Failed sleep training

[CherryBlossom456]

My 11 month old is (and always has been) a terrible sleeper. He wakes 4-5+ times a night and is up for the day at 5am everyday.

My marriage is hanging by a thread and I’m seriously depressed from the lack of sleep and frustration. I go back to work in a few weeks and I just can’t deal with this anymore :(

This has been an issue for so long I have now emotionally disconnected from my boy which is really sad.

Over the last 5 months I have tried sleep training repeatedly but it has failed miserably every time. Please can anyone help!! I have tried absolutely everything

Controlled Crying (pat briefly every 2,3,4,5,5,5 etc. Mins)

• night breastfeeds were undermining consistency (now stopped night feeding and son has been exclusively bottle fed for 2 weeks)
• cries for 3 hrs until he’s so exhausted a couple of pats puts him to sleep meaning he doesn’t self sooth

Disappearing Chair (each night move chair further away)

• needs me in the room to sleep and wakes every 30 mins.
• screams for 3 hrs when he can’t see me

Won’t take more than 4x150ml formula a day. Eats a lot of solids x3 meals a day. Naps for 1hr in a morning and 1hr in an afternoon.

Please can someone help! Our little family has almost been destroyed by his sleep and my failure as a parent :’(

I'm so sorry you're feeling like this.

A lot of my battles with my poor sleeper eased when I accepted it. There are reasons for frequently waking which routes in need for attachment and reassurance. Ultimately frequently waking is normal. Using sleep training methods will be reinforcing to you the idea that it's not normal and creating the stress you're feeling.

Ok, so if it's normal how can you get more sleep? The need for connection from baby will always be there so doing as much as you can in the day to enjoy baby and reaffirm that connection will help. Use a sling, skin to skin etc.

Have you tried co sleeping? When done safely it can be an absolute sleep saver.

Please try not to blame marriage troubles on the baby. The baby is just fulfilling his needs, blaming them will just lead to lots of other issues. You're both adults, if it's sleep making you more irritable then put a system in where you both get sleep somehow. Mine always falls asleep in the car so early morning drives have been known!

Ignore the sleep training. Please. Cry it out etc are not helping your baby with the reassurance and attachment he needs. Let go of any ideals of what sleep should look like. There's no should, each one is different.

And you're not failing as a parent at all. I know how tough sleep deprivation can be, but the saying that kept me sane through the tricky sleep times was that it's not going to last forever, if it does I'll be a millionaire from having so many news stories and interviews about the 18 year old who never ever slept 😂

My DD was like this, she's 4 now and still wakes a lot (tonight she woke at 4am and hasn't got back to sleep yet). Just co sleep, if you have to buy a bigger bed to do so, make DH sleep elsewhere, get floor bed for your DS that's big enough for you to share, anything that means you can sleep as much as possible

You sound at the end of your tether, you poor thing.
You'll get lots of conflicting advice I expect, but all babies are different and you need to find the approach that works for YOUR baby. CIO doesn't work for everyone.
My son woke about every 90 minutes for his first 18 months, it was so hard. What worked for us was a double sized floorbed (so he couldn't fall out) and cosleeping. I breastfed until he was 2.5 because it was the easiest way to settle him quickly in the night, but just being able to cuddle him instantly helped so much.
I also tried reminding myself that he wasn't being naughty or deliberately making my life harder, he was just my tiny precious boy and he needed me in the night and that is developmentally normal, not a flaw that needs correcting.
Have you seen your GP if you're feeling depressed? They might be able to help you? Or you could ask you're health visitor for support (if you have a decent one - ours was bloody awful.)

^your HV, bloody autocorrect making me look illiterate

11 months of disrupted sleep is brutal, I hear you. I have a 15 month old who was and still is a terrible sleeper, the only things that have got me through as other posters have already said-

Ditched the sleep training, I found it distressing and it was another thing I was failing at. My DS was having none of it and I actually think I made his sleeping worse relentlessly trying

Began co sleeping, and just accepted that some nights I have to get into bed with him when he won't go down but is clearly tired. We both got way way way more sleep just getting up and fetching him in the night rather trying to get him to "self soothe" which benefited us all.

Saw my GP and started on a low dose of sertraline which is a mood stabilizer, it enabled me to cope with the sleep deprivation and lifted my mood. I was only on it for 2-3 months until I felt I could cope without it

The sleep thing put such a strain on my relationship, I totally understand. I hope things improve for you 🤞

Apologies my post had paragraphs but they have disappeared!

