What do you do when sleep training hasn’t worked?

[Nosleep2021]

DS is just awful. We are lucky to get 2/3 hours at the start of the night, wakes, then he refuses to go back in his cot. He isn’t hungry or anything - milk is offered and refused.

Since what he wants is to be picked up the sleep methods like Ferber don’t work.

I never thought I’d do CIO but I just can’t carry on like this. I’m depressed because of lack of sleep.

I think you should LTB. He sounds like a twat.

(Obviously not real advice but hoping it might make you smile).

All things shall pass (eventually).

I keep regretting having him in the middle of the night but I don’t really it sucks

If you think something won’t work you’re probably correct. Because advice is only useful if taken. A big part of the cost is individual tailored advice (which you haven’t had, so you can’t say it won’t work) and individual tailored support. The support and getting everyone in the family being consistent and supportive is not to be underestimated.

What do you have to lose by enquiring?

If your OH isn’t up for CIO, or taking the hit on several sleepless nights in a row while you go to a hotel (also costly!), then a sleep consultant seems reasonable.

Sometimes we can’t get outside ourselves to see what’s actually needed.

I am a sleep consultant and happy to help. I do personalised plans that work but it would involve looking at daytime sleep first before the night.

Yeah I know thanks Squirrels but tbh not everyone just has a few hundred going spare

Sleep thanks and this is why I doubt it would help. He’s at nursery mostly so I have no control over that and anyway I’ve never known it make any difference.

Most people don’t have a few hundred going spare, especially this time of year. But if you need support - and it seems like support is your biggest issue - sometimes it’s worth the investment if the support can’t come from elsewhere. MN can’t help apart from sympathy! If he’s at nursery FT then they have a schedule, so then you piggyback to replicate that at home. Someone who can look at the big picture of your individual circumstance and baby could be invaluable.

The nursery will help you structure his day sleep if you explain how bad things are. I would be aiming for a short morning nap that you’re going to drop over the next few months, and a long lunchtime nap. Most nurseries want the kids to do that anyway.
Then you need an extremely rock solid sleep training method that you stick to like glue. No trying this trying that, just one thing that you do relentlessly every single night. At this point I would do controlled crying with no pick ups at all just patting inside the cot. Because you are all at your wits end.

Daytime sleep does make a difference to nights but it can take a few weeks to get it going. I've worked with families in your situation lots of times where child is in nursery. Most nurseries will work with you if you just ask for a bit of flexibility. Once there's more structure to day (you haven't said what times he sleeps at during the day as far I read) then I'd look at breaking those sleep associations at night.

The help is there if you need it.

Ds3 (now 15 and can sleep for England) was my worst sleeper. Around 12 months was the worst. Waking every 30 minutes. We were exhausted and miserable. The patience of the early months, when broken sleep is to be expected, had long worn off and I was getting cross and frustrated. For what it's worth this is what we did.... I went to the gp in desperation. I cried to him and begged for help. Now obviously this was 15 yrs ago and my gp was close to retirement and a little old fashioned but he prescribed medicine to help ds sleep. Essentially what he said was that while we were all so tired it was going to be very difficult to stick to any kind of sleep training and the first step was to break the cycle. We were instructed to use the medicine for a couple of nights only. Now i appreciate your gp might not do this but if there is another way to break the cycle then i would recommend it. Can you get a night off and let someone else have him for the night? Once we were feeling a bit better we genuinely felt able to retry controlled crying and had a more successful experience. Nothing was going to work while we were in such a negative and exhausted situation. Children pick up on our distress and it's really unsettling for them. We needed to sort ourselves out first. This is only our experience and might be totally useless to you but on the off chance it helps...

I'm not sure if this helps but my daughter was like this. We also have no one around to help us and with both working more than full time and a 3 year old too we were permanently exhausted.
We tried some sleep training and it just didn't work. Then at around 15 months she started sleeping a lot better. She'd only wake once or twice and would go back to sleep relatively easily most of the time.
She seems to be going through a regression right now and is as bad as ever but I'm hopeful she will improve. Your situation is not uncommon, although from reading replies here it makes it sound like it is, but I know so many people who have the same problem, or whose toddlers sleep even worse than you describe. It will get better though.
Are you breastfeeding at all?

'And I’m absolutely desperate to do something.' 'It's ruining my life'.

@Nosleep2021 but you've been told by several others on here to try a sleep consultant and that it's worked wonders, yet you say you don't want to because 'you've read books on them and don't think it'll work'

Ok then 🤷‍♀️

These threads are all similar and usually contain refusal from a sleep deprived mum to use a sleep consultant.

Yep my little one would do 7ish till 10ish no probs and dream like as you describe, and then be up for 3-4 hrs... she was toddler aged before we manage to make the changes that helped.
You are exhausted and it seems like just want to do CIO, which is fair enough especially when feeling so so exhausted for so bloody long.
It has the potential to make things better but there is also the potential that it could make things worse. Especially if you've already tried short phases of crying and being returned to and that hasn't made any difference...then I think the chances are it won't be that effective.
I get that you are completely nuked by the not sleeping (and you and OH don't seem to be able to make a way work of getting even a few hours block in for you which doesn't help).

I know you don't feel like it really but I would deffo consider sleep consultant in your situ or even a night nanny or similar if OH is resistant to helping you. The effects on your physical and mental health of no sleep are just unbearable.
Also really helpful to have a seperate expert in your corner if it's an area of conflict with OH so it's not you having to try to lead things and suffering the blame if it doesn't work.

I would also book myself a night in a hotel! Just for survival! He can cope for a night or two. To give you the energy to manage what ever plan it is you go with from here.

You say you don't have a couple of hundred going spare but most people don't ... yet if you needed urgent root canal treatment you'd find the money. Treat non-sleeping baby as the same.
It's not thousands of £. It's worth putting a few hundred into if it's ruining your life?

