Gradual withdrawl method - help needed

[lori21]

We are doing the GW method as described by the Millpond Clinic. We've done the rocking to sleep and are now on the holding to sleep. The next one is the 'holding in cot' to sleep. I'm a bit sonfused about how to do this. I may be being a little thick as I am rather sleep deprived. If anyone else has done it please give me some tips

Thanks

congratulations to walbert and walberts bubba girl my dd 8 months, still no bloody teeth!!!

thanks tibsy! i call them 'bloody teeth' when dd is crunching away on my finger as she has absolutely no interest in teething rings!!! make the most of not having gnarled fingertips!!!

My lo got his first tooth when he was about 9 months. he still has just one!

lol at your victorian maiden bikebug

Wow tibsy you must be soooo proud

Fantastic walbert - my lo was waking hourly at 5 1/2 months so am impressed!

Another good night here. This gr / gw is sooooo fantastic and I feel that as it is so flexible you can give more or less support to help them sleep depending on circumstances rather than an all or nothing approach.

So our night was...

7.15 asleep with hand on chest

11pm wake up and feed

2.30 wake up and quick feed to calm him down then hold to sleep in chair

6.30 playing in cot

6.45 joins us in bed for cuddles

My lo is a nightmare in bed with us so i'm afraid I have banned him until 6am!

well, another unsettled night here so in bed with me at about 11.30 so will hope to pick up where I left off when she's got over her recent 'reason not to sleep' illness. (which I think is another tooth as she's been very unsettled for about two days. Must dash, catch up later

From what i have read we do expect a lot for our lo to sleep through the night consistently whilst they are so young. They have got so much to cope with - new teeth, learning to sit, crawl, walk, talk, all the new experiences they have and their growing understanding, the development of seperation anxiety, etc etc etc I'm sure my lo's brain is far too active to sleep and everyone assures me that he will start finding it easier to sleep once he has started school. Only 4 years to go then.....

Am tending to post updates of my nights on the Sleep is for the weak thread and can't be bothered to repeat them here. What a lazy cow . But in brief we are on holding hands in the cot to get her to sleep first thing and trying to repeat that when she wakes in the night unless she insists she's hungry (I take this to mean when she keeps on crying and trying to gnaw my hand or goes back to sleep only to wake again less than an hour later). The thing is she isn't waking any less frequently atfer midnight. We've only been at it for a week tho. Will I have to get to the 'last' stage to see any improvement in the frequency of waking? Or stop bfing at all in the night? Anyone know??

lilysma, how old is your lo? i'm sorry, i cant remember
i ve seen a definite improvement, and have only just moved to sitting beside the cot stage after weeks!! no one could accuse me of hurrying things along!!
lori, i agree, there must be so much going on in their heads, all this new information to absorb and talk about an overload of sensations, bless em i guess we do expect a lot of them really. and as for your feelings of gr/gw,...ditto, it rocks!!! yey, for your night too
ginger 'reason not to sleep' illness

night all, lets hope the littleys have a peaceful one

To begin with I did not see any huge improvement. I found gradually spacing out the bf - increasing by 1/2 hour the time between feeds every 2 days - seemed to make a big difference a long with the settling to sleep in the cot. The way it is written in the book - with military position - I found was a lifeline to me and gave me something concrete to work on. I even wrote a little chart (Monday rock to sleep feed every 2 hours, Tuesday rock to sleep feed every 2 1/2 hours, etc) We have been working on it for 3 weeks now with a few pauses for Christenings, birthdays, and visitors. The first week 1 to 2 hours wake up, second week 2 - 3 hour wake up, third week 3 - 4 hour wake up. Lets home this continues!

