3-4 hours sleep a night. practical help and support desperately needed!

[pevie]

My 4 month old has never been a brilliant sleeper particularly during day. DR thinks reflux and is on gaviscon. she now seems much happier during day although onlt taking very brief naps. as you can imagine we did a lot of what we needed to do to get by at beginning. however lately night sleep has become a nightmare. think she now relies on all these props and when she hits light sleep will waken for us. shes in ambi baby nest s0o sometimes a shuggle of that works, thats how she gets to sleep at night. but lately that doesnt work through night. so end up feeding her earlier and earlier, even then she oesnt re-settle at times. last night for example, down at 6.50, stirred and re-settled at 7.15, 9 and 1. picked her up then re-settled in cot. but at 2.30 woke completely couldnt re-settle so fed. took biggish feed but wouldnt go back to sleep. finally rocked her back to sleep at 5. dh and i demented and worried about dd1 who is being disrupted by this. any ideas, am now able to tolerate some cring i think cos none of us can go on like this.

This was me and my ds pevie.
when you tell people in rl..they just do not get it or even listen do they...every one i told glazed over and im sure just did not believe me!

dont know what an ambi thingy is, mine was in a cot and i slept in a z bed at the side of the cot, or he slept in his chair..you know the sort that you can get fromArgos, dont know how to describe them...every one has one, its material stretched over a metal frame.
well any way, because this kept him uprightish he slept in this really well for a week or so.just enough for me to recharge slightly.
i will tell you one thing tho, i did any thing i possibly could to get sleep and to get him to sleep, ANYTHING such was my desperation and extreme exhaustion.so i know how you feel.

Dissle , am hoping there is a happy ending to your story. Did he eventually settle? What age at? Has anyone tried controlled comforting, am wondering if that would work cos it lets you pick them up and settle them, but still helps them to do it on their own. Sorry about all typing errors in first message, had baby on kneel

Your situation sounds awful, I really feel for you.

DD was a 10mo when we decided to teach her to sleep, she wasn't sleeping longer than 2 hrs at a time, and there were usually a few hours in the night that she would wake every 20/30 mins.

We followed a sleep plan that you can download off the internet for about US$60. It's called The Sleep Sense Program, by Dana Obleman. There are a number of sleep plans categorised by age.

We started by staying by the cot. You can pat/shhh etc to calm your baby but only intermittently so that they don't actually fall asleep from it. The point is that they fall asleep on their own. It can take a long time, and your baby will cry. If DD became really distressed I would pick her up, calm her down, then back in the cot. Keep doing this till baby falls asleep.

After a few days you move away from the cot a bit and do the same thing. Then move to the door. Then leave the room while they are still awake.

It worked really well. DD goes to bed about 8pm and usually sleeps through till about 5/6am. If she wakes up she might cry out but will be asleep again in a few mins, or we pop in, give her a quick pat and she resettles herself.

I had previously read a book called 'Helping your Baby to Sleep - why gentle techniques work best' by Anni Gethin & Beth McGregor which gives lots of good reasons not to do control crying, so was quite anxious about leaving DD to cry.

I reckon though, there is no way of teaching your baby to sleep without some crying. They are crying for their usual sleep aid, and when they don't get it they get angry! This program worked for us as even though DD got mad, I was with her and she would not have felt abandoned - just frustrated! So worth persevering though. The first time she fell asleep on her own after just a few minutes felt like such an achievement. And waking up at 6 in the morning and realising I'd been asleep since 10pm...!

If you're still reading this post, sorry it's so long! Hope this helps, and good luck!

i think because of the reflux they are happier upright to sleep, this is why the baby seat thingy helped.
dont want to tell you how long it took him to sleep through the night as it will make you want to jump off a building as it did me....

tried controlled comfort in fact i did it every time he woke for..well...ages, it became routine.

HV even asked me fill out a sleep diary, i documented that he was up 27 times one night alone...gave up because this was not a one off night, this was every night.
i have concluded that he was just a baby who did not sleep well.
he turned into a toddler who did not sleep well and now he is 4 we still have him sleeping through maybe 5 out of 7 nights.
this is good and only happened in the last 6 months or so, prior to that he never slept through.
i did every thing right.
no talking, no lights, no drinks no food, no stimualtion, no picking up, just patting and shhing til he dropped off.
moved towards the door gradually.
he always went to sleep in bed from awake, settled himself off, had very strict bedtime routine from when he was tiny baby.
tried lavender bath stuff...crap,
tried well, every thing....you name it.

he just is not a good sleeper.

Dissle, how bad was your Lo's reflux? I don't think my LO is that bad anymore as she no longer gets distressed in the day like she did. Ironically when she seemed at her most uncomfortable, she slept much better at night. Although she would get up twice, I'd feed her and she'd go back down. I wonder if she's now got into bad habits because of all the stuff we did at beginning, and now that she's more aware of surroundings, she looks for it more. If I thought that was case, then I'd feel much better about letting her cry.
Antherbadmother, your plan sounds realy interesting. How long did it take? Am assuming it might not take so long if baby younger. Think we may have to bite the bullet and ship off DD1 to grans for a few nights.

my dd is 5 months and can be like this some nights. she never ever sleeps through. 4 months is still so young. do you bf? can you just take her into bed with you? it's really worth it for some sleep if you find she sleeps better like this. she can just latch on and you only semi-wake, no getting up. do it for a few nights and forget about the sleep training for now.

that's what i would do anyway.

I don't know anything about reflux, but at this age DD would only sleep with me. So thats what I did.

Am bf but unfortunately due to reflux she can sometimes be uncomfortable after a feed so its not really possible to just do it lying down. Have taken her into bed with us from about 4 or 5 before and this used to work okay, now she jumps about and constantly wakes herself, even worse than when in the bed. Trust me, I'm not just trying to avoid inconvenience, have genuinely tried lots of softly, softly aproaches. Even rocking doesnt seem to work until she is totally knackered which is about 2 hours after she wakes!!! Found the same with DD 1 although she not half as bad - the more we intervened the worse it got, so at about 8 months did CC, which worked after 1 night!!! I find it difficult when people are so against certain measures, cos I would genuinely try every option open before CC. However, do think LO is too young at this stage so that is why was considering something a bit more hands on like picking up and putting down.

We took the sleep training really slowly, about 2-3 weeks. Although the strategy tells you to move to the next stage every 3 days, so it would take about 10 days.

Things were a lot better though after only a few days.

Hadn't taken the reflux into consideration in your original post though pevie. If there are underlying situations like this, sleep training might not be effective if your LO is in pain. IMO you'd need to be sure that the reflux has gone as your LO will cry when you are training them to sleep, and it would be awful if they were crying in pain, but you confused it for an angry cry and persevered.

I think I have read that sleep training is not recommended for babies under 6mo, so you might need to check that out first.