Time for tough love?

[Springsnow22]

I had a night out tonight, and I was with a group of women who all had babies within a week or so of mine and all sleeping through. The odd bad night and quite a few wake early but they are all getting a good block of sleep.

Ours is just awful. Won’t sleep in cot, even co sleeping is so difficult as refuses to sleep unless ON me. Still wakes when co sleeping. I’ve just been up for an hour and a half with him. He’s 18 months.

And I’ve had enough. I’m sick of not being able to do anything in the evenings and fed up of the broken nights.

Is CIO really the only option? Anything else (Ferber, et al) wind him up more, he can see you’re there but gets very upset at not being picked up and held.

I'm going out on a limb here as I'm childless, but all of my friends have had multiple children and by going on conversations I've heard, don't compare yours to others. Some babies/kids are just really shit sleepers and it's as simple as that.

My DD was a shitty sleeper too OP. In my experience each child will "get there"
but in there own time. She co slept too and only on me. One day that changed and she still wanted to cosleep but not on me any more. She's just shy of her third birthday and she's in her own bed and is starting to sleep through the night. We still have bad nights though.
I get that you're fed up of not having an evening but I promise it won't last forever.
If you want to try CIO by all means give it a go. It never worked with my DD she is incredibly stubborn and has never cried herself to sleep. It was very much baby steps with her- and a lot of one step forward, 2 steps back.
Sending hugs 🤗

It might not last forever but then while it is lasting it’s horrendous and I can’t go on like this now. I really have to do something.

I would like another child and if I wait for DS to be sleeping through it won’t happen. I am also very concerned I’m setting him up for a life of poor sleep.

Oh no. I'm 7mo in and I keep hoping 'tonight's the night' and it hasn't been. Not once. I seen your post and can't believe it might go to 18mo like yours!
I'm sending you're doing so so well, don't be tough on yourself
I really hope someone pops along with great advice for you
From one sleepless mum to another x

It's not just co-sleeping straight to CIO. Controlled crying I think it's called is more gradual, and yes, you are entitled to sleep at night! We did something similar with DS at 18 months when he basically had fun waking up 6+ times a night and yelling for me and I was not safe to drive during the day. Go for it, it will take a few nights of gritting your teeth, but it's better for all of you. Remember that sleep deprivation is a form of torture, so no, you don't have to do it to be a good mum.

But you also need to consider the possibility that you're not "setting him up" for anything. As PP said, some babies/children are just terrible sleepers, in the same way that some adults are.

DS is almost 3.5 now and has been an awful sleeper since birth, although it is slowly getting better. 0-18 months he woke on the dot hourly all night every night and it almost broke me. Once I stopped BF that reduced and from 18 months to now he's always still woken in the night, but it's generally only 2-3 times and he'll quickly fall back asleep. We co-sleep to minimise disruption to my own sleep as a result (and definitely won't be having any more DC!).

I get the desperation for things to improve, honestly. Especially when it feels like everyone around you has a child that sleeps "normally". But I just couldn't do CIO. At 18 months there's just no way for your child to understand why they've gone from having reassurance and comfort at night, to that suddenly being taken away.

If you have room to put a small cot alongside your bed, one possibility is to get them used to sleeping in there, by having your arm through the bars as much as needed to comfort them, once they realise you are right there reliably they may relax and sleep, it could take a while but might be less intense than going from co sleeping to separate rooms?

I really wouldn't do cio he will wonder where you are . What about Ferber but bigger gaps in length ?

I'm afraid DS just had to do as he was told, I went back to work full time as a single parent staff nurse when he was 6 weeks old and could not have tolerated this sleep disruption and worked a full shift.
We always slept in the same room at night but he caught on pretty soon that bedtime was bedtime.
I live with DS and DiL who are in their 40's now as it's cheaper for all of us to live together in separate parts of the house and he certainly wasn't traumatised by it - he doesn't even remember being that young.

My daughter was the same only slept directly on top of me! She's just last week slept through in her cot for the first time and she's two in a couple of weeks. What I did is put an air bed in her room next to her cot and got her comfortable sleeping in her cot that way.

