Sleep is for the weak part four, we're officially hardcore.

[gingerninja]

Yes ladies we've got a shiny new thread to share our woes of chronic sleep deprivation, to hail all that is gloreous when something works and throw our arms in the air when it all goes wrong again.

One bad night doesn't impress us, we're awake more than we sleep cos we is 'ard I tell ya.

I haven't had my first breakfast yet, as DS slept in til 8.30!!

Usual amount of night wakings and whatnot, but anyway, the late wake-up is a rare treat.

mmm, two breakfasts!

yey, lie in for meggy!!!!
really must get off this blardy computer, havent had my breakfast yet!
i think the minutes spent on the computer are a bit like 'pub time',.... before you know it, they're calling last orders and youre stumbling home wondering where the time went

yay meg for sleep in.

cruise, myLO is 7 months next week but the last 2 nights he hasn't gone to sleep until 9pm due to late afternoon nap, so i'm wondering if we can just drop it, though i think the transition is going to be hard - a lot of energetic keeping awake type stuff!

Mrs TH, i've done all kinds of crazy detoxes, nutritional ones (cutting out a lot of stuff) and yogic cleanses involving drinking litres of salty water and fasts as well.

i wouldn't recommend anything extreme for a mum though cos you probably need a bit of time out of your full on life when doing a serious cleanse.

a suggestion of what might be appropriate once you stop breastfeeding could be:

cut out all processed food
no refined sugar
take a tablespoon of ground flaxseeds/linseeds every day
drink tablespoon of psyllium husks in water everyday
plenty of fresh veg and fruit
if you have a juicer, something like carrot, celery and beetroot juice everyday.

could do this for 2 weeks. also options of cutting out dairy and wheat, but starts to become quite labour intensive them. maybe better to do a simple one on the theory of cutitng out the junk!

Hi all,
I just wanted to let you know how much i love this thread! I lurk on it from time to time but haven't actually posted before cos I'm not sure I qualify-my 14 month old dd now only wakes up once a night for milk and sometimes but not always once more for cuddles/jumping on daddy before going back to her cot where she puts herself back to sleep. Anyway, I'm not posting to gloat (although it does feel quite good to be the one with a "good" sleeper for once!)but because it makes such a nice change to have a thread about babies who don't sleep much without everyone saying "do controlled crying", "babies over 4 months don't really need a night feed", "you are making a rod for your own back", "if you let dd come in your bed they will never sleep anywhere else" etc etc.

I'm sorry but wherever did this notion that all babies reach a certain age and are no longer hungry at night come from? I still get hungry in the night sometimes so how can i expect my dd not to when she has her dinner earlier than me?

I have so many people telling me that they don't know how i get up with her everynight but it's simple, when a newborn she used to cry all night long, as she got older she had 2 hourly feeds through the night. She then gradually cut down to two night feeds then at 10 months or so started having just one-the one night feed almost feels like heaven after what we were used to!

My only worry is that no 2 is coming along in december and I'm not sure how i'll manage getting up wih both of them, hopefully the feeds will coincide (am i dreaming here?!)or who knows, this one might even be a good sleeper! If not maybe i can train dd to feed the baby so i can sleep?! Later on the two of them will be sharing a single bedroom and i'm just praying they'll both sleep ok in such close quarters! If not, I know where to come!

hi claireybee. thankyou for your support. I sometimes forget poeple are reading what i write. feels like i'm emailing friends on this thread
can your dd teach my ds to wake up only once
you prob know but i'm trying to cut him down to one bottle a night atm. (he's 18m)
Don't know how it happened. he was bf until he was 8 months old and only fed once or twice in the night. anyway we're having a little success last night he only had 6oz milk so fingers crossed we get there eventually!

congratulations on no.2 btw

bags how was artic monkeys concert last night? hope you had a good time

Claireybee, thanks for popping in and saying hi. I agree with your sentiments. Hope it all goes well with No2 but feel free to pop back if you're suffering with 2 lo's waking at night. Sounds unbearable. I'd like to think I wouldn't be here by then but I'm probably kidding myself and I'm not sure I could leave my siftw sisters anyway.

Hello Cruise hope it's all still good with you. Is your little man still on two naps? Is he still waking early? My DD has taken to waking for the day at 4.50 exactly, you could set the clock by it. It's horrid. Anyway, I'd like to encourage her to drop the first nap but with such an early waking it's probably not possible. I wanted to try and establish a new routine so when she goes to the CM in about 4 weeks she's only needing an afternoon nap otherwise it's a lot of change all in one go. CM wouldn't be able to keep to our current timings due to school runs etc. Given that my attempts to 'establish a routine' have never worked I'm not sure why I think it may now

We had one waking last night again which is such a dramatic improvement. We've also got another new tooth which is moving at such a rate. Last night I noticed a little crack in the gum but this morning you can now see and feel the tooth the last one took about 4 days from gum splitting to tooth surfacing.

