9w old will not sleep

[dueat44]

My dd is an excellent sleeper once she IS asleep - usually goes through from 8pm to 3 or 4 am, then feeds, then up again between six and seven.

BUT - it takes forever to get her to go off - anything from 1 to 2 hours, including after her night feed. We tried everything, including sleeping with her. Nothing worked except giving her my finger to suck, which did send her off a bit more quickly. She cannot keep a dummy in, however.

But we have created an absolute quandary for ourselves, because she has become totally reliant on a finger to suck - and wakes up once I take it away, however soundly she seems to be sleeping. Then the whole process begins again - sometimes this goes on for three hrs, longer than the pre-finger era. I can't sit up most of the night any longer with her.

In desperation, we are considering a form of sleep training: not full-on 'cry it out', but putting her in her cot, with lots of reassurance, but no finger and no picking up to comfort her. Is 9w much too young??

she is still tiny - 9weeks is still brand new

You may be surprised to her it, but it sounds like she is doing very well for 9 weeks.

It is very typical behaviour, I remember it used to take DD1 three hours to get to sleep.

But it did suddenly get better somewhere between 12 and 16 weeks, so there is hope.

Maybe you can try putting her in her cot and keeping your hand on her so she knows you're there?

Have you tried rising the head end of the cot - if she has reflux, then this may help a little.

Swaddling is also something you could try, I've heard that is supposed to be good.

My DD is 10 weeks and feeds all evening from 5pm onwards. Once we go up to bed it takes anything up to 3 hours for her to go to sleep. Yours is doing well to sleep from 8pm

In retrospect, her taking a couple of hours to go to sleep with some rocking and patting doesn't seem bad at all. What I'm really converned about is the dependency we seem to have created on a finger to suck, which has made the original tiring but apparently usual prolonged bedtime much worse, with a lot more wakefulness and a lot more crying. Things have really escalated - she can't nap in the daytime now either without the finger being offered whenever she comes near the surface of sleep, and she wakes in the night a few minutes after it is withdrawn. Rocking and patting no longer does it for her, even a couple of hours worth.

Oh, and it takes hours to get her down after her night feed also. So if she wakes for it at 3.30am, as she did yestarday, my night is effectively over.

Persevere with the dummy, dueat. She should be old enough to take one ... if not now, then very imminently.

I know some people have strong views about them, but they're a Godsend for getting them off to sleep.

You should find that her sleeping improves sometime over the next few weeks anyway.

Hang on in there, gal ... with your pruney finger!

Agree with your post Desiderata.

Both mine had a dummy - and both gave it up by themselves by the time they were 3 or 4 months old (although dd had discovered her thumb by then!)

Have you tried swaddling?

Any particular sort of dummy, Mercy? The orthodontic ones just fall out when she starts to doze.

That can be a problem with dummies, that if they fall out they wake up and you have to put it back in.

You're right on that, Belgo. I'd forgotten the rummaging around for dummies in the middle of the night!

Eventually I attached a kind of soap dish to the outside of the cot and put three or four in, so I knew where they could be easily located.

I think I just used the Avent ones.

Although to be fair, mine didn't fret if their dummy fell out once they were asleep.

Dueatt - I do sympathise, my dd was a nightmare to get to sleep. But it does get easier as they get older (better not say how old in dd's case )

Are you breast or bottle-feeding?

my ds took hours to settle at that age. he did settle down at around 3mths however.