6 month baby girl.. trying to get her to sleep 7-7 with controlled crying

[SimonTheDad]

So.. here is the story.. we have a 6 month girl who has never really slept well. Here routine until this week:

wake 8-9am
feed
nap on/off untili 11am
feed
various feeds/45 min naps throughout the day awake 2hrs nap 45
right up until 10:30 then feed and sleep
various waking in the night

she has only slep through twice and typically wakes 3-4 times often just for a dummy replacement.

This week we started her on a more structured routine. We tried EASY and are essentially following it. Although she hates the PU/PD. The PU particularly drives her crazy with crying so there is no PD. So we have adapted it to controlled crying but with the EASY sched.

Day 5.. usual bed at 6:15 and crying on/off until currently 8:10 probably until 9 and a breast feed. She has learnt to roll over in her cot (progress for her motor skills) but i think that is mainly as she knows we come to arrange her when she gets all out of shape. She hates having the light off so we have some dim lighting in there. Ermm.. what else.. she is trying to sleep but just cannot.. we are entering her room every 10 minutes and giving light petting and replacing a dummy.

Any advice welcome.. its haaaaaardddd!!!

Oh.. she seems her usual happy self in the day.. but cannot sleep beyond 45 mins in the day so guess what.. its more controllded crying EASY PEASY during the day too... phewwww

you can't spoil a young baby. if she falls asleep in your arms so be it - but it's not spoiling her.

Karen, the sshh method worked really quite quickly for us - we had decided to take things very slowly, as that's what we wanted, and our bed times became much like yours. Teething and illness has messed with that a bit lately, but I was surprised how quickly shh/pat became shh outside door became bye!

Not much sense - we had decided to take things slowly, but it worked quicker than we thought, I meant to say!

Hurrah for IAteRosemaryConleyforBreakfast.

Simon, I think the reason you've been given rough treatment here is simply because of your flat refusal to accept any advice about alternatives and your constant quoting of 'theories' as reason to support your approach as opposed to an understanding of your baby to support your approach.

day 4-5
little one went to sleep at 6:5.. she is still sleeping.. no crying tonight at all

more details to follow but it was wake to sleep we think that did it

"Hurrah for IAteRosemaryConleyforBreakfast.

Simon, I think the reason you've been given rough treatment here is simply because of your flat refusal to accept any advice about alternatives and your constant quoting of 'theories' as reason to support your approach as opposed to an understanding of your baby to support your approach."

huh.. wake to sleep was suggested and we used it.. perhaps what u mean to say is you have not changed to your opinion.

i never quoted theories.

someone mentioned Hitler at some stage LOL

peace

Tipex - Nobody is suggesting anyone leaves their baby "to cry for hours" but MINUTES. And this is not "neglect" nor is anyone talking about denying "physical contact". What I recommended was to hug/kiss/rock/etc whatever to put baby back to sleep without a feed.

Read my post again. I AM making the sweeping statement that six month old babies don't PHYSICALLY need the night feeds. I have been told this by DD's paediatrician, and my own experience & that of friends confirms this. The vast majority lose the habit of feeding at night in a couple of nights. For the rest, it takes a bit longer (about a week, I am told). We are of course talking about normal babies here - not premature, underweight, etc.

Anyway, are you ever going to state your claim to professional authority? What is your training and profession? Just curious, because you don't sound like a doctor.

"Hurrah for IAteRosemaryConleyforBreakfast.

Simon, I think the reason you've been given rough treatment here is simply because of your flat refusal to accept any advice about alternatives and your constant quoting of 'theories' as reason to support your approach as opposed to an understanding of your baby to support your approach."

huh.. wake to sleep was suggested and we used it.. perhaps what u mean to say i have not changed to your opinion.

i never quoted theories.

someone mentioned Hitler at some stage LOL hmm

peace

haven't read the whole thread - but (speaking as someone who has done CC with a 6 month old before - it worked I must say).

I think you're expecting FAR too much to expect them to sleep 7-7!

S H E
S L E E P S

S H E
S L E E P S

hoooraaaaaahhhhaaaayyyyy

The books advice about cluster feeding?

"I think you're expecting FAR too much to expect them to sleep 7-7"

not expecting.. but that is the grand goal.. eventually.. read whole thing

Wait until she starts teething

"The books advice about cluster feeding?"

recap.. we feed at 9..11...4.3

that is hardly cluster feeding if your'e bf tho

yes if you have a child who likes their sleep - you may get the 7-7 thing - you may have a child that doesn't need that much sleep and therefore will NEVER sleep that long.

DS1 (who we did CC with) - is often awake from 6am (goes to bed at 8pm) - he's 7 now so knows to stay in his bed/be quiet. But he's always woken up early.

DS2 on the other hand would sleep until lunch time if you let him - and has been like that since he was a baby.

DS3 has recently (at nearly 8 months) in the alst week started going 8pm until 5.30-6am - as far as I'm concerned that's a decent nights sleep - if that's all he needs that's all he needs.

ok I've read the thread now - and I think you're making life far too hard for yourself....

skim read, no doubt all this been said before, but here we go

babies go thro endless stages, you can spend lots of time 'training' them to sleep longer then they hit another developmental stage and, back to the beginning.

most 6 month olds don't sleep thro, its normal, some do (lucky parents)

chill and enjoy your baby and take your lead from her

i did all this with ds1 cos i was a beginner at babies and daft with it. it makes me feel really sad now that i did. ds1 is far more neurotic and terrible sleeper now btw. ds2 is brill and laidback, rubbish until 1 though but never looked back from then on

oh - and FWIW - re "the textbook says XXXX"

guess what...........

Nature forget to give the textbooks to our DC to read while they were in the womb.......or should I say our DC forgot to bring their instruction manuals with them.

So we have to figure out how they work - different methods work for different babies (and I can testify to that having had 3 totally different ones with regards to sleeping).

my ds2 (9 mths)has always self settled, lucky me...
when he wakes I breastfeed him as he drops right back into sleep. job done 10 minutes.
Sometimes it's every 2 hr I wake up next day and thing what the f??? was that about.
then next day out pops another tooth
I'll lay my foot down about sleeping after the last tooth appears circa@ age 2.5
Did this with dd and she has been a dream since then
And no guilt.
But I am a lentil weaving, breast proffering sort...

Simon - Great! Did you just put her down?

piffle

hey Simon,

You're probably sick of reading posts by now, but I read further down the thread that you wanted some support.

I figure you do what you've got to do.

Some people may not have felt so utterly knackered and at the end of their tether that they will try anything including CC. I have. I too found that not sleeping was incompatible with work, and that not working was incompatible with putting food on the table.

So i did Cc
at 6.5 mo

DD's fine
we're fine
she sleeps

glad I did it.

I know many of you who haven't done CC have had just as much sleep deprivation to deal with. But, hey. Horses for courses.

"Simon - Great! Did you just put her down?"

yes we stayed with her the whole time.. basically her prob is that she jolts herself awake every 30-45 mins.. we watched her sleep in her room for 1.5hrs.. so we are trying to be in the room when she jolts so we can asist