Thank you for your quick replies! They have already brought me some comfort even if I’m bawling while holding my boy at the same time!

You are right about my marriage. It’s our issues rather than my little boys. Lack of sleep is very problematic.
-my husband does no housework and does almost nothing to help with our boy as this is my ‘job’. This infuriates me especially when he tells me I’ve failed at 4am because he’s been repeatedly woken up for long periods and has work in the morning.
-he thinks I have an easy plush life on maternity leave and take his stressful work and his money for granted given he has supported me financially the last 2 months while I’m on no pay.

Please tell me if I’m being ungrateful and I just need to get on with it. I can only see his lack of help when I need it through a sleep deprived fog :( I can’t see us lasting longer than 1 month when I’m back at work.

I have tried so incredibly hard to sort my son’s sleep out for so long it just feels so unfair. I’d be over the moon with 1 wake and a 5am start just once or twice a week. What have I done wrong?! How do I fix it?! My DR and HVs are either completely useless (HV) or cant help (DRs).

I will try co sleeping and give it a go 🤞. Husband doesn’t agree with it but meh. I do love my boy I’m just finding life with him so difficult.

X

I completely understand that if you’re going back to work, you probably don’t want to do co-sleeping etc. Have you tried white noise? Alexa/YouTube will produce hours of eg dishwasher noise and it knocks our baby out. We don’t use it all the time, but it is helpful.

I really really recommend buying the blissful baby expert book and also contacting Lisa on Instagram directly (she has an insta handle as the blissful baby expert). She changed our lives. I have recommended her to everyone I know, and this is gospel, i don't know a single person who has followed her that it hasn't worked for. It may take a bit of time and perseverance but it will get better - I promise you will sleep again!

Sorry just to add, I know this will be an unpopular opinion on here and I will be FLAMED for it - but cosleeping isn't a permanent fix. Yes you may get slightly more sleep in the short term but then you've for the next issue of breaking the cosleeping habit. By cosleeping you're essentially just putting a plaster over the bigger sleeping issue and I can't see it doing much for your marriage either.

Have you tried going down to one nap? At 11 months my DS was just having one nap of about 2 hours over lunch (starting earlier or later depending on what time he woke in the morning). It may well not work for you, but I only mention it because all the advice is babies “should” have two naps etc etc and you might not have thought of it.

You might have a tough few days pushing him to a later nap if he’s up at 6 but if you could keep him awake say 6-11.30 and then 1.30 until starting bath/bed around 6 (ours always loves bathtime so if he’s tired and grouchy but it isn’t bedtime yet we stick him in an early bath for half an hour) he might be tired out.

OP, I have a hideous sleeper (20 months) too and a lot of your comments resonate.

Re sleep training, MN tends to be against it so you'll get a lot of people saying to ditch it and just bed-share. My daughter and I did bed-share out of desperation for a few months, for parts of the night, but neither of us got quality sleep. It doesn't work for everyone.

I found that sleep training only works when your child is receptive to it. DD goes through stages where she'll respond well and where she will just cry for hours and get hysterical. Unless she gets hysterical, we try to stick with training even when she's crying and it's hard to listen to. We started with the 'gentler' methods but they were useless on DD so we moved on to controlled crying. She is a strong willed toddler and can be incredibly determined to continue crying. You just need to persevere.

The above approach probably isn't for everyone, and most babies probably don't need something as hardcore. But it works for us. We still struggle massively but the overall trajectory is positive, I think. For what it's worth, I've spoken to sleep consultants, health visitors, and a specialist from CAHMS. All said after meeting DD, that I need to persevere, she's just very intuitive and strong willed.

I completely get what you say about your marriage. Sleeplessness is so hard and of course will impact on your relationship. What works for us is one of us will do the night shift and the other gets up early with DD and let the other sleep. At the weekend, take it in turns taking the little one out and let the other have a break. Get a cleaner if possible - it really helps.

All the best OP

You might have more of a DH problem than a sleep problem - he really should be seeing this as a joint enterprise! He should be taking your DC when he can to let you sleep.

It sounds like you’re both in the same room, can he sleep somewhere else so he’s more refreshed and ready to take over on weekends? I’m sorry it’s been so hard for you.

