling after that...

You're going far too fast OP. Gradual Withdrawal means not creating any distress for baby. But making gradual progress towards independant sleep.

So if the start point is feeding to sleep, the interim stages leading to in-cot patting/firm hand would be:

• breastfeed with comforter smushed to babys face. unlatching at the just gone to sleep point, rock to deep sleep, then into cot
• unlatching before asleep, rocking with comforter smushed to face until in a deep sleep, into cot
• feeding before getting ready for bed, rocking with comforter into deep sleep, into cot
• rocking with comforter until deep sleep, start timing how long this takes. Place into cot with firm hand slightly earlier each time.

Each stage might take several weeks to become accepted and part of the normal routine. So this is no quick fix.

And all this ^ needs to happen before you get to the in-cot settling, where you are currently trying to start from.

She always feeds to sleep and refuses a dummy no matter how often/how many varieties I try.

The issue is lack of independant comforter, this is going to make any form of independant sleep difficult. At the moment, breastfeeding = comfort for your baby. All refusing to breastfeed is doing is refusing to comfort.

Your options are:

• accepting your baby needs to be attachment parented, cant easily sleep independantly and find ways to maximise both of your sleep while feeding to sleep

• accepting that independant sleep is going to be hard and be prepared to put in the time investment needed for gradual withdrawal.

• accepting independant sleep is going to be hard and dealing with the distress of Controlled Crying, for faster results.

I think all CC is doing at this age is teaching baby that there will be no comfort. That doesn't mesh with my beliefs. I think getting babies to learn independant sleep is about replacing parental comfort with independant comfort. Not withdrawing all comfort. That's just me though.

feeding at night: yes, I feed lying down, we both drift off to sleep and when I wake an hour or so later I transfer her into her bednest (she'll be too big for that soon). She then sleeps on there for another few hrs happily enough

Just seen this. That sounds great to me. What's wrong with carrying on doing that?

When you are trying gradual withdrawal, are you doing it in the cosleeper?

I didnt realise, because it might be easier. Cuddling into the cosleeper cot might be a way to gradually withdraw. Try feeding baby lying down while in the co sleeper, unlatching and doing the 'firm hand on chest' thing gradually sooner within the feed.

The key is not moving a sleeping baby - so feed to sleep in the cot

Thanks FATE. I think she's going to outgrow the co-sleeper soon but I will see if DH can adapt the bigger cot to attach to our bed as well. Of the 3 options you suggest I am most drawn to developing independent sleep. I want her to be able to get herself off to sleep, for her own sake. Esp when she'll have to go to nursery in a few months.

I don't want her to cry. She gets so upset, so angry and distressed. It's not how I've been parenting her so far - she has never been left to cry about anything - and she generally is a sunny, happy little thing, and rarely cries ever by day.

It doesn't help that she's a desperately light sleeper as well. Anything can wake her up - creaky floorboard, toilet flushing, DH or I getting undressed. On one notorious occasion when she was pretty tiny she woke up when DH turned a page of a book he was reading.

No one in my family has bf this long, or at all, so they don't really get it. I get lots of advice telling me I need to let her cry, I just need to give her a bottle, or I should give up and wean her off the breast completely. It's hard to figure out what's best - as I said, my head's in a spin.

She's only 9 months old

I fed mine to sleep for a long time, well past when I went back to work and funnily enough they were fine settling for naps without me.

I would rule out any issues like tongue tie etc. If she's a light sleeper I wonder if she snores. Maybe this is why she cantresettle - because she is uncomfortable.

But the idea of worrying about her being an independent sleeper - she won't be needing you when she's older but she needs you now. Listen to your instincts. It's tiring worrying about what the books and theories say.