9 months and still won't sleep

[TeainanIV]

This isn't the first time I've posted about my DD and her horrendous sleep... and it's only gotten worse. I'm at the end of my tether now, cannot cope and it's make me so angry and anxious. She just does not sleep unless on my boob or on me. She is incredibly clingy, to the point she becomes hysterical if my partner tries to settle her. We used to at least be able to bounce her to sleep, but now thats impossible and the only way to get her down is feeding. Even then moving her is difficult as she immediately wakes and either latches on or screams blue murder until back on. This is the same whether it's day or night - I can never just pop her in her cot, she just screams and screams.

I'm beyond exhausted, I feel dizzy most days through sheer exhaustion. I am angry and snappy all day, I've got no patience left by night time and I hate myself but some nights I feel so much anger towards her. I would never ever hurt her but it scares me how angry I feel - I'm generally a very placid and patient person so not used to feeling this way. Nothing in the house is getting done because she is on me all the time - naps are on me or in the pram because ant other way and she just doesn't sleep!

My relationship feels in tatters - she's still in our room, neither of us are sleeping and my partner gets upset as she is hysterical if he tries to settle her. He gets annoyed at me for feeding her to sleep but the alternative is screaming for hours on end. We've tried CIO, controlled crying etc but all end up with her hysterical and making herself choke she's that worked up. The only thing that calms her is the boob.

Sleep training has been made harder as our neighbours have complained about the noise and now completely ignore us out of the house as its annoyed them that much! I hate myself for letting it bother me as she's a baby and can't help it, but it's only added to the anxiety of night times knowing not only is it effecting us but them too.

I don't know what to do, I feel like a failure in terms of her sleep. I feel like I've created this problem and now it's so deep it's becoming impossible to fix. I worry about her future sleep if this is what she's like now and I genuinely don't think I could go through this again if we were to have another baby.

I feel so pathetic writing this, this is one of many threads of written with the same issue and I honestly thought it would've improved by now but it's just gotten worse and worse. If you've made it this far thank you!! This is such a rambling thread, please go easy on me in the comments - really at a low point

@teainanIV I didn't express due to low supply so combi fed instead. What we found though was that she actually wasn't hungry when she was waking and it was more for comfort so night feedings stopped being a thing.

If you're going away though then yes, express milk. Maybe do a test run one evening and go out leaving your DH a bottle. Babies behave very differently when mums aren't around, you'll be surprised!

Really hope things get better for you. A lot of it is our mindset, as I have discovered with time. I used to get really down seeing "normal" solutions work for every baby except mine. Now I've just accepted she's incredibly strong willed and that's probably going to make me grow in ways I wouldn't otherwise. You're not doing anything wrong- keep reminding yourself that!

All the best x

Could she have silent reflux? My daughter was like this and the only thing that helped was reflux meds and dairy free formula.

@girlabouthome

Have you actually read Henry and Wang 1998? Because it is not about sleep training.

I suggest you do some independent research yourself and you will soon find that there is no scientific research showing that sleep training is harmful, but there are studies showing that it does help improve sleep, improve the mental health of parents, and does not make any difference to the long term mental health of children.

Not signalling (crying) is NOT self soothing and is described in literature as LEARNED HELPLESSNESS.

Sleep training doesn't cause learned helplessness. That is the result of severe neglect over months or years.

Conflating learned helplessness with sleep training is like saying restricting sugar from a child's diet is the same as starving them. Or that leaving a baby with a babysitter for an evening is equivalent to putting them in an orphanage.

I sleep trained both of mine and they both still definitely call out for me in the night if they are unwell, scared or need something so they know I’m there for them but they now also know how to fall asleep by themselves. Best thing I did as they were not improving without sleep training.

Controlled crying, or cry it out may very well work and improve YOUR outcomes, but at what cost?

The cost is your baby is not trusting that you will respond to their cry.

The cost is your baby stops calling for you.

The cost is that you stop knowing how to attune to their needs.

