Returning to work and baby waking hourly still

[Sleepdeprivationistorture]

I’m in desperate need of help I’m really struggling at the moment. Dd is 8months, she’s never been a great sleeper but has steadily got worse since about 4 months and has now been waking in the night every hour for weeks.
She used to have a 2-3 sometimes even 4 hour stretch from being put to bed about 7 and then would have another 2hour stretch and then wake every hour. She usually co-sleeps at least half the night.

But for the last few weeks she’s been waking about between 15 mins and an hour after being put to bed, then maybe going two hours then waking every hour after that.

She’s exclusively breast fed and every night I wish I’d given her formula I’ve convinced myself that breastfeeding has caused this and it’s making me resent feeding which I once loved. I don’t really want to give up breastfeeding!

Dp is no help and never has been and dd is very attached to me and won’t settle for him now at all which is just building loads of resentment and bitterness - but that’s a whole other thread.

I go back to work full time in six weeks and I’m dreading it, the lack of sleep is severely affecting my moods now and I don’t know how to get out of this rut. I’d love to break her sleep associations with feeding but she’s very stubborn and I don’t want to do anything too harsh like cio or cc.

I lsit up all night imagining having a night in a lush hotel with a bed to myself and a full nights sleep but to be honest I’d settle for just a couple of 3-4 hour stretches! Please someone tell me there’s something I can do that doesn’t involve lots of crying and will help her sleep better before I return to work? Or if anybody has a magic wand I can wave that would be amazing.

Just want to offer some comfort - my youngest was like this - I went back to work when he was 9 months and actually found I it ok! Yes I'd love more sleep but it was doable. Tho mine is an office job, not manual labour!

I think speeding up weaning and filling her tummy up is a bit of red herring here. Yes it will help. But the problem you have is that she’s reliant on being BF to get to sleep and so is waking at the end of every sleep cycle.

I had the same with DD2 - she was waking 8-9 times every single night and killing me. When she was 11mo I went cold turkey on the night feeds, but still fed her in the evening and first thing in the morning. At that time she was barely eating anything, hardly any surprise as she was drinking milk all night. I spent 2 nights cuddling her back to sleep - the first night she protested for 2 hours but I was with her the whole time. The second night she went back to sleep more quickly. The third night she slept for 6 solid hours for the first time ever. I nearly wept with relief.

There are more gradual methods, as mentioned above, where you pick a five or six hour window and decline to feed in that time. It’s supposed to be more gentle but, for me, I just think it’s prolonging the process and not really understandable to a baby why they get milk at some points during the night but not all. I think you just need to find a method that suits you and your baby though, I can understand why some prefer to go down that route.

The biggest point I think though is to come up with a plan and stick to it - consistency is key. This is why it’s important to choose a method you feel 200% comfortable with as otherwise you’ll bail out when it gets tough. Realistically there will be some crying, but I felt ok about letting my baby cry when I was there to comfort her. I actually slept in the cot bed with her for the first two nights!!!!

I hope that helps - feel free to ask any questions. I currently BFing my third, now 7mo, and will need to tackle his rubbish sleep soon! BFing does have fantastic benefits but I do think it’s easy to get into habits which need to be broken if you can’t cope with the frequent wakings and co-sleeping long term. You do have 6 weeks though which is easily enough turn things round before you go back to work. Good luck whatever you decide to do!

Also offering sympathy. My middle one was a shocking sleeper, he bf every 90 mins until weaning, when we'd sometimes get 3-4 hours of sleep. He didn't actually sleep through until 2.5, so although it's hard, you can work through it! I was full time from just after his 1st birthday.

We did the porrodide/weetabix before bed, he was ff from 10 months, we tried Co sleeping, controlled crying, rocking to sleep, dummy, no dummy, changing the temperature of his room. Nothing made a differnece and he did get it eventually. He's now 4.5 and fantastic at sleep. He goes down nicely and sleeps right through. In fact, have to wake him up.

So you might find it's hard for a while yet, but you might be surprised at what you can cope with in the end. Good luck!

My daughter is 14 months now and still wakes up every few hours to feed, and I've been back at work for about 5 months now. I've just been managing my best on 4-6 hours sleep according to my watch! It's a bit shit though. Good luck!

That sounds really hard.
I don't think formula would help as it sounds like sleep association not hunger.