Never did it coz I didn't have to as Ferber worked for us... but if I were you I would be doing CIO

Also a stringent day time nap and eat routine is really helpful for us (twins) they are two now but we've always had no flex in their nap, eat, bedtime and wake up time no matter where we are and what day it is. Only just started to flex for family occasions now and guess what... massive sleep disruption over Christmas.

Also I agree f*ck off am I sleeping on the floor!

The trouble is there isn't really anything else that anyone can say... There's not going to be something that you haven't thought of or looked into. You have to pick a line and stick to it. It almost doesn't matter which line you pick. Personally I'd say daytime routine first. View it as seeing yourself up for success. I know you've said there isn't much of one and that he's at nursery. So speak to nursery and see roughly what they do. At 12m he will probably need 2 naps, and awake time 3-4hrs. So say he's up at 6am, he'd nap 8:30 for say an hour, then nap 1-3, in bed before 7. But because he's not sleeping well at night, he might be not getting enough sleep overall. In which case there's a few things that could happen, he could be napping longer than this and naps could be propping him up, so you might want to cut them down and do an earlier bedtime to compensate. Or he could be just getting less than he needs in 24hrs every day and running up a sleep debt. An early bedtime might help with that too. Anything after 5pm can be bedtime, if it needs to be. And likewise i would rather have him up at 5am starting the day than going back to sleep and thinking that's his first nap. 12m does have a sleep regression I think, but I know this isn't a new issue for you. Personally I'd pay a sleep consultant to unpick things with you, it's not as much as £400 you mention. Saved us here. But failing that if you post more detail about what the average day looks like, perhaps people can help. There's an app I've heard of called huckleberry that helps time basis, might be worth a look. After a week of routine routine routine I'd do controlled crying. Or if the checks are winding him up more, then I'd do cio yes.

Hi,
This sounds utterly exhausting and unsustainable. I dont know how you're functioning.
I don't really have anything different say than any of the other posters but for what it's worth...

I would absolutely get a sleep consultant, they will have faced this issue before, have methods to suggest and will support you which I think you'll need. As you say you've tried everything and none of the suggestions on this post sound like like answer to you so it's time to bring in the big guns. It is expensive but I would prioritise this above most things, better than a holiday, forget birthday presents for the next year, eat vegetarian for a couple of months, whatever it takes. Your sleep is worth everything. When you're exhausted it is difficult to see the wood for the trees and make a decision on what strategy you're going to go for so having an expert will hopefully guide you down the right path.

Is there anything you can think of that may have triggered the change 4 months ago? Starting nursery? Seems like massive separation anxiety. Is he clingy to you during the day? I would try and address this by trying to get your ds attached to a comforter of some sort. When my son started nursery he was so anxious and really needed his comforter more than before. You may need to give it to him consistently for a month for him to take to it. Every time you have a cuddle, at nappy changes, in the push chair, when he gets in bed with you, when you say good bye at nursery... just constantly shove it in his hands and hopefully he will start getting attached.
I feel like if you're going to let him CIO it would be beneficial for him to have something else to cling to. He obviously needs the security.

My 16mo boy is happy to self settle and for the most part sleeps through the night. Every so often we have 2 or 3 nights where he will wake up and not want me to put him back in the cot, I guess it is developmental regressions. When this happens I sit in the dark on the floor next to the cot, making shhhhh noises while patting the mattress rhythmically. Sometimes this will take over an hr for him to get back to sleep and I know he would go off to sleep quicker if he was lying on me but I'm terrified of starting something I can't carry on with.

I also wouldn't poo poo looking at the routine, even if it is for your own benefit. I love having a routine, before I had a baby I thought it was ridiculous that parents worked their day around the baby but it gives me structure to my day and predictability in how my son will react/behave. Sounds like you will need to largely adapt to the nursery routine. How many naps is he on at nursery? At 12mo he will likely still need 2 so if they are only giving him 1 this may need to be addressed.

Good luck xxxx

yet if you needed urgent root canal treatment you'd find the money

Oh, we would, would we?

Maybe sympathy and hopes of a better future is all I need, at 3am?

There's a Facebook groups called the beyond sleep training project. Lots of advice there.

I've seen some people use a cot with the side down as an extra large next to me. You might need cot raisers under the cot so it's high enough. That might be a good transition arrangement. It'd at least give you more room to sleep.

We used a sleep consultant at 12m - I'd had enough by this stage and I couldn't work from tiredness. I was writing for a living and I couldn't focus.

It cost £200 ish and I'm in London.

She gave us a programme to follow which focused on day naps and eating aswell. Then we discussed different options and she was on call for a week for any time it was going bad and we just needed that reassurance.

Yes it's a lot of money but I would rather sacrifice other stuff so we could sleep.

Have you tried not taking him out of the cot at night?
Either just popping your head round the door once or returning every 5 minutes and seeing how long it takes for him to fall asleep again?

I’d stick to his nursery routine every day too, I’m guessing one nap 12-2ish?

Give it 10-14 days and see if the awake period in the night gets shorter.

Just wanted to offer you my sympathy @Nosleep2021 DD1 was a terrible sleeper and now I have DD2 who is also terrible. We tried longer naps, shorter naps, fewer naps, white noise etc. No joy. DD1 eventually improved over time and slept through at 2 years old but it took a real toll. Can't face another 2 yrs of it with DD2

I work with lots of different sleep consultants... and they don't need to stay in your home overnight. They really are worth the money and not too expensive. They can help on lots of different aspects of sleep and family life in general.

And most importantly help and support you too

My son was a bit of a nightmare sleeper I took him to a cranial osteopath and wow what a difference that made!

If all you want is sympathy and hope then don't post asking for advice.