Newbie - does anyone have words of wisdom on a non-sleeper

[clemette]

Hi all - sorry to barge in with a question. My DS is now 9 months and has never slept at all well. In fact he is an appalling sleeper. He has never slept longer than two hours at a stretch and at night he generally wakes every hour. I bf him and he settles quite quickly (within a couple of minutes most times). BUT I am exhausted - I have a 3 year old and I also work full-time. I don't expect him to sleep "through" but I did think he would be doing longer stretches by now.
So, does anyone have any advice? He is bf and is on three small meals a day plus snacks. We have tried controlled crying but it didn't work (after five nights of no impact we gave up). Has anyone faced this and it improved by itself?
Thanks in advance. Sam

you have my sympathies. ds was like this (now 3) and dd is shaping up to be similar (now 6 months). have you read elizabeth pantley's " no-cry sleep solution"? i've just dug it out again because of sore nips due to all night feeding (sorry, tmi!)

anyway, it has some nice ideas. when ds was feeding all through the night this worked:

gradually getting baby used to sleeping without sucking to sleep. as baby starts to drop off, or sucking starts to slow, use your finger to break the seal and remove your nipple. baby will root about. if baby starts to cry, replace nipple and try again after 10 seconds. this can go on for a while so it's a good idea to set aside a few days when you are not going to be too busy during the day/ will have help.

the idea is that eventually baby will get used to falling asleep without feeding to sleep. then you can start to use other methods of getting them back to sleep such as patting, saying "sleepy time", etc. eventually, the theory is that because baby isn't getting fed every time, they decide it's not worth the effort, and just go back to sleep by themselves!

this worked for ds (up to a point - he stopped waking every hour, but he does tend to need a cudde at some point through the night).

hope i've explained this well enough?! it is a good book with lots of other ideas too.

Thanks - I have a well-thumbed copy and I do manage to get him to sleep without suckling in the evening. It's just in the middle of the night all my good intentions go out of the window as I tend to fall asleep myself with him on the breast!
I love the Pantley philosophy but find her techniques need the sort of patience that sleep deprivation has sucked out of me...

that's true! and probably the reason why we still play musical beds in our house. i also think it will get better as he gets more active. the other thing that helped my ds's sleep was that he started pushing a little trolley about at 9 months and slept a bit better as a result. good luck!

Much sympathy. We are in a similar situation. Ds is 10 months and has always been a terrible napper and sleeper, waking up all the time. Bf and on solids but not a big eater. Constantly overtired during the day.

Also have a 3 year old and also absolutely exhausted.

We got a book out of the library called 'Healthy Sleep Happy Child' by a Dr Weissblum (after reading a thread on here recommending it) and putting some of his advice into practice has made a difference but we still have a fair way to go.

He recommends among other things - getting decent naps during the day at set times, early bed-time and teaching them to self-settle. He does favour cry-it-out but we dont so we adapted this to our own version staying with him while he cried and reassuring him.

This was hard for me to swallow as I have attachment-parented both children using bfing to sleep, slings, pushchair naps, cosleeping, and never crying. But we were at our wits end thro tiredness and I was on the verge of PND.

He has gone from waking every 1-2 hours from sleeping a 6 hours stretch followed by a bf at midnightish and then a 3 hour stretch. We struggle around 4am when we cant get him back to sleep by any means and he thinks its morning - this has been going on for 3 nights now and we are not sure what to do, other than keep trying and hope he will adjust to having less night feeds.