Well done to those making progress.

EP could you position the cot next to your bed so you can hold hands through the bar if need be like we're doing. It feels like it's working and might make it wasier on you as you don't actually have to get out of bed.

Hi everyone,

I have read all the posts, I promise, but I'm a bit hard of thinking this afternoon, so forgive me if I get anything mixed up.

As far as I remember, no-one had a real shocker, which is good to hear .

Meg for your lovely lie-in.

Ginger - hope the teeth don't disrupt things for you too much

EP - I'm with you on the jabs! DD is having an extra one as well, as our health authority recommends TB jabs for babies.

Tam - just had the one breakfast myself, but as it was coated with lashings of grease, I feel it should count double as well

Well, I discovered an advantage of having a non-sleeping baby! As we've yet to find that magic bedtime routine that guarantees sleep, it didn't seem to matter too much that we've been away, and the routine went out of the window. In fact the wakings were pretty mcuh the same . As such, I think we'll try and get away as often as our limited finances permit .

Oh, and Tam, the Artics rocked! I was sooo tired afterwards though - I'm getting far too old for partying hard .

hi ginger . ds has changed his routine slightly but defo for the better. Now goes to bed around 8 - 8:15pm, wakes around 7 - 7:30am naps twice daily around 10am and 3pm. Just perfect..... for now. well done on the one waking per night. What a long way you ahve come...

Bags: glad you had a good night out

Ginger: DS actually sleeps better at the cms as he gets more tired! He is getting a bit funny about his afternoon nap atm and sometimes misses it - went to bed without his bath this evening and was asleep within about 10 mins! Does not mean he will now stay asleep...

We are using a travel cot with mesh sides, so I have to fish over the side to get to DS which means getting out of bed [sigh].

CB: nice to hear from you . Hope you get a sleeper this time! If not, you know where to find us

Sending you all lovely sunny sleepy vibes for tonight

hi claireybee, and thanks for the support congrats on no. 2. dp keeps pestering me to try for the next one, but i just want to sleep first!!!

bags - was thinking about you this morning. was listening to fearne cotton on radio 1 and the reviews were fantastic a little bit but you had a great time.....too old?????? you're younger than me you cheeky minx

hope you all had good days. we've had a bit of sunshine at last
wishing everyone a sleeptastic night

hello everyone, special hello clareybee.

hope you have fab nights.

ginger - sounds like real progress with LO - well done!

EP, Tibs, i'm so confused about naps at the moment. i think i need a routine more than ds does!

off to bed for an early night.

Bags so of artic concert too.

amber don't rock the boat (with naps) when ds is doing so well at night!

Hi cruisemum. glad your ds giving you a sleeptastic life atm.

Tibs everyone pestering me about no.2 aswell!

EP yay for your 10 mins settling tonight. Hope it lasts

hi amber, dd sings from her own hymn sheet with regard to naps......and just about everything come to think of it

night tam!! are you tempted re. no 2????? i'm not atm, i must admit. dp is very disappointed, but then he's not the one with broken sleep

yeah, his naps are all becoming all funny times though! today he had 30 mins at 10am, 20 mins at 1.15 and 30 mins at 4pm. can't believe he survived on that little, but he did.

tibs, i don't want another one until LO is at school and i can spend my pregnancy sleeping in the day and watching soaps

why do you think i waited until ds was 12 before i had another?!!

and ds was a good sleeper, dd will be 24 before i have another!!

really gotta go....... night amber
night everyone, hope we have some good nights out there xx

Bags of your gig, I used to go to gigs a lot but don't think I'll be doing it for a while, at least not while DS is attached to boob every 2/3 hours! (Could always take him with me, I suppose...)

I have to admit to feeling a bit broody when I see tiny babies, but think i will be waiting for DS' sleep to sort itself out first, for one thing DH and I haven't slept in the same room for a week so it's not likely to happen yet!

Also do we need a new thread soon..??

Hi y'all, I have been referred here by the wise Mrs TH (thanks doll! ). I am really impressed to find a group of mothers who admit to being as sleep deprived as myself! I am so used to the feeling of being judged to be a 'bad mummy' cos my bambino didnt sleep through by 2 weeks old .

