Drowsy but awake?!

[Laura1609]

OK, so, everything I read about baby sleep says “you should put baby into their cot drowsy but awake so they can self settle”. 5 months in and this has never happened and I’m starting to think it’s an impossible task!
My DS has always been a terrible sleeper, I’ve always tended to boob him to sleep and then make the cot transfer before him inevitably ending up in our bed at some point. We’re reluctant co-sleepers over here! Anything to survive.
We seem to be deeeeeep into the 4 month sleep regression which has now been going on for 5.5 weeks. He used to generally do a 4-5 hour sleep stint, feed, another 3 hours, feed again and then down again for 2 more hours but this last month or so he’s been waking up every 40-90 minutes which is fun as you can imagine. Even when he’s been in our bed he’ll still wake up crying even though I’m right there snuggling him. I’ve just fed him to get him back to sleep. I know he’s still really young and he will eventually learn but, jeeez, I sure am tired and I’m yearning for those 2 wake ups a night which felt like a dream in comparison.
So tell me, who’s managed this drowsy but awake thing and if so, tell me your secrets. He loses his s* as soon as I put him in his cot and the only thing to soothe him is being picked up by me (not even my DH can comfort him; he’s a real mummy’s boy) x

I feel your pain, I never had any success with 'drowsy but awake' with DS, he's 22 months now and still gets cuddled to sleep before being transfered to his cot. If you put him in awake, or even accidentally wake him mid transfer he howls the place down. And DD (3 weeks old) is so far oblivious to the drowsy but awake concept too. I wouldn't mind but my mother does like to remind me that my SIL and brother managed to get their daughter going to bed drowsy but awake from the start. Which is as helpful as you can imagine it would be.

I think either "drowsy but awake" exists for your baby or it doesn't, and if it doesn't it feels like a mad practical joke the sleep books are playing on you. If your baby lacks this setting, the only option is "feed/rock/bounce til comatose" until they're old enough to be reasoned with. (Perhaps at 18?)

In the meantime, survive! A few of us with non-drowsy babies are reluctantly cosleeping and waiting out the horror here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/sleep/3695769-waiting-it-out

DD is 2 and I’ve yet to manage the ‘drowsy but awake‘ technique . I think you either get a baby who will do it or a baby who won’t. DD would absolutely not entertain being anywhere but next to me unless in the deepest of sleeps.

Your little one sounds absolutely identical to mine at that age. I tried all sorts of things to ‘fix’ her sleep. What actually worked was accepting I had an awkward one, embracing the co-sleeping, and realising that she just needed to be close to us.

I know it doesn’t feel like it, but you will sleep again one day. I honestly didn’t notice when it happened for us. Just one day I realised I wasn’t tired any more.

Now she goes down well in her own bed. Most night she climbs in with us at some point, but doesn’t wake us, and she wakes up around 6:30. Occasionally she doesn’t climb in.

I spent so long stressing that I was doing it all wrong, she’d never sleep and I was ‘making a rod for my own back’. I wish I hadn’t.

By all means try any methods you are comfortable with to try and improve things, but if your baby is super stubborn and doesn’t need much sleep like mine, then just do what you have to do to get through it and don’t worry about when she’s older. It sorts itself out. Just smile and nod the next time someone suggests putting them down ‘drowsy but awake’.

Mine have never dropped off by themselves until quite a lot older. DS was always rocked or fed to sleep. Even now at 2.5 he needs to be rocked for a nap or will refuse to go down. He's fine to go to sleep after stories and milk at night now though.

@katmarie Ahh yes, the ol’ comparisons. My mum likes to tell me that me and both of my brothers slept through at 4 months. “Strange” that my DS doesn’t. Is it strange though, mum? Or have you actually just forgotten given it was over 30 years ago?!

@burritofan I can confirm it doesn’t exist for him and these books are lying. It’s a sick joke, one of the worst out there. See you over at the party thread then, probably at about 3am 🎉

@KTCluck It’s mad how you adjust to such awful sleep isn’t it? I think you’re right, just embrace it and I guess enjoy the cuddles now because in 15 years when I’m still trying to cuddle him (probably in front of his friends) he won’t be able to get away fast enough.

@Modestandatinybitsexy I guess I just need to accept it and hope that at some point before I have to return to work in the summer and be a proper person again that he’s cracked it.

Thanks for your replies. It’s comforting to know I’m not out here on my own. I’d expected a barrage of people saying “it’s easy, just pop them down in the cot as soon as their eyes go and give them a pat” 🙄

Reading this as I am feeding my 9 month old daughter to sleep for the second time. She fell asleep the first but then woke as I placed her in the cot!! So here I am again feeding to sleep for the second time !!! It's nice to read threads like this to not feel alone.

The 4th month was awful for us . Literally waking up every half hour all night for a month . I'm not sure how I got through it , but I did cause there was no other choice !! I do remember one night trying to cosleep on the nursery floor using the mattress from the cot . My daughter was having none of that though lol

I asked a trustee friend for advise on it and she said with her two children she spent her evenings yo yoing in and out of their rooms resettling them with singing and patting . I tried that this week and was determined to succeed . .... massive fail as it just left my little girl hysterically crying and hiccuping .

Embracing the boob now (as my friend didn't have that as an option) and hoping I'm not still doing this when she's 4!!!

Trusted *