Is she napping enough eg not overtired?

Do you use white noise in case she is getting disturbed?

I recommend the book by Lucy Wolf which helps them settle without being left to cry. If you read and use this approach soon there is plenty time for it to make a change

Good luck.

I've read your update and its good to see you have had a better evening. I just came to show some solidarity. My friend went into hospital with an infection when our children were that age. She was in for a week. I was actually jealous that she had a week of sleep rather than being concerned about her health. How awful is that? The things lack of sleep do to you?

This sounds like my first DD. Huge bowl of baby rice with home blitzed fruit after dinner and her sleep improved over night. I do the same with DD2, bowl of porridge before bed and she settles and sleeps well. Good luck OP keep us posted

@thewinehasgonetomyhead
How do you fit that in? Do you give a while after tea and then milk feed a while later? At the moment I do tea at 5 then milk about 6.30 for 7pm bedtime.
Sorry to derail thread OP.

Mine was like this and has just recently started sleeping through the night in her own bed (she's almost 3). The only thing that helped was me saying no to breastfeeds during the night. It was hard, and she still woke at least once a night until recently as I say. She was 18 months when I stopped bf though, so older than yours. I wish I had wound down the nightfeeds much earlier though.

Sounds like pouch for dinner is helping though - good luck!

Following to see how you get on OP! My EBF baby is 6mo so younger than yours but I’m going back to work in 5 weeks. DH is taking over on shared parental and really struggling with trying to soothe DS without milk in the night.

I definitely got into a vicious circle with mine - I was bf lots at night, so she’s wasnt hungry during the day and didn’t eat properly, so then was hungry at night. It took a couple of nights of strong resolve (and pumping for my comfort!) to break the circle but was worth it. We sat with her and comforted her, and gave her some water but no food.

I breastfeed until six months with mine, but unlike you I didn’t enjoy it at all.

We also introduce combination feeding too which worked well - formula for bed and when he woke in the night he was offered water. This broke the habit for us as I was desperate for some sort of routine for back to work. I went back at eight months and also found Gina Ford very helpful - I just used the bits which helped me as a first time parent. You don’t need to follow it strictly as I’ve seen comments on MN who don’t agree with her perspective. Ultimately you’ve got to do what works for you and your family. A lot may be trial and error. Good luck.

Is she still in your room?
Moving my daughter to her own room helped massively, also cutting out dairy as it turned out she was waking with tummy pain and wanted comfort. At 4 months old she was waking every 45 minutes and I was a wreck.

My daughter is now 1 and is sleeping through the night most of the time. It has been a long road getting here but I started sending my partner in to comfort her and then I would go in if she wouldnt settle.

After a few months of perseverance this didn't work properly until the night of her 1st birthday when, for the first time,my partner did not have to come and get me to settle her with a feed and she settled for him after a drink from a sippy cup. She has settled for him since.

I'm glad I can now carry on breastfeeding without being so sleep deprived. You really can get to a point where you can with a bit of belief and consistency in your approach.

It was strange that things turned around the night she slept through for the first time as I'd said to my partner, leave it longer before getting me tonight, I am sure she will do it if you leave it a bit longer. And she did. And my partner then was able to sleep soundly too from then on. Could you sell it this way to your partner? If he resides himself to having less sleep for a week or two to just try it out? It's only fair. I wouldn't be able to work full time on the sleep I was getting.

Another one agreeing that feeding her more will do naff all - I’m going to wager that her longer stretch this evening is a fluke. She’s not breastfeeding for food, she’s after the comfort - which at her age is just as legitimate and important as food. Exhausting, to the point that you want to die or imagine crazy scenarios like major illness that will put you in hospital do you can sleep finally, but just as important.

Both of mine were as wakeful as yours when I went back to work when each was 8mo, and I was just as desperate in the month leading up to returning, wondering how the fuck I was going to cope, because nothing worked to make them sleep longer stretches. Night weaning didn’t work (they pop a new tooth every five minutes at that age and withholding key pain relief like that is just barbaric), sleep training gentle or otherwise didn’t work (God help me, I did full-blown CIO with DS1), a phenomenally expensive and usually successful sleep consultant was flummoxed by both of them, huge bowls of porridge with banana did nothing. Now that I’m a few years away from it, I’ll admit I even gave DS1 Piriton once to try and make him sleep. Nope.