Hi all, really appreciate everyone’s responses and just thought I’d post an update given everyone took the time to write to help me.

Firstly I totally agree my husband is part of the problem with the lack of support. I’ll just have to cross my fingers this works out.

I have tried co-sleeping over a few nights but as I haven’t done it since he was 3 months old my boy was totally confused by it and got really excited refusing to sleep, bouncing up and down crawling off the bed. I don’t think this will work at the moment as his activity is terrifying!

I’m going to try adjusting his naps (going down to 1 nap) and play with the times over the next week or so and hope for the best.

I go back to work in 7 days. God help me!

I used a book called Teach yourself: Baby sleep which I found really helpful.
Your DH sounds spectacularly unhelpful. My DH and I had a system where he was in charge of responding from 9pm-midnight, I was then responsible for midnight-6 am, then DH from 6am-7:30am. Although obviously not perfect it did mean that we both got at least some sleep each night.
Could you afford to employ a sleep trainer?

Get some expert advice. There are sleep trainers who do it all over the phone and the cost is manageable. Sorting out his sleep will be the best thing you can do for yourself and him. You could have years of disrupted nights ahead badly affecting you both.

Oh OP lack of sleep is actually torture so I feel for you.

I totally and utterly disagree with @muddypuddles12 (sorry!). My daughter went through a long period of feeding every 20 mins. 40 on a good stretch due to undiagnosed CPMA. Co-sleeping was our saviour. I could wake, feed, and go back to sleep in minutes. At just after 11 months we moved her into her own room on a double mattress on the floor. By just after her 1st birthday she had stopped night feeding and was sleeping through and has been a good sleeper since (apart from the usual leaps and sleep regressions).

This time (with my second) we just went straight to co-sleeping (we're lucky enough to have another spare room that my husband sleeps in!) and I totally trust he'll happily move out of bed and into his own.

I'd co-sleep for a few weeks, see how it goes and then maybe start moving to own room and see what happens.

I’ll be looking into all the sleep training books but admit I’ll only be looking at the gentler ones from now on. I feel horribly guilty about trying CIO repeatedly when my boy just would not get it and it was very traumatic sticking to its rigorously without improvement.

My local Health Visiting team are sending someone round later this week to try help with his sleep because it’s been so bad and I’ve been asking for help and advice for so long now. I didn’t know they offered this service on the nhs but I'm probably on some sort of ‘watch’ list now after being referred for it.

I see my GP fairly regularly regarding medication. Trying to stay positive for my return to work. That’s the next added challenge to all this!!

If it doesn’t improve I’ll be looking for a sleep trainer of some sort provided they offer something radically different to what I’ve already tried! If that fails I’ll try find a nanny to help at night. Very expensive though!!

Hi OP, just wondering when you go back to work will he be in nursery? We found that DD finally started sleeping after a few weeks there, as she as exhausted from all the activity, and full of food (wasn't a great eater before she started, now eats everything)

OP; your husband is the problem. If he helped out during the night and day with housework etc, you'd feel much more supported and able.

I've a 9 month old who wakes every couple of hours and it's brutal. Really brutal. But my husband helps massively and actually, yeah, I'm knackered, but it's copeable and we still rub along nicely together.

I feel you - our boy (almost 2) was a crap sleeper. He is now a slightly less crap sleeper.

My experience has been that he is receptive to things when he’s good and developmentally ready. Anything we did, especially under 1, was kind of tidying in the margins. Some kids are just more hard work in this way.

We managed through a share of responsibility and my partner taking him for the 6.30 wake up for an hour or so. He starts the night in bed and then comes in with us. I have to say I would have fallen apart if Id had the support you’re getting from your partner. It was around this age when my anxiety really played up - the first thing my gp said was to try and get some sleep. I do from time to time leave my partner to do a solo night, and catch up on sleep.

Doing sleep training when it’s not the right time is miserable, and like another poster says it makes you feel like you’re doing it all wrong. Through combining a few techniques we now have him sleeping from 7pm ish to between 11pm or 1am. Then he’s in bed with us. He definitely wakes more frequently but tbh, I’m finely balanced with just enough sleep and the thought of trying to resettle him at 2am in his own bed for an hour gives me the screaming heeby jeebies.

We used the No cry Sleep Solution (there were definitely tears in our part) and Precious Little Sleep. I have done some controlled crying but it tends to be a tactic of last resort in our house.