getting up 8 times in the night...ugh

[Lowryn]

My Ds is a little bugger. He is 5 months now and so far has not blessed me with a single full night sleep since he was born.
I am bf and have introduced purees in the last two weeks in a vain attempt to lengthen his sleep times.
He goes down at 7.30 ish, and wakes at 10, 12.30, 3ish, 4.30 ish 5.30ish etc etc. I bf him at most of these as he seems so hungry. I can't bring myself to let him cry himself back to sleep as he has this incredibly high pitch shriek that wakes up DD and DH (and probably sets off car alarms)
i am soooooooooo tired

many many sympathies lowryn. Both of mine were like that and I did the same as you. In fact DS2 12mo still wakes a three times in the night.

IME it is habit at this stage and you just have to break it. I am certain that more successful and practical MNers will be along soon to give their experiences

PS he is such a cutie I don't blame you about not wanting to let him cry though

Thanks SW you are lovely, but really, still three times a night at 12 months...? [runs off screaming at the prospect of never ever sleeping again]
Now I appreciate what a darling darling daughter I really have!

lowryn, i know that high-pitched shriek very well - my ds was also a pro at it - never heard anything like it with my two others. He also used to wake up all the bl#$dy time and appear to be starving. I resorted to pick up/put down and ear plugs - only had to do this a few nights (4 or 5) before he started waking up a bit less frequently (still up twice, but better than before). That's probably not much help though if your ds will wake up everybody else in the process? Any chance of shielding your dd from the shrieks a bit more, i.e. putting a tuned-out radio in her room whilst you sort ds out?

If I bribed my mum to take DD overnight do you think one night of c/c would be enough?
It's just as well he's scrumptious, otherwise I would hand him over to the church raffle.

forgot to add that ds now sleeps through from 7pm-6am most nights - he'd got into a new horrible sleep habit at 8 months of waking up at 11pm and then screaming for 3 - 4 hours unless being cuddled and I got a sedative (hydroxyzine) for him from the GP. It was mild stuff (he still woke up but didn't do the long screaming) we used it for 10 days and it sorted him out.

I don't think 1 night of CC would fix it, more like 4 or 5. It's best let DH do it if possible. I mean you may decide to feed him and 11 and then at 4 and then when he wakes, for example. Well let DH do the cc in between those times. We have had success in the past like that but there always seems to be something to come along and disrupt the new routine,

Do it now before serious teething starts, that's what's keeping my boy wailing in the night, and a cold and being possessed by Beelzebub

Lowryn, you poor thing - loads of sympathy coming your way! Probably won't make you feel much better but my ds didn't give me a proper night's sleep until 10 months. But it was the feeding that was keeping him waking, definitely - he was just getting into the habit and once we cut that right down he did settle down. I couldn't leave him to cry either so had a couple of nights when I said 'right, no feeds' and just rocked him to sleep or gave him water. Since your ds is a bit younger could you try just cutting the feeds down to a couple of times a night instead? It did work although it was tough for the first couple of nights. really feel for you - that 'walking dead' feeling is awful!!

My dd the same age and the same problem exacerbated by teething in the pixiefish household though.
Sorry no answers but I did try cc the other night and ended up having to change her bed because she screamed so much he was sick! gave that idea up as a bad one within 5 minutes of starting it...
I bring her into bed with me and we both muddle through until morning and I try and have a nap in the afternoon with her to catch up on my sleep.

decide which times you will bf him (once a night should be enough at 5 months but you could drop it to two feeds and see how that goes at first) The other times settle him by other methods. It is a habit and he will be learning to expect a bf. He will not stop waking if he knows that he gets a bf.

Try cuddling until he is quiet then put him in bed pat his back or just stay with him. Try shhhhing and tell him gently ... go to sleep. Another option is offer him a drink of water from a tipee cup but he is probably abit young for that still.

one nite of cc in another house without you there would freak him out and he is still young

all the best

AM going through same thing with DD (also 5 months) Lowryn. Only difference is that DS was equally horrible at nights so I have nothing but gloomy outlooks for the future to offer... sorry!

Still, at least they are delicious in the daytime. Re the solids, I am trying that too but she;s not that interested and I have to say, it didn't make a blind bit of difference to how much DS slept anyway. Lots of MNers have said the same, so I think I might drop it for a bit. Just one more thing to faff with during the day.

Sounds just like my ds used to be. I truly sympathise, Lowryn. It's hell, you feel like a zombie during the day, have no energy and it's also all too easy to get depressed and for things to get all too much when you're that tired. I think that other posters are right when they say that a lot of his waking may be 'habit'. What they mean is that by bf-ing him when he wakes you are perhaps 'rewarding' him for crying out, which makes him more likely to cry the next time he wakes. Whenever he cries, there you are with a bf for him. What baby wouldn't want that when he finds himself awake in the night? Another thought that ocurrs though is that at 5 months he's probably quite a big baby and if he's almost totally breastfed then you'd be having to produce a lot of milk to satisfy him. It could be that he is genuinely hungry when he wakes at night. You say that "he seems so hungry." You know him best. Does he seem to need feeding more in the evenings and at night than he does during the day? Is it possible that, because you're so tired, your milk supply runs lower at the end of the day and it's having trouble keeping up with demand? I had this problem of playing 'catch-up' all the time with bf. You may find that in a few weeks, when he's starting to take more solids, things get a bit easier, especially if he's taking solids in the evening. I really hope things get better for you soon, as I know how awful the sleep deprivation can be. I used to feel as though I'd sell my soul for a good night's sleep! Hang in there, it won't last for ever.