But do you know what? You can actually function quite well at work on that little sleep. It is far from ideal - I was walking into walls one day after one of them had given me a princely 14 wake-ups one night - but it is actually survivable, despite what you might think. I never came close to being sacked and I never killed anyone - none of my patients and no-one during my one hour drive to/from work. You have other things to occupy your mind with other than how fucking tired you are. At home with a baby, you have the cause of your exhaustion permanently staring you in the face and - the cheek! - demanding sleep during the day as well just to rub in how little sleep you’re getting. You can go to the loo and stare at the wall for five minutes. You can talk to grown ups which further takes your mind off your misery. You might even discover other people who have done the same thing but have never admitted it for fear of people blaming their child’s poor sleep on them (hint - it’s not your fault, it’s no-one’s fault, it’s not breastfeeding’s fault, your baby just hasn’t developmentally got to the point of long independent sleep stretches yet.)

I got through it twice by co-sleeping both times. Forget about persisting with the cot for now - it’s just another battle you don’t need. I successfully night-weaned both around 14 months (cold turkey - the Dr Jay Gordon thing never worked for me as it just confused them and made them rage more), after the first molars were through, then did a very gradual withdrawal to get them sleeping in their own beds, where I slept on their floors for quite a few weeks.

They were champion sleepers from about 2yo. I know that that seems like an unsurvivable age away for you now, but, honestly, work is surprisingly manageable on horribly broken, minimal sleep.

I spent a fruitless period trying to break DDs sleep association with breastfeeding after things got bad sleepwise at 4 months. It didn't work, I got miserable and I realised that approach doesn't suit me at all. I felt like I should be working with nature not against it. It's a useful association. Frankly it's a gift! So then i just decided to officially cosleep with me and DD on a mattress. When she wakes up I stick a boob in her mouth and go back to sleep. She still wakes but
I've no idea how often because I never properly wake up. Also abandoned 7pm bedtime. It's more like 9 or 10pm. She's 7 months and I'm back at work. I really resent all the time I wasted reading baby sleep guides, trying to regiment naps etc. I know it works for some, but not us. I just want people to know that you don't have to follow the textbook. I wish someone had told me that. Although if the textbook works for you then go for it.

Just to say - at that age, it’s not about hunger, it’s about sleep association. She wakes, you feed her and that’s the only way she knows how to get back to sleep whenever she rouses. That is definitely not a criticism of you, by the way- we’ve all formed unintentional habits, I’m sure!! But you need to teach her to settle herself.

Please don’t think that sleep training = controller crying. There are lots of different methods, many of which don’t involve leaving your baby crying on their own.

I agree with chloechloe, especially that feeding during the night at longer intervals will probably just prolong the process. There's a couple really interesting books out there with some data on sleeping training and crying - I realise on no sleep you may not be that keen to read a book! Cribsheet just came out and looks at data on whether crying as part of sleep training is damaging to babies (author concludes no evidence at all) and whether it is effective (author concludes definitely yes and very quickly if you stick to a consistent approach and are ok with some crying). She also looks at baby led weaning and doesn't find any long term advantages to this versus spoon feeding - so definitely carry on if you want, but I don't think you're doing any damage by spoon feeding some of the time! Bringing up Bebe also looks at the supposedly French approach - the author says French parents do "le pause" before immediately responding to a baby crying and also that they believe that even babies have a capacity to wait for a short period of time. Cribsheet is very data based and focuses on high quality research so if that type of thing will make you more comfortable with your decisions, I'd highly recommend it. Bringing up Bebe is anecdotal but a lot of the approach the author is suggesting does make sense.

What worked for us :
"le pause" from an early age. We used to count to 30 before going to DD at night and now give her a few minutes and try to judge whether the noises are really upset crying or more yelling/groaning before rushing in, more often than not she goes back to sleep on her own within a couple minutes.

My paediatrician told me to leave DD in her crib for the length of time I wanted her to nap (she was a terrible napper) and I was appalled, I thought it was going to result in a scream fest for an hour and a half. Instead after 3 days (with 10 minutes crying on worst day) she now regularly naps 1.5 - 2 hours twice a day.

Cutting out night feeds - like Chloechloe we go in and shush and pat DD but don't pick her up (this seems to only make it worse, she becomes hysterical when we put her back down). We also controversially gave her a small soft toy and this immediately stopped her crying - she played with it for 10 minutes then went back to sleep. Paediatrician recommended this and pointed out that the SIDS risk after 8 months is vanishingly rare so we decided we were comfortable with this.