AAARRRGGGHHHH what has happened to his lovely day time naps. Yesterday he refused to go down for his afternoon nap and I gave up at about 3.30pm (or he would not get off to be at night) This morning he was doing all the sleepy signs but it took 1hr 20mins before he went to sleep. please tell me this is what happens when the night time sleeps start improving and it will all work itself out in the end

Tibsy my LO is 5 months and a couple of weeks. We seem to have settled into a pattern of 7.30ish to sleep with little difficulty, 10.30/11ish she wakes up for a feed and goes back to sleep easily, 2-3ish she wakes up and I don't feed her but settle her with varying degrees of difficulty (last night it was at least 40 mins with screaming and ended up picking her up and cuddling to sleep), then 5-6ish she wakes and I feed her and she MAY go back to sleep for another hour or so, or maybe not. This would be fine and dandy if I could only stop having to settle her at 2-3 and could push the 5 am waking to more like 6. Will keep trying!

Lilysma, I was still feeding on demand until last week and DD is almost 8 months. I wasn't happy to stop until I felt she was a bit more established on solids and therefore getting a certain amount of calories and nurishment from food other than milk. I naively thought that the minute she was on solids she's start sleeping. Didn't realise it takes them so long to actually start eating anything. It's still hit and miss.

Last night was similar to previous two (or three?) so will post in a couple of days when I feel we're making progress again.

Tibsy, are you still feeding at night? If so what hours are you 'resisting'? I'm going 12 -6 but am thinking of trying to extend it.

gingerninja - sounds very familiar. My lo eats like a horse but this has made absolutely no difference to his sleep (or lack of it) Now he is 'on the move' I am hoping that will exhaust him! I stop feeding him at about 11pm and start again at about 6am.

lilysma - your night sounds spookily familiar. My lo goes to bed at about 7/8pm wakes up for a feed at about 10/11pm then I comfort him at about 2/3am then we start the day at about 6/7am. This to me is fantastic even though he is nearly 10months. After so many months of only having 3 hours sleep a night in short blocks having a couple of 3/4 hour streches is wonderful

Well they say proud comes before a fall. I was so excited about sharing my news that my lo went to sleep in his cot without me holding him and just sitting by his cot singing. Unfortunately within 30 mins he was awake and screaming. I decided to feed him even though it is against my rules and fingerscrossed I am not storing up trouble for myself. I decided to cope with the pulling himself up by ignoring it and then leaving him to do whatever he wanted in the cot until he cried then I would lie him down and sing to him. I repeated this for about 40 minutes and he eventually went to sleep tucked in the corner of his cot holding onto the bars!

Hmm, I would also be grateful for a night like that , Lori, even if only temporarily . It has all gone wrong here due to DD having a cold, so I'm back to 2 hourly feeds .

Sorry to hear that lilysma, you think you are getting some kind of pattern and they change it on you. Strangely my lo sleeps better with a cold so hopefully when he recovers from his snotty nose then the 3-4 hour sleeps will continue and maybe we can move onto 4-5 hour sleeps. Here's hoping. Spoke to my friend today and her lo sleeps for 10 hours Although he was an appalling sleeper from birth and has only just improved wereas my lo was a great sleeper until 4 months - lulled me into a false sense of security the little darling

Does anyone know whether babies need a late evening feed (ie 10ish) at 5.5 months? It seems to me that I'm giving my dd really mixed messages by settling her awake at first, then feeding her when she next wakes up (I'm too tired myself to wake her up after this and then get her to sleep again, so I put her down pretty much asleep) and then trying to settle her without feeding her for the rest of the night. But not sure about how to resolve this. She seems to wake up if I try to dreamfeed her in her sleep. Should I try harder to put her down awake after this feed or try to get rid of it altogether?

This is a hypothetical question at the moment as all bets are off because she has a cold so I've reverted to my previous 'bung her on the boob when she wont settle without it' approach

hi all!!
glad to hear that some success is being had. have been laid up with a nasty sickness bug going around, so am with you atm lilysma and 'all bets are off'
well tonigth was first night i've felt human, so back to it and shes settled herself really well.
i've only skimmed posts sorry, but....... am still feeding dd when she wakes at about 2ish, but she had pushed herslf forward to 4ish before i got ill. will see what happens now we're back in the saddle!
i'm sorry if i'm a bit vague, serious lack of sleep over last few days and for once i can say its not cos of dd!!
will post again when more with it! xxxx