My four month old has just started sleeping through from 7pm-7am (sleepy feed at 10pm)He was waking up to 15 times a night at one point and one night we just decided that we had to break the pattern - for our own sanity. It was hell leaving him to cry for the first three nights, but each night the crying became shorter. We would leave him for 5 minutes for the first night then increased this by 5 minutes each night. He finally began to get himself off to sleep without us which was just fantastic. Eventhough it was hard at the time and I nearly gave up many, many times, I think it was the best thing to do - he needed to be given the opportunity to learn this skill and I feel we helped him to do it. Golden rule - every baby is different and what works for one won't necessarily work for another.

Oh Lowryn - ds was/is like that.

I also introduced solids at 5 months and found a bit of an improvement after a couple of weeks (so hang in there! )

However I find that the best way to get him to sleep well is to give him an extra nap late afternoon (ds has his at about 7pm, bedtime 9pm) - I call it his "magic sleep". This used to work when he was 5 months, but at 7 months or so he was such hard work to put down at that time I gave up. Nights deteriorated again, but this week he is back on the nap (with the help of a 3 mile walk every afternoon - that's how desperate I am) and we're back to one waking in the night.

Also I find that dp can rock him back to sleep in the night in about 5 mins, where he will wriggle like hell if I try to do it - if he goes through a particularly bad patch this helps as less eating at night means more in the day etc.

DS was the same. It was so awful. I started pumping so that dh could help out and we would alternate getting up with him. things gradually improved although at 13 mos. he still gets up once a night but we are just grateful for a half nights uninterrupted sleep after the hellish months we went through. I think he was 9 or 10 mos. before there was a really noticeable improvement. Don't know if this is much help, but at least you're not alone!

How much do you think he takes at 7.30 and 10? I would use expressed milk at these times and really force feed him till he can't take another drop. Plus cluster feed him from 5 oclock onwards so he builds a reserve of milk in his tummy.
Plus if you use expressed milk during the night - you can see just how much he actually takes and judge whether he's taking the piss or not!
mine was! once I realised he wasn't hungry - I just give him a bottle of 3oz water, 1oz milk - he doesn't seem so keen all of a sudden!

Oh mine were the same too - much sympathy. I think they have to be cute or you would just chuck 'em out of the window.

Ds1 didn't sleep more than an hour til he was 8 months old, and didn't sleep through the night til he was three (he was breast-fed til he was one - and stopping made not a blind bit of difference).

With ds2 I just wasn't prepared to do that again so I hardened my heart, invested in ear plugs, and did CC at 8 months (I also gave up bf-ing at 8 months). It took about a week and he is now (mostly) a brilliant sleeper. Incidentally, I did modified CC: I did CC at bedtime but I didn't do it if he woke in the night (I couldn't take prolongued crying at night, and also didn't want him to wake ds1). If he woke in the night I would give him a cuddle etc., and settle him down more gently. I found, though, that once he could go to sleep by himself at the start of the night - he settled himself in the middle of the night too and rarely cried.

I am a total advocate of CC - I think once they know how to go to sleep by themselves, they follow that through for their other wakings in the middle of the night. Everyone has periods of wakefulness during the night - but we just settle ourselves back to sleep again ('cos we know we would get short shrift if we poked our dh's and said "Oi! You awake? Can you get me a drink? What shall we do tomorrow then?") Getting yourself to sleep is a skill that has to be learned - and I so wish I had done it sooner with ds1 and saved myself 3 years of being a walking zombie!

Having said all that....5 months is still kind of young (to me) for CC. I don't think I could have done it then....

Huge hugs and sympathy. It sounds like absolute hell.

Could you work on cutting out the feeding as much as possible for the next month, and then when he's six months (the 'official age' although between ourselves lots of us do a CC-lite before then (or is it just me ?) because we are going totally insane) do CC?

I vividly remember being so exhausted I was screaming down the phone at DP to 'come back and ring social services to take it away'.

Oh, I feel so much better hearing that motherinferior. I can remember yelling at dh "Why did I do this? I've ruined our lives! Can't we put him up for adoption"

Of course, now that I am getting some proper sleep it sounds mad, but at the time, well, you know how it is.

Thanks everyone. I got a whole 4 hours this morning between 3am and 7am!
Reason being DS had the most god awful poo (having not had one for over 36hrs) and I had to change him, wash him and toss his sleeping bag in the wash. I don't have a spare grobag so I decided to swaddle him in a big holey blanket.
He always did sleep well as a little baby, all swaddled up.
Feeling much more human today!

no time to read whole thread but me too on the tiredness lowryn (shame there isn't a yawning face smiley). Was woken 6 times last night...