By way of introduction I have given you a bit of a potted history below of where we are with our sleep situation and I am absolutely hoping beyond hope that some of you might have dealt with some of the issues that I am at present. I really look forward to hearing your ideas.... so here goes (sorry its a bit long)

I am breastfeeding my LO and hope to continue up until she is at least a year old. She has been sleeping in our bed, or a co-sleeper/bedside cot, from birth. For the first six weeks of her life she did not sleep unless physically attached to me, which seemed like most of the time! Nowadays she will sleep through the night but only if she is under my armpit or starfish style btwn DH and myself, with a foot on each. I am now trying to get her to sleep in her own cot as I really want to get some better sleep myself. She is still waking several times through the night and I am nursing her off to sleep each time she wakes in the night, 3 or 4 times from when I go to bed. (she also wakes like clockwork 3 times from the time we get her to sleep - usually around 8ish till we go to bed about midnight)

I will be returning to work in September and I would like to continue bf'ing - probably just am and pm, but I really want to wean her from the night feeds. She has really resisted my attempts to get her to sleep independently and ends up in our bed most nights. Both my partner and I are really suffering from the interrupted sleep and I really want to sort this out.

I guess my questions are:
How did you get your baby to sleep independently if you had been co-sleeping previously?
How did you get your baby to stop waking up for feeds throughout the night?
What is your bedtime routine?
....and most importantly how did you manage to get your baby to sleep without the boob?

I really dont think I want to do the CIO (yet) - but I am open to other methods ie PU/PD and the gradual withdrawal ... but it would be really useful to hear from mothers who have actually managed to change their babies sleep habits without resorting to CIO. My HV told me that CIO was the only option - I am not convinced that it is.... please help!!

All words of advice most gratefully recieved!! Apologies again for the longest intro in the history of SIFTW

Hello, quick one:

Hackney? I am from Hackney (well, stoke newington) too - still haven't got MMR though ( was glad we have BCG at 6 weeks even though it has left a horrible scar on her arm cos there was an outbreak at my school when she was 3 mths!). Maybe if anyone else is from London we could meet up and share horror stories in rl???

Bags, Arctic Monkeys sounds great - the night Aph went away with dh I went off to a small gig (on my own ) and LOVED IT - felt so cool and part of it again. Will definitely be adding more gigs to my (minimal) social life.

I am so up for no.2 - we are trying right now. Well, if we ever get a chance to make a baby anyway...

Mamahotfoot, I firmly believe there are ways without CIO and I think the key is to view it as them learning something new. try to first work out what do they need to learn? (can you tell i am a teacher)eg for me, when we first started to tackle it (at 8mths - and improved her sleep massively) Aph needed to learn that she can go to sleep on her own and that its ok to be awake in her cot. This might mean playing in her cot in the day, with me leaving occasionally (and coming back) and attempting a gradual withdrawal. For me, CIO would not teach her what I want her to learn so seems pointless to me. Mind you, she certainly isn't a 12 hr straight through baby (although we fell - happily - back to co-sleeping at 10mths...)

My view is that I wouldn't teach her anything else by making her cry so why would I guide her through this this way. I am quite a strict teacher btw - and pretty firm with discipline too. But positive discipline (cos it actually works long-term)

(hmm... not so quick. sorry)

Hello all,

Forgot to welcome claireybee yesterday .

Hi mamahotfoot - no answers to your questions I'm afraid, but I know some of the others, Ginger in particular, have been working on the things you mentioned, so I'm sure you'll get some sound advice.

Deeply impressed that you lot are already talking about having more babies! I have always thought one might be it for me, and now with the sleep thing we'll definitely be having a big gap at least!.

Having said that, some improvements were witnessed in the Bags house last night . Re-settled 7.30, up at midnight (bit of a long one), up at 4, then one dummy re-plug before 7! As such, dd slept in her own room until 4. She was fully swaddled though.

Hope things were ok for everyone else too!

how old is your LO mamahotfoot?

welcome mama hot foot. I think at least one of us is tackling each of your issues atm but not all at the same time ifswim. ginger is trying to stop co-sleeping and get dd to stay in her cot all night. They are stying with her and holding her hands etc until she settles. think it's a form of GW/GR.

I am tackling he night feeding as ds had regressed back to taking a bottle every 4 hours (he's 18 months ) but am happy to co-sleep until we move house in oct/nov and then move him into his own bed (as opposed to cot)

I think everyone else is still bf'ing. I bf ds up until 8 months and then had a blocked milk duct/lump and stopped. Still feel like a failure for not making the year mark
Tibsy is trying to reduve night feeds i think?
ginger has succesfuuly stopped dd feeding at night also.

Bottom line is no matter your problem one of us has had it/has it and is trying it 'fix' it so you're in good company!

Our night was pretty good.
Bed at 7.30, woke at 11 and came in with us but no milk and didn't even ask for it (this is where the success is)then woke at 3 (had milk this time) and then 7 for the day

Doesn't sound that great but the not asking for milk at 11ish is a good start for us