Terrible sleeper - at the end of my tether - where can I get help?

[Piccalilli2]

Dd2 is 7 months. She has never slept through the night, she generally wakes a minimum of every 2 hours, often more. Through a combination of sleep training techniques we had managed to get her settling in her cot for a few hours at bedtime before co-sleeping with me. However, over the last week she has stopped even doing that - she will only feed to sleep lying down in our bed. I am now officially desperate - not only have I had less than 4 hours sleep a night for the last 4 months, in stretches of less than 2 hours, but now I don't even get to spend any of the evening with dh, in addition to not sleeping together any more. And I'm going back to work in 5 weeks, to a fairly responsible/stressful job. I really, really can't take this much longer and I feel like we've tried everything and probably need some professional help. But I haven't the first idea how to go about finding help. Has anyone used a sleep clinic or trainer they can recommend? We're in Yorkshire.

I tried Healthy sleep, Healthy child, and it worked. DD went from waking really frequently to now sleeping through. It took 4 weeks of hard work, making sure she took her naps, which meant staying in a lot more, and there was some crying out, which was awful,but I needed to help her sleep, but it didn't last for long, thank god.

Good Luck

are you bf? have you got money to spend?

i know aloha hired someone, search on her name and sleep training you may find it.

but 7m really this is entirely normal behaviour alas. what childcare will you have and how much does your dh currently do?

hi Piccalilli2. You have my deepest sympathy as sleep depravation is the absolute pits!
Have you spoken to your health visitor about this? or your GP? They would be your first ports of call i would think. Can you afford to pay for some professional help perhaps?
Have you tried comtacting your local NCT to see if they have a counsellor who might be able to offer you some advice/guidance?

agree with fishie, totally normal behaviour.

we had some success with elizabeth pantley's book, the no-cry sleep solution, but it isn't a quick fix. you do have to work at it and it can take a while to see results.

fwiw, ds2 was a frequent waker, ie, every 2 hours at 9 months. he is 13 months now and last night he slept through til 6am!!! for the first time ever.
that sounds bad, but his sleep has gradually been improving over the last few months, and we haven't really done that much to change it

he has stopped feeding to sleep by himself, and recently will settle for naps without a breastfeed.

Exclusively bf, won't take a bottle and not really taking to solids yet (which I know is normal, if hugely frustrating). Also have dd1 who is 3. Dh tries to settle her after her bedtime feed but ultimately she just wants mum/boob and I can't co-sleep with him in the bed so he's sleeping in the spare room. We don't really have money to spend but equally I've had some dicey moments in the car lately due to lack of sleep and would rather bankrupt us than kill someone frankly. Will search for the aloha thread, thanks. It just feels like things are going backwards at the moment and I'm so panicked with my return to work approaching.

in the short term can you try getting sleep any other way?

when I was at my most sleep-deprived I was going to bed at around 7.30/8ish.
do was lovely and would get the boys up in the morning so I could have a little bit extra in bed, even if it was just half an hour before he had to get off to work.

every little helps.
is your older child in nursery? can you nap when baby naps?

thisisyesterday, the phrase 'nap when baby naps' just makes me want to cry. She doesn't nap. Ever. Unless I drive her around or take her out in the pram, and even then never for longer than 45 minutes. I can't go to bed any earlier because she isn't settling until past 9 most nights - I would normally be in bed by now but she'll wake up within an hour anyway. Dd2 wakes at 7 , dh does deal with her on nursery days but she's quite noisy and generally wakes up the baby so that's that.

aww, no, I know that feeling too! can you go to bed early and just get dh to bring you the baby when she needs feeding?

Would you not get more sleep by just going to bed with her at 9pm for the night (in the same bed) and just feeding her laying down when she wakes. If you co-sleep like this, you should be minimally disrupted through the night.

When you go back to work, you may find that co-sleeping suits you better anyway as you will get more close time with her and be less disrupted.

Piccalilli2 your situation sounds exactly like ours...DD2 is currently 'crying it out' upstairs - first time I have done it, but don't know what else to do. Bought Healthy Sleep Healthy Child book the other day, nearly cried when it arrived - it's the size of bloody War & Peace, how am I supposed to get through that on 4 hours sleep a night...Scampish are you able to sum it up in one sentence?!

picca will you be working regular hours? would serve you best to work out what is realistic for you to do and go towards that.

whenever i was/am desperate for ds to go to sleep and become impatient it always goes badly.

hence i handed it over to dh for a while (10m ish) and now i have taken it back again otherwise they play soldiers for two hours.

it is horrible having a non sleeping child - i only have one and it is that sort.

the best method of dealing with it is the one which gets everyone the most sleep. sod anyone who tells you about teaching them to fall asleep.

Picallilli, just wanting to say I'm really sorry about what you're going through... I've heard there are some good sleep consultants who don't necessarily go down the cry-it-out route (although that too can work well for some people). There's a sleep clinic called naturally nurturing children which I've heard is very good, and then there's andrea grace in London, again has good reputation. Both are expensive, I think, but if you can afford to have one consultation plus email/phone follow up, then that might be very helpful. You don't have to be around the London area to work with them, they do phone consultations as well.

