S.O.S (save our sleep) please

[chonky]

Hi. My dd has absolutely no sleep routine whatsoever. We try to put her down every night at 7 (after bath & feed), and generally she won't settle until 11 at the earliest, sometimes 2-3 (aaargghhhh). I've no idea as to how many naps she should have, as her sleep patterns from birth have been completely awry. For the first 2 months of her life she was very sleepy & unresponsive, to the point that she underwent paediatric investigation. The tests they did did indicate a few problems, including that fact that her vision was delayed. She now has her vision, and from 3 months onwards she has been an utter monkey about sleeping, it's almost as though when her vision switched on, someone flicked the sleep switch too.
I now have no idea as to how much sleep your average 4 month old gets/needs. I'm very aware that she's unlikely to settle if she's overtired at 7 in the evening, however, I don't want her to sleep too much in the day & then be wide awake in the evening.
Can anyone suggest a basic routine please? I'm not the GF sort (although not knocking it for those of you who finds it works), but neither can dh and I go on for much longer without some sleep! Sorry to sound a whinger, but we've been through the wringer with all the tests dd has been through, plus all the ongoing concerns we have about her & now we're exhausted.

chonky ime the more they sleep the more they sleep. i'd say 11-12 hours at night and at least 3 hours during day between two naps (one short one long or both equal).

i'd say that you're right to suppose that this might be about over tiredness.

we had to be very hardcore with ds (going in and checking just didn't do it) so one lunchtime i put him down and just left him to cry until he went to sleep (45 mins!) nearly killed me, i was crying the whole time, but we've never looked back. he sleeps during the day and 11 hours at night (day varies between 3 and 1 hour, he's 10 months old). i know this isn't for everyone and that people will condemn me for it, but it was what worked for us. and he is sooo happy when he gets enough sleep and so crochety when he doesn't.

also be aware that this is the age at which they start to get hungrier...we also found that structuring his feeds and weaning (which we did do at 17 weeks [self-flagellate, self-flagellate]) really helped. again, i know this will be looked on askance and it certainly doesn't work for anyone.

my total sympathies for you and your dh: when we were going through this (altho not quite as bad from the sounds of it) i was in a total state and could hardly speak from tiredness...

good luck

x

Hi chonky. Sleep deprivation is hideous. In my tiny experience babies need sleep to sleep. If mine doesn't get her naps her night time sleeping goes to pot. GF is not everyones cup of tea but I found her nap times are good and work for my dd. getting up at the same time every day and 2 good naps in the day time are a good idea. Also at about 12 wks I made a rule that dd when upstairs at 7 and did not come back down which basically meant if she woke up we feed/comforted her in her room with minimum disturbance.

Hi Chonky. Sorry to hear your little one's battling with sleep (as are you).
I found this post-it on the baby whisperer website which said a typical sleep pattern for a 3 month old is:
Night: 10 hours;
Day: 5 hours - 3 naps, 2 naps of 1.75 hours and 1 of 1.5 hours;
Total: 15 hours
We didn't use the Gina Ford routine exclusively but took bits and bobs from various sources and then found out what worked for us - and our DD slept through the night from 8 weeks with a 10pm dream feed. Another bit of advise that worked for us was to limit her awake time to 80 - 90 minutes. That prevented her from getting overtired and then helped her fall asleep quicker.
Hope that's a little bit of help for you.

You could be describing ds!

I found that he was getting overtired at bedtime, so I started putting him down for a short late afternoon nap 2-3 hours before bedtime. It was very hard to get him to settle (usually i put him in the pram and rocked him to sleep), but when he had the nap you really could see the effects at bedtime!

The other thing is, don't wait until she is obviously tired - ds always slept better when he was wide awake at bedtime (he was all smiley occasionally - it seemed a shame to put him to bed).

So ds's routine was - half an hour to an hour in the mornings (I found he'd get too tired in the afternoon if he slept longer), an hour and a half to 2 and a half hours after lunch then 15 mins or so in the afternoon. Similar to GF really.

I also did a bit of sleep training in that I left him to cry himself to sleep in the mornings for a while. It didn't work at any other time - just the morning nap (I left him 5 mins, then shushed and stroked his head, then left him another 5) and I found other sleeps were easier once that had become established - I guess it's a question of letting them know that dark quiet room = sleep. Put her down exactly 2 hours after she woke up (a la Gina Ford - it's one thing she's definitely right about).

I tried the pickup/put down thing too (where you pick them up if they cry and put them straight back down when they go quiet) but it didn't work for ds.

I hope you can understand all this - it's a bit garbled as it's a subject close to my heart!