The cost is that the breastfeeding relationship is compromised and baby is weaned too early.

The cost is that their levels of cortisol rise with no one available to soothe them to down regulate (because babies DO NOT "self soothe")

The cost is that even when the baby stops signalling the levels of cortisol remain high and baby and mother are no longer physiologically attuned.

And yes I've read Henry and Wang and have lectured on it for the past 2 years, to surmise;

KEY POINTS
• Mothers and babies are designed to be a mutually responsive dyad. Babies express their needs to the mother (or caregiver) through crying.
• Letting babies "cry it out" is a form of need-neglect that leads to many long-term effects.
• Consequences of the "cry it out" method include: It releases stress hormones, impairs self-regulation, and undermines trust.

It sounds like it could be reflux.

I used a sleep consultant that charged £100 and she wouldn't charge if there was no improvement and it was the best money we spent.

However, we had to get the reflux under control first. Gaviscon is over the counter, but we found it didn't help (though it does now she's older). Omprezale, prescribed by GP, helped a lot, but it can take two weeks, and they often start at the lowest dose which might not be enough. Our little one had to be on the highest dose.

It could also be a soya allergy.

Join some Facebook reflux groups for babies and I'm sure you will find many other mums feeling just like you and desperate.

Don't worry about your relationship with your baby that will get back on track once the sleep gets better. Sorting the sleep will sort everything else out including questions with regards to having another.

Make sure the GP listens to you re reflux.

I wouldn't do the ladders when your sleep is so bad, it's to stressful trying to work out what's causing what etc. Once the sleep is better those other things can be sorted, there's no rush.

Do you really think that babies who have had controlled crying used NEVER cry again?!

Hi OP this sounds so hard (and familiar!!) All kids are different and I know from experience that food/reflux issues definitely don't help, but I found that when mine had phases like this of being super restless, waking very frequently, needing to be on the boob all night etc, it was mostly because he was getting way too much daytime sleep and wasn't tired enough by bedtime to sleep deeply. I kept trying to make his naps longer because everyone was telling me "sleep begets sleep" and that he'd sleep better at night if he had long naps - but it turns out that's just not true for many babies and there's no scientific evidence for it.

Georgina May is a baby sleep specialist who's done loads of research into low sleep needs babies and how to help them sleep better (without sleep training). She has an online course you can pay for but also runs a facebook group called Desperately Seeking Sleep which has lots of tips & advice.

There's also a book called the No Cry Sleep Solution - you can find free ebook copies online - i found some stuff in there useful. She's got a great method for gradually shortening night feeds and gently teaching the baby to unlatch and go back to sleep quicker, I did that when my kid was about the same age as yours and while it didn't make him sleep longer stretches it made the night feeds much quicker and easier.

You are really exposing your ignorance here. Where have you been lecturing? Hopefully not in any kind of educational establishment, or to mums with babies that don't sleep!

Henry and Wang 1998 isn't about sleep training, doesn't mention cry it out, and doesn't even have the words cry or dyad in it. It's a review paper about the effects of severe childhood trauma - not the causes.

You are thinking of Middlemiss et al 2012. However that paper has been roundly criticised. It involved babies that were sleep trained in a hospital by nurses. Their cortisol levels were shown to be the same before and after sleep training. Their mothers cortisol levels were shown to be lower when the babies weren't crying.

The studies on learned helplessness are from Romanian orphanages

There are several up to date peer-reviewed review papers that summarise all the research on sleep training. You can find them easily on google scholar. For example

sleep training review

So if you have an interest in the subject goodness knows why you would choose an incorrect reference that is 24 years old, or a single poor quality paper, when there is so much else out there.

Emily Oster summarises current research here
https://emilyoster.substack.com/p/sleep-training-is-it-bad?s=r

Even la Leche League which is against sleep training can't actually come up with any evidence against (and doesn't bother with the Middlemiss paper)
https://www.laleche.org.uk/letting-babies-cry-facts-behind-studies/