Support thread for those who were under the misguided illusion that their DC would sleep through by six mo - come and join!

[arthymum]

Did you assume that your DC would be sleeping through by the time they were 6 mo - and now you've hit the milestone you realise you were wrong, wrong, wrong as you stagger out of bed 1, 2, 3 times a night?

Do you sometimes can't help but wonder if you'd done things differently (BF/FF/stuck with the dreamfeed/co-slept/put them in their own cot/followed a GF routine/listened to your MIL ) you'd be getting more sleep?

Do you sometimes dread meeting up with other mums with perfect sleepers (especially when said babies are way younger and tinier than yours)?

Are you in a permanent state of confusion and doubt about whether to 'try' something or not (CC, ssh-patt, PUPD, NCSS etc.) but feel it's never the right time (teething, cold, too young) and not sure anyway whether you have the bottle/energy to see it through?

Do you hold out faint hopes that they'll sleep better when they're on solids/when the teeth come through/when they're another pound heavier/when they're in the new gro-bag/when they're on more solids - and each time - wrong again?

Do you mostly cope okay but every now and then feel tired and miserable and sorry for yourself and burst into tears at the postman or get into a petulant fight in Sainsbury's?

Do you secretly fear that you'll be on here in 3 years time, posting about the fact that you haven't slept for nearly 4 years?

Then come and join me! I've seen you lurking on other threads but feel that we need a place to congregate. Share your tears, tantrums, triumphs and tips - and hopefully one by one, we can all eventually disappear off the thread and into the land of nod....

welcome Sambo! Can I give you a bit of hope? When we share a room with DS he wakes all the time but when he's in his own room he can sleep thru or at least sleep for 8 hours. I think the line of thought that you disturb your baby (even if you don't make that much noise) is definitely true for us and many of our friends. Also, as they are further away from you, you don't wake at every noise and you quite often sleep thru little noises that they make.

Now that DS is 6 months it's safe for you to put him in his own room. I have to confess, we put DS in his own room at 5 weeks and he slept a million times better for it.

hope it improves things for you

Yes to all of your points!

alleluia! I am not alone! Why is it that everyone looks at you funny when you say your baby isnt sleeping through the night yet??! Mine's 5 months old and wakes every 2-3 hrs for a BF. When I saw your thread arthymum, I just had to laugh, you must be reading my mind. I was under the impression he'd be sleeping like a baby, excuse the pun, by 3 mths. Now everyone has convinced me I must be starvin' my child to death if hes waking so often for a feed! Not helped by other mums with babies who go 8-8am no bother!!

oh - hope you dont mind me joining as Im not quite at the 6 mth stage yet! Just had a thought, my baby did sleep for a whole 5 hours once, after his first course of baby IMMS, best nights sleep Ive had in 5 months, cant wait for the next lot!

DS didn't sleep through the night until the age of 2.5 yrs old. He was still waking 2-3 times a night at 6 mths. (To be honest, I have known much worse. I have two friends who's babies woke up every 2 hrs for the first year at least). It felt like hell to me at the time, though. I was a depressive zombie through the lack of sleep .

DD sleeps 8pm-6am at the age of 14 wks. Nothing we did or didn't do.

It's a bitter pill to swallow in some ways, but on the bright side, it let's you off the hook and stops you feeling inadequate or thinking you must be doing something wrong: All babies are different, with different temperaments, and will usually sleep through when they are ready. This I have learned.

Mine did sleep through for about 2 weeks. And then hit that 4/5 month growth spurt. I don't mind the waking so much as the fact that I used to just feed and plonk him down again, and now he fusses and won't sleep again after the feeds.
The especially amusing one is when he's quiet for about 5 minutes so I get back into bed and fall asleep and then have to get up again.

Thing is, he's not that bad compared to what many of you are talking about, and I want another baby ASAP and talk of babies waking hourly is scaring MrNC off...

Thing is, his two cousins (9 and 14 months) stay regularly and 'sleep through the night' - aka scream for half an hour when put to bed, and for up to 20 minutes a few times in the night, the only difference being they don't get fed. My baby feeds longer than usual at night so I figure feeding him is one thing I am doing right...

oh can I join - I think a few months back I did start a thread along the lines of 'My baby is 11 months and stillhasn't slept through the night..'

Well my baby is now 14 months and still has not slept throguh the night - despite trying everything books etc had suggested offer (except CC - just couldn't do it). She wakes up on average 3-4 times, although last night was bad and she was up about 6 times. I work PT, but the days I do work are very long days, and most days I go in feeling knackered and for the past few weeks now as really struggling to concentrate, which is especially difficult as I work as an Anlyst and need to be spot on with what I do. I find that I am getting stressed and aggitated really easily too. (think I am waffling a bit - but am tired, and got about 65 spreadsheets to populate before the close of play today and all I want to do is put my head down and sleep)....

Can I join the sleep deprived ranks, DD3 is 7 1/2 months old and has NEVER slept for mroe than 4 hours at a time.

DD1 slept 8-8 at 12 weeks

DD2 was still waking 5-6 times a night at a year.

DD3 looks like she is going the same way, she is doing great on solids, has both purees and finger foods at every meal, this has made not one bit of difference to her sleeping except maybe she nurses for less time at night now.

We cosleep and she is BF, you see her rooting when she wakes, only boob will do, few mins sucking and she is off to sleep again.

Hello all new folk, hope you're all bearing up and overcoming the afternoon slump.

Rollercoaster1 - my mum is convinced I am not feeding DS enough and that is why he doesn't sleep through! (She conveniently forgets that I didn't