I could have written this. she is 3.5 now. As a baby she wouldn't sleep unless being held. I agree with pp, she nearly broke me with the frequent wake ups. Night weaning didnt help. Co-sleeping saved my sanity. She dropped her nap around her 2nd birthday. I tried what I could, but couldn't do CC or any other sleep training methods. She was a very sicky baby and crying would always cause her to vomit so to me it seemed pointless. Every night was "maybe tonight is the night!" I had friends with babies who slept through from 7pm and had 2 hour naps in the day. Gro clock, blackout blinds, white noise, no screens, relaxing music, bath, books, evening walks in the buggy - none of it ever made any difference and I feel like I wasted a lot of time and energy trying to change what I could not.

I have since had another Dd who is 4 months old. She has a quick feed and a burp and only settles properly if left alone in her cot to drift off. She doesnt like to be held to sleep. It is astonishing to me every time I put her down awake and look down to find she has dropped off without a single cry.
What I am trying to say is - in my experience it is not you, its them. Do whatever it is you need to do to get most people the most amount of sleep. Sleep deprivation is so hard and you have my sympathy.

OP you're not setting him up for a lifetime of bad sleep. People naturally gave different sleep patterns that change over time.
I was a horrendous sleeper until I was about 5 and was still frequently in my parents bed at that point. They were very flexible about cosleeping amd didn't do any form of CIO / sleep training. Now, I'm almost always asleep within 10 minutes of getting into bed and (prior to having DS, who still wakes 1-2x a night at 2.5) would sleep like the dead until morning.
DH's parents did controlled crying with him and he slept through (or at least wasn't waking them up when he woke) quite early. But he's a terrible sleeper now, takes 2-3 hours to fall asleep, wakes in the night and can't get back to sleep, lies awake feeling anxious and overthinking things...
And you'll find plenty of people with the opposite sets of anecdotes too. Your DC will sleep through without you at some point, it's just a question of what you can cope with until that point. I found the 'Beyond Sleep Training Project' on Facebook really helpful and supportive for all things sleep related. Also the Possums approach.

My second was a shocking sleeper came as a shock after first slept through really quickly. After ds2 turned 1 we got tougher. When he woke we went in and checked he wasn't wet but that's it. It did make him cross when we didn't pick him up but we just kept going, we would set a timer adding a minute each time and go in check on him then leave we had 2 tough nights and the third he slept through and has done ever since

You can't jump from sleep with us to cio. I would get dc sleeping in own bed and when he cry's don't get him up or let him get up just go comfort him in his room. Dark, no talking then gradually reduce the comfort every few days so try say hand on torso, to just fingers, to hand just off torso then gradually move away until you are at the door. Also do you have a dh? Are you both working? I'd do two shifts say him do 7-1 while you sleep and you do 1-7 so at least you get a block of sleep. Also lots of exercise, fresh air, stimulation in the day.

I appreciate the advice but anything that involves me being there but not picking him up is not going to work. It might be gentler on paper but DS really doesn’t see it like that. Being in the room with him or going in and out will upset him.

Interested to know how this panned out as DS1 is 2 and stil up multiple times a night - did you do CIO & did it work?

Hi @Bofg1 ; I didn’t expect to see this one upped! I saw it in active and thought ‘wow, this sounds just like how DS used to be’ 😂 then realised.

Yes, his sleep was awful. The thing with DS is you just can’t co sleep with him. He has this constant need to touch so he runs his feet up and down you and cuddles into you which is cute but very smothering. To be honest I am not a massive fan of co sleeping anyway. Obviously nothing against it for others but personally I like a bit of space at night.

Anyway, we used a sleep consultant in the end, it must have only been a couple of days after I posted here. It was horrible, I won’t lie. It was gradual retreat and he screamed and cried that first night and then slept through the next. And while we had the odd wake up and occasional bad dream, illness, sometimes just bizarre things (he once woke at 3 in the morning shouting I WANT JINGLE BELLS just before Christmas last year - yeah thanks for that DS) he’s slept through ever since. To be honest I can live with wake ups but the big problem was once awake you couldn’t get him back in his cot.

We had another baby in July and she’s thus far a good sleeper. I don’t know if it’s because I know what I’m doing but I don’t think that it is. I think she’s just a snoozier baby than DS! She wakes once at night which is why I’m up now but she goes straight back in her cot, no problem.

The only thing with DS is when his night sleep improved he substituted it with early mornings so from summer 22 until summer 23 6 am was honestly a lie in of epic proportions: he generally woke 5-530 but even earlier wasn’t totally unheard of which was horrible. At first I was so grateful he was sleeping through I didn’t mind but as the months went by it got pretty miserable. Hoping DD doesn’t follow this pattern.