I need help!

[poppyflower1803]

Hi,

This will be a long one!
I am in desperate need of some sleep help and advice.

DD, one week off being 6 months old, EBF has been waking every 40 minutes -every three hours if we are lucky. Tonight she slept for a couple hours straight until 2am where she has been up, literally, every 40 minutes. She has been like this for 2-3 weeks now (maybe a regression, though feels like we never left the 4 month one ). Before, she was waking maybe 2-3 times a night for a feed and before 3.5 months, she was able to sleep through the night. In fact, she was such a good sleeper as a newborn, it would take me ages to rouse her when she was due a feed during the night and she would sleep through nappy changes!

I am absolutely exhausted and at a complete loss. I am thinking about sleep training, though would prefer a gentler method but not sure I can wait and Keep up with a routine without seeing any results for a while! I need change and fast 😅

She has two sleep associations, feeding to sleep and being bounced on a yoga ball and unless she is in the car or the pram, cannot fall asleep by herself. How on earth do I break these? I presume sleep training again. I have tried the PUPD method, she just screams even more when I put her back down and I have tried just putting her in drowsy but awake whilst comforting her but again, she just screams.

Another issue is, she goes to bed between 9-10pm! She has 5 naps a day, usually short 1/2 hour ones with the occasional nap being over an hour (either contact nap or in the pram). She starts nursery soon, so this is not going to work, how do I bring her routine forward? I have tried longing her wake window before her last nap a bit more and then doing an earlier night time routine, and it just creates a very broken night with a super early start. No good for when you have no sleep!

I have bought the millpond book as recommended by my Heath visitor, but their method takes around 6 weeks to work, and I just don't know if I have the stamina at the moment.

Sorry for the rambling post, it's 5am and I am shattered.
Any advice is much welcome ♥️

Our lo was like that. We got to 6 months and we sleep trained. We did CC. We got to that point as we were exhausted and beyond tired and I was becoming really low.

Don't worry too much about nursery. THey are magic and have their own ways. Promise.

It would help if lo has a dummy so they can self soothe?? To break the habit it is literally that. Changing the habit and sticking to it no matter what.

The thing is we found it easier when lo was in their own room to do. We did do it when lo was in our room and it didn't work as effective.

If you look at ferber method, there is a formula for feeding overnight too.

To bring bedtime earlier. I would personally do some contact naps to get long naps. So say
9am till 1030am nap
1230pm/1pm till 2 to 230pm
Then nap about 430pm ish good for about an 45mins (one sleep cycle)
Then bed around 8pm.

We got to 6 months, totally exhausted and did sleep training and life got much better for us all, even baby. So yes I would do sleep training and look at sleep routines for 6 month olds on Google and try and follow it, good luck x

We put lo in her own room at 6 months as we kept waking each other up 🤪

@ChittyBang1987

Thank you for this ♥️
She won't take a dummy sadly, not to soothe anyway. She thinks of it more as a teether toy 🤣 I may keep persevering though. She used to be able to self soothe, using her hands in the middle of the night, just not for initially going to sleep and naps, but that has since changed.

I will have a look at the overnight feeding for Ferber. I was considering doing the Ferber method as it seems quicker and more effective but less harsh that cry it out!

I definitely need to get her on a better schedule with wake up and bed times. Throughout the day she naps two hourly, wakes at 8 then bed at 9, but with such dodgy night sleep it's not enough!

We don't have the option to put her in her own room at the moment due to renovations, but I will be soon, as we are waking each other up!

Thank you again for your help :)

@naomi81
What sleep training method did you use?

I follow wake windows for her which are roughly 2 hourly, but definitely need to get a better wake up and bed time. I've been a bit lazy letting her sleep in so I can catch up on sleep in the morning! 😅

@naomi81

We are waking each other up too! Most annoyingly is when I go to put her down, get up out of bed, and my partner decided it's the perfect time to roll around and fix the sheets waking her up again 🤣

Number 1 is fix the routine
7am wake no matter how much night sleep was had. Milk feed upon waking.

9.15-10am nap. Do not feed to sleep. Do a pram walk if necessary but do not feed to sleep.
10.30am milk feed (or at 10 if they can’t wait)
11.30 veggie purée or mashed banana. Cup of water. Bit of natural yoghurt
12-2.30 nap. Do not feed to sleep. This is sometimes a crap nap. Don’t worry if it is, you can sort later.
2.30 milk feed. Make it as big as you can. This one is actually really important for night sleep
4pm veggie purée
4.30-5 nap in the pram, car, sling, anything you can do for a short nap
5.30pm milk feed
6pm bath
6.30pm milk feed
7pm bed. Do not feed to sleep. Put on white noise and pat to sleep inside the cot.