DD has always been a pretty good sleeper but we've also always focused on moving forward - ie, we had a big regression around 3 months but didn't go back to feeding every time she woke even though that was harder in the short term. She'd been sleeping longer, she was gaining weight well so we were comfortable that she didn't suddenly need feeding all the time again. One way to think about it is if someone gave you a muffin every 2 hours, you would likely expect a muffin every 2 hours.

Hello I feel your pain - my dS was a similar sleeper with the regular wakings. For us it was night weaning that made the biggest difference. I had to recruit my husband for a tricky few days where we just cut down the number of night feeds offered from up to 4 per night to none between 7 and 7 (on an average night) and it really changed sleeping for us. I was also keen for him to have breastmilk so I expressed and we started to offer him bottled bm in the day as well as bf. Then eventually mixed this with formula to gradually wean him off the boob. Good luck xx

I feel for you OP and I could have written this myself except mine is over a year old. She refuses a bottle and only takes a tomee tipee beaker.
Have you tried 'catching up' on sleep during the weekends?
Also see if your DH can give the last meal of the day and you can try sleeping before everyone else?
It really is hard work and it's crazy the amount of times I've literally cried myself to sleep!
Wishing you all the best

I’m a bit concerned by your comments about your DP not being helpful. Mine wasn’t with our first, but it was at the stage when I was breaking from lack of sleep that I had to force him to step up. We found that DS1 just wanted comforting when he work, so I still put him to bed, but DH slept in his room for a few nights. He got comfort, but not quite the comfort he wanted. DS was a bit angry the first night, but DH did lots of rocking, playing music, singing etc and he settled without too much hassle. By night 3-4 DS realised he wasn’t getting me and was down to two wake-ups. After that, I started going to him again, but there was no milk, just a cuddle. It didn’t resolve the issue completely, but it did make it better.

I breastfeed my baby but he willl take a bottle so I night weaned him at 7.5 months by gradually reducing the amount of milk I was giving him. Honestly I don’t think it’s possible to go from where you are to sleeping better without any crying but there’s a difference between leaving your baby to cry alone and being with your baby to comfort them but reduce the amount of help they need to fall asleep. Formula won’t make a blind bit of difference, except as a bedtime top up after the breastfeed to help them through until the morning. I’m massively empathising. My LOs have been shocking sleepers.
I didn’t want to do sleep training with my second but had no choice as he started waking every half hour! If you wanted to co sleep I can’t see any reason why you couldn’t teach them to self settle (involving crying unfortunately) while they’re in bed with you....

I co slept, so the reverse cycle when I went back to work was survivable as I was barely waking to feed them. Each one of them fed a lot at night when I went back to work. If them sleeping apart from me had been important to me it would have been a horrible time but I never cared about that. I was much more interested in getting sleep than having a baby who slept elsewhere.

I absolutely could not have put up with this when DS was a baby. I worked 12 hour shifts as a nurse full time when he was a couple of months old. I was a single parent too.
I would probably have killed a lot of patients if he hadn't been sorted.
I kept to a very strict routine, none of this feeding on demand in the night, picking up and soothing business. He was fed to a strict timetable and I changed to formula a few weeks before returning to work.
If he woke before a feed was due I left him to cry, he soon learnt, he slept right next to my bed so he could see and hear me. I'd speak to him if he woke up and that's it.
As a result he slept through the night in no time.
I'd probably be done for abuse these days and he has grown up into a wonderful person and we are very close.
Quite honestly an hour every night and I'd have gone stark raving mad.

I've read a lot of great advice here as I am in a similar position. I was planning on night weaning and just shushing and patting but it is so hot here over night (not UK) that I think he is waking with thirst, I know I am! Planning to dream feed when I go to bed and then switch to offering a bottle of water for any wake ups after that. Can anyone see why that wouldn't work?!

Can anyone see why that wouldn't work?!

I can see why it wouldn’t, because that assumes waking for a breastfeed is only for nutrition or hydration, whereas for an older baby it’s a sleep association as much anything else. See my post above (28/6/19 21:24). It’s a sleep association you’ll only be able to break if they’re developmentally ready to part with it.