Up since 3am, opened my new sleep book in desperation and now v upset...

[Scifinerd]

I am having horrendous sleep, or lack of, with DS who is 6 months. I bought a book which I think was recommended on MN and amazon and I opened up for some help and reassurance at 5am after being up since 3 to read the following: (BTW it was specially highlighted in bold on the page to make it stand out:

"WARNING: If your child does not learn to sleep well, he may become an incurable adult insomniac, chronically disabled from sleepiness and dependent on sleeping pills."

Further on it said in ref to colic, (my baby has bad reflux), "it is not biological factors that contribute to enduring sleep problems beyond nine weeks of age, it is parenting practices.

So now on top of feeling crap from no sleep I get to feel guilty about its everlasting effects on my children and get to blame my own parenting skills for it too. I am so angry and upset, I bought this book to help me not make me feel absolutely shit. And what really gets me is that the author has bolded and underlined these phrases knowing sleep deprived parents will skim read to begin with.

The book cost me £9.99, money I can ill afford, and now I am too stressed to read further in case it upsets me more.

I am pretty lacking in confidence as it is and I really really don't need this. Why oh why did I not stick to Elizabeth Pantley?

IMO parents need support rather than advice especially ignore non supportive judgy advice

'insomniac for life' rubbish

Thank you for your messages, it makes me feel better. I know I would say it's all rubbish to if i was replying to this post but easier to say to other people than believe myself.

Anyway I have just started rereading Pantley and beginning to try her methods and her book is so much better for me, more reassuring and comforting. So hopefully it will work.

I have also read sleep books that have made me feel like a complete failure. Sometimes it seems as if all my friends have sleeping babies and my DS is the only one who wakes in the night and needs help to nap during the day (if he does at all). I once had three books on the go - all giving completely opposing views - GF, baby whisperer and william sears. I thought that by reading them, I could develop my own theories, but I only ended up confused and depressed.

I agree that parents need support rather than judgement!!

I once emailed Elizabeth Pantley, with a few queries after reading her book, and got a lovely personal reply from her. That encouraged me to keep going with her method. dd didn't sleep through the night till she was 2, but I stopped worrying about it!

That sounds like an awful book, agree send it back. I used to tie myself in knots about how I'd made DS into a bad sleeper by my terrible parenting - picking him up when he cried, bf him to sleep, letting him sleep in our bed etc - comments like that would have tipped me over the edge.

And it turns out that he was one of those who got better on his own, suddenly started sleeping 12-13 hrs when he turned 2 yrs. I'd read Pantley and we did do a bit of half-hearted nudging, but really we just stopped worrying about it and co-slept when necessary.

my dd was also Bf on demand co slept when a little baby then was in our room until she was3

but she starting sleeping thought just fine when she was good and ready, at around 10months she was generally sleeping quite well

and since moving to her own room absolutely refuses to come to our bed unless it is to jump on it in the morning to get us up

yy return book scifi. ds was the most dreadful sleeper as a baby but is great now at 3.6, so nice and fun to put to bed. lots of work to get to this, much patience and sitting but well worth it.

i also think you may be expecting too much at 6m. not to belittle what you are going through, what hell it is. but much closeness is inevitable for the first year and if you disrupt that it won't make life any easier.