11mo will not sleep in cot at all.

[Quodlibet]

He is driving me mental.

It's taking longer and longer to get him to sleep, the only way currently is feeding to sleep, and when I put him in his cot he wakes immediately and cries until I take him out.

I can co sleep with him once I go to bed, but there's nowhere I can leave him in the evening where he isn't in danger of rolling off the bed.

My entire evenings are spent with my nipple being chewed/baby in physical contact with me. It's more draining than having a newborn. If by some miracle I do get him asleep in his cot he is up again and crying within 30 minutes.

Currently I want to run screaming from the house and not come back.

He wants to be with me/on me all day long as well. I need a break in the evenings.
So far this evening I have been trying to get him to sleep for 3 hours. He has slept for 20 minutes during that time and is back awake and rolling round wailing now.

It seems like he hates the process of falling asleep. He just thrashes and wails for hours no matter what I do.

I don't know what to do, am honestly at the end of my tether with him.

I have no advice for a long term plan (I BF and coslept until my DD was 16mo and then started moving her) but in the short term, if he falls asleep feeding in your bed, I'd make that a safe place for him. We use a bed guard on our bed (a foam wedge one which both DD and now DS quite like to snuggle into a bit) and have a video monitor on.

I am in the same position with an 8 month old. No evening at all since birth.

We are day 2 of following fairly gentle sleep training - see the thread started by nectarina called "what worked for us" in 2012. Not fully night weaning yet but already making really good progress.

Or your alternative is to make the bed safe (mattress on floor etc) and continue as is.

I feel for pain op, this was exactly my eldest. We put our mattress on the floor.

Also her dad settling her for 3 nights in a row, she cried much less than we thought, and he stayed with her till she slept. It put things on a different footing.

Have you read No Cry Sleep Solution? I didn't follow itr strictly, but it had some good ideas.

And remember, it will pass, dd is 13 now, it's a distant memory. She is very confident now for all that input and cosleeping!

You need to make the fundamental decision between if you want to:

■ Let baby feed to sleep and cosleep. Make that safe and stop trying to move a sleeping baby into the cot (that never works long term)

■ Teach baby to go to sleep in the cot. That means completely separating feeding and sleeping, offering alternate sources of comfort so baby learns to go from awake to asleep in the cot. Lots of tears and stress. But there are ways you can get your baby doing this.

Watching with interest as I am here too with DD - very similar age!

FATE, what I WANT to do is teach him to sleep in his cot. It isn't possible to make our double bed safe for co sleeping for various reasons. And I want my space back.

But I feel like I don't get to choose. He is actually (it turns out) both ill and teething at the moment, hence last nights horror show. But it's always something which means that the boob to sleep habit is getting more and more ingrained and the consequences if he doesn't have it more and more unbearable. Basically at the moment he rolls around whinging/wailing and half asleep, and will do this for hours until I stick a nipple in his mouth. How do I break out of that one???

I feel for you OP my DS was like this. He will grow out of it but I understand how hard it feels right now.

In terms of solutions would you be open to trying a dummy to help replace the boob once he has had enough of a feed. Or a bottle of water. Just something to get him off the boob? If he's teething maybe some calpol just before bedtime to help him get over the hurdle of actually falling asleep?

Is there someone else who could lie with him after you've done the bedtime feed? He may not like it but after a couple or days might start to associate sleep with something other than feeding?

Hang in there OP it's a tough phase but it will pass. Hope something on this thread helps.

Thanks Zeddy - yep he has a dummy. Used to be fine to feed til dozy then put in cot to settle himself to sleep. Since he's been pulling to stand (he mastered walking this week) it has been much harder to get him to lie down though.

Since he's been pulling to stand (he mastered walking this week)

Ah! 💡

Sleep often goes shit at this pulling to standing phase.

Have you considered a sidecar cot? Interim to get baby into the cot, you can physically hold baby still in the cot by cuddling, holding dummy in, firm hand on chest. Then just wait in that position until asleep and extract yourself.

A pool noodle under the bottom sheet of his cot mattress makes a barrier enough that he won't accidentally roll over it when asleep. He can still climb over it when awake, but one would assume you will hear on the monitor if he wakes and starts climbing.

I've tried firm hand stuff, but he is really strong and won't lie down if he wants to get up - just gets cross.

The sidecar/pool noodle thing would have worked a couple of months ago but he crawls around and gets up on his feet half asleep now. I would worry about getting up the stairs quick enough if he wakes up.

He properly does just romp all over the bed to avoid going to sleep. I'm currently on the double Hemnes with him in our spare room as it has 3 walled sides so he can't fall out. He does laps of the bed half asleep and grumbling when he is tired/winding down. It's exhausting trying to settle him.

We had this when DS started walking. FATE was very helpful! Different for us in that we weren't BF so slightly less complicated but we decided no more cosleeping and he was to stay in the cot all night. We had to do a lot of sitting by the cot pinning him down with a firm hand on his back and once he was in the cot, he didn't come out until morning. It was hard but worked really quickly and he's since slept 12 hours straight every night and we literally put him in the cot standing up at bedtime, shut the door and that's that. Before that there was always a reason to cosleep or get him out for cuddles, be it teeth, illness, whatever. But then we realised that babies that age teeth constantly and have permanent colds so we just bit the bullet.

The sidecar/pool noodle thing would have worked a couple of months ago but he crawls around and gets up on his feet half asleep now

The idea would be you stayed until fully asleep.

Use your body to physically hold baby still in a cuddle. Cuddling right in and around baby (like co sleeping, but in the cot) is a way to physically calm and still baby with cuddles that is more robust than the firm hand while leaning over the cot.

Right, with a bit more perspective, the issue is that I really can't leave him in any kind of open bed, pool noodle or no. He really is unusually mobile and strong (can walk and climb a flight of stairs at 11m, physically like a toddler really). He will wake up and in seconds be crawling/climbing in his sleep. Last night he woke while sleeping between me and DP and we had a job keeping him from falling out of the bed because he had climbed over DP in seconds. Our bed is high (it is a storage bed so we can't change it) and I can't think of a way I would be comfortable leaving him upstairs in it while asleep. He needs to be contained in his cot to be safe.

The other conundrum is: he really gets upset if he wakes and isn't immediately offered a nipple to settle himself back with. Much sobbing and flinging himself about. So I don't know how to break this habit - for the sake of us all not being awake for hours it's the crutch I rely on to get him back to sleep.

We are in a vicious circle that I am very motivated to break

Positive update: tonight I managed to get him to sleep in his cot from awake, by staying with him down at eye level and being very smiley and connected. Stroked, tickled, kissed him through the bars, kept repeating 'good boy, lie down, sleepy time'. It took half an hour and a bit of half-hearted wailing but he did manage it.
Tonight is the first night for ages he hasn't woken up multiple times in the evening. This usually only happens when DP puts him to bed (I presume he wakes looking for me).
I think it's partly about me having the resources at bedtime and not being completely knackered and negative myself.
Anyway onwards and upwards...