hello all, hope GW is going well for everyone. I've not been posting because I'm not sure where we're at. DH has been doing bedtimes, and I am limited to a gentle 'so, dod you pick him up then?' to find out what he has been doing. He knows the program, but (as previously mentioned) is even softer than me, and incapable of resisting any crying at all... Also very tetchy about any implied criticism of his parenting, hence the gentle questioning only . Still, the small one slept all evening yesterday, woke up at about 1 am, came into bed with me and slept until 5 when the daylight woke him. Must, must, must get blackouts. Sleep vibes all round

lilysma - my lo was feeding every 1 to 2 hours at 5 1/2 months so don't know what is best. What I did over the last month was to increase the times between feeds until he was going about 8hours without a feed so now I feed him at about 7pm, then 11pm then 7am. This is theoretical as I will feed him any time after about 10pm (but only once) and any time after about 6am.

We had a very peculiar night last night.

7pm - bf then asleep in cot with me next to him singing
9.30pm - woke - screamed - held to sleep but he really protested
1.30am - woke - bf then sleep
5.30am - woke - would not settle, took him into bed with us (against my golden rule )
6am - fed, he played, cried, fed again,
7.30am - he went back to sleep and we all had a lie in until 9am (very naughty )

tibsy - so sorry, posted before I typed - hope you are feeling much better now

bikebug - lucky you having dh doing some of the work, mine is a teacher and has hundreds of pieces GCSE coursework to mark so is even less hands on than usual.

I think the lo must have heard me talking about his sleep routine so he's now changed it! So last night was

7.30pm bf, story, sleep
9pm ish brief wake up for cuddle / comfort
2.30am bf, sleep
5.30am wanting bf but had to settle for a cuddle
6.30am bf then up for the day

Is anyone still around? I'm back to trying to space dd's feeds after relenting and bfing to sleep while she had a cold and then planning to start on the GW again. I've got the cold now, though, so was a bit crap last night. Consistency is not my strong point . Any successes out there?

Sorry, been a busy weekend

Anyway FANTASTIC NIGHT

7.30pm - sleep

12.30am - bf

6.30am - awake for the day

I think I can live with that!!!!

Fingerscrossed this will continue

anyone still there? No sucess stories here . He's going down to sleep without my holding and cuddling him (I hold and cuddle to get him sleepy, but then put down in cot and the only contact is the constant lying him back down). But it isn't translating to better nights at all. We were up last night at 9.50, 11.30, 1.00, 2.30 and 4-5.15am (when I utterly gave up, bf and took him into the spare bed for the first time all week). I am getting very low about this now. Seriously considering cc for the first time, as I feel this is just prolonging the agony for all of us. DH now thinks I am a crap parent - he is very anti cc - but it's not him who has to get up . I've had 2 full nights sleep in 14 months and I am very close to the end of my tether. Hope it is going better for others - I think I just have a tough case here. Or maybe I'm just crap and anyone else would have sorted this by now. Bah. Don't think I dare start a cc thread either. Oh well, off to the GP this afternoon (possibly his ears hurt, so getting him checked before I even contemplate leaving him to cry).

Should have said - Lorisparkle, what great news! Sorry, I was being selfish ranting on, it is lovely to hear it is working so well for you. Long may it continue

hi ladies, am now recovered from the dreaded lurgy thank god
dd 'almost' got her first teeth thru too, its all been happening here!!!!
i've just started introducing supper to dd as the GR/GW has been working really well with encouraging her to self settle so she was just waking for food. anyway, last couple of nights, gave her some baby rice after last boob feed and she slept til 4.30am!!!!!! woo hoo

lori sleeptastic for you too!!!!!!

lilysma - i'm a bit of a lightweight too, have only just got arse into gear last couple of months and dd 8 1/2 months! i tried holding her out by cuddling back to sleep and even took a bottle up to deter her, she hates the bottle!!! obviously if she seemed desperate i would just feed her whenever.
she had her 9 month check the other day (early) and the hv said i needed to feed her up during the day with calorific food to get her to sleep thru.........you think!!!!!!! ffs, what does she think i've been trying to do?