I would definitely put her in her own room, I started by doing day naps in her big cot and then doing nights in there too. I didn't really follow any method I just googled food and nap schedules for 6 months olds and just chose one that looked doable. Also sleeping bags where a game changer too xx

Yes and no feeding to sleep, really put them down awake just before they get tired, just watch for cues x

Blooming heck just read she doesn't have her own room yet, can you not put her in the bathroom or something so can't disturb, get a baby monitor also just for peace of mind. X

Hiya,

Thank you so much for this timetable. We have just started giving her a taste of foods so I will begin to incorporate that into our routine. My daughter only feeds to sleep during the night, during the day she needs motion to nap whether that be a pram walk, car journey or bouncing on the yoga ball. What would you recommend for that? Should I just be putting her down in the cot on the big 2 o'clock nap and hoping she will fall asleep or should I still use the motion sleep association at this point. It is worth noting, we use the yoga ball to get her to sleep too after her milk feed in the evening. So would it be better just to put her down and let her fuss?

You have two very strong sleep associations.
I would start by not ever feeding to sleep.
Then work on removing the motion. You would be surprised how quickly you can remove the associations if you are 100% consistent

@naomi81 tell me about it 😅 bit of a nightmare really but we do what we can do!

We use sleeping bags from early on. She began to dislike her swaddle at around two months after she found her hands to suck 😄

I only feed to sleep during the night, otherwise we have to bounce her. When I try out her down in her cot drowsy she just screams bloody murder for ages! Think I might have to bite the bullet and do it though at this point.

@LapinR0se
We definitely do! Wish I had known a few months ago how all of this would affect her sleep down the line. At that point in time everybody was saying to do what works for you to survive and it will sort itself out! How wrong was that 🤣

I will work on the feeding to sleep. Does that mean weaning all night feeds? I know they don't necessarily need the milk during the night at this point.

Not at all. She might need at least one feed in the night until solids are really well established.
but now she is not waking out of hunger, the sleep association is waking her up. So if you get that sorted then she will wake much less often.

Yep bite the bullet, I think there is something called controlled crying whereby you leave them for a certain time period and then go back in, been a long time since I did it, but Google controlled crying. Obvs hard to do when your all in the same room 🤣 maybe you and other half in tent on garden and little one has your bedroom 🤣🤣 sleep deprivation is hard work 😓 xx

@LapinR0se thank you so much for the advice. Fingers crossed it gets better for her soon ♥️

I would not start with controlled crying and definitely not cry it out. Stay next to the cot and do pats and reassurance but try not to pick her up. White noise (pretty loud) is also very helpful

@naomi81 sounds like a solid plan! 🤣 hopefully will only be a couple more weeks until the renovation is complete and we can move her into her room properly.

I'll have a look, thank you :)

Feeding to sleep is biologically normal! Think about it, people are telling you to stop the thing that gets her to sleep when you ask for advice in getting her to sleep!

🤣🤣🤣 my dad actually went and slept in the garden when I was little 🙄

@Perpop its not keeping her asleep though and the OP and her baby are exhausted.

LapinR0se is talking complete sense. You might feel trapped by her sleep habits like needing motion to sleep - if you broke your leg and could no longer jiggle or pram walk or whatever for her to go to sleep, do you think she'd just never sleep again!? It only takes a few days for new sleep habits to form, most of the time!

I'd go with her suggested routine and persevere, don't be defeatist about it. We sleep trained at 13mo and 9mo, basically it was about saying this is the routine, you will sleep within it. When people use sleep consultants for sleep training, I think the main reason why it works is they've forked out £200 so have to give it a decent shot and stick it out.

Just aim for that routine and believe it will work in the end. There might be crying involved but not for very long, and right now you're going through lots of crying anyway!

@Dogtooth

Hiya, thank you for commenting. You have a good point!

There was so much guidance and different advice out there, it's hard to know which methods are good and recommended! It's nice to hear different peoples opinions on it. I think, before when I tried settling her without sleep associations, I was more experimenting with how she would react instead of giving it a good go. I didn't have the need to then as what we were doing was working! I am desperate now so much more likely to stick to what needs to happen to get this sorted.