I'd be curious to know though, why do people think this kind of sleep-behaviour is completely normal for 7 months old? Surely something that is so disruptive for the whole family needs to be worked on... and also, surely there are babies that age that are sleeping much longer hours? I'm just saying that sometimes people here on Mumsnet say 'this or that is very normal' while the original poster has clearly said they need some help & guidance... and in my opinion, a 7 month old is not the same as a 2 month old, for who we could all agree that this kind of sleep behaviour is completely normal. Usually (from what I understand) by 6 months or so babies, in most cases, fall into more stable sleep patterns...

Brownmia- as for the Weissbluth book- I think in one sentence (or actually 2) here's what he advocates: babies need their sleep (which according to him is a set amount of hours for all babies), parents need to do their absolute best to provide that sleep. Ways to do it- letting them cry it out- not even CC but clear cry it out- if that's necessary, provide set naptimes (follow a very rigid schedule for naptimes) & early bedtimes. Do whatever you can to make sure they're getting their sleep.
To be honest, I found the Weissbluth book good in many respects, has interesting ideas/research about sleep... but I'm not at all convinced that his way of helping children sleep- i.e. crying out out until they learn- is what I would choose to do. There might be other ways to try first. Just my thoughts...

Maria, just because a mother is struggling to cope with a particular behaviour doesn't mean it is not normal! neither do any of us think that the OP shouldn't do something about it if she feels she needs to. all we are doing is reassuring her that it is something a lot of babies do, and it will pass in time regardless of if she sleep trains now or not
it is perfectly normal for a breastfed baby to still be wanting feeds throughout the night at 7months. it is very common.
of course that doesn't mean there aren't babies who sleep longer.

not sure where you get the idea that by 6 months most babies are in a better sleep pattern? i'd be interested to see research that says that is true

OK, thisisyesterday, I see your point & I agree about something being normal although not at all easy or convenient... However, I just don't agree that at 7 months THAT amount of waking is something that is that normal. Maybe it's something that if encouraged (or allowed to continue to that extent) will go on, but I'm not sure that means it's normal per se. Of course, there is a huge range of what is normal, after all each child is different... But surely waking every 2 hours at 7 months is not about hunger, but about habit?
As for 6 months (or so) being a time when sleep patterns generally fall into place a bit better, not sure where I've read it, but because I've become a bit obsessed with reading sleep-books (because of my boy's sleeplessness!) it's something that many people in sleep-books (including Pantley's no cry sleep solution) seem to suggest.

Sounds like mine. I do leave her to cry for 10 mins of so now and often she goes back to sleep. I think its habit more than hunger except at about 3am.

If you're going back to work in 5 weeks you need to sort out bottle or solids or something. Perhaps then dh can do some feeding and give you more of a rest.

Firstly with the bottle have you tried expressing milk, going out and leaving her with DH for an hour or two? My friend's DD wouldn't take EBM if her mum was in the house. It was as though she could smell the milk and only mum was good enough

Secondly is she spoon fed or does she self feed? If she is spoon fed try self feeding with finger foods. Some babies just don't take to being fed and want to do it themselves.

no, it may not be about hunger, but about needing comfort.
which is just as important, IMO, as food.

that isn't to say that the OP can't work round that and find other ways of comforting her DD though. this is what the EP book aims to achieve, replacing the comfort of feeding to sleep with other objects. creating good sleep cues, so that baby doesn't need mum to fall asleep

thanks to everyone who has responded.

She self feeds, she won't have a bar of spoon feeding, she is getting better all the time but we're making very slow progress. She won't take any significant amount of milk from a bottle or cup whether I'm here or not - I have tried going out and leaving her.

IlanaK, we are co-sleeping, but feeding her to sleep from 7-ish then co-sleeping means I never see dh except at weekends and it is starting to have a negative effect on our relationship.

We've tried the no cry sleep solution and got nowhere with it.

For a week or so we had worked towards her going to sleep in her cot, sleeping til 10, feed, back in her cot til midnight then co-sleep. I could live with that, just can't cope with where we are now. I think I'm going to investigate andrea grace.

I used www.sleepnannies.co.uk and paid for a phone consultation (60 quid). They run through your baby's routine and suggest any modifications and then run through a technique most suited to your baby to get them to sleep better. The call lasts ages and is really in depth and considered. DD was 9 mo when I used it and she needed to BF every 2 hours at night. In a week she was sleeping all night but still BF to sleep and still doing BLW which the nanny was fine about me doing so it's not like they insist on crying to sleep and 3 proper meals a day or anything.

The sleep training she suggested might not suit a 7 mo so I wont go into that unless you want me to. It wasn't cruel, it took longer than controlled crying probably would.

I really sympathise with you, it is difficult to know what the hell to do when you are in the midst of it all isn't it!

Have you tried putting her down at 7pm and only going up to her when she needs feeding?

Sorry Picallili - Mesa can I be cheeky and ask for futher details? My 8 month old has just gone bonkers in the last couple of weeks and would love to know what worked for you (DH is in their with him now trying to settle him for the FOURTH time tonight).

Thanks so much MesaLoca, that's just the kind of recommendation I need. I'm happy to try a bit of controlled crying (well, not happy, more desperate) but not cry it out and don't want to give up breastfeeding just yet so that sounds ideal.

nappyaddict, if we just put her down she screams and screams until she's sick. I'm not quite that desperate yet.

sorry i mean feed her to sleep at 7pm then come down and only go up to her when she wakes up for a feed.

If you want to give controlled crying a go, this book is very good - the technique certainly worked for us. Of course we have different sleep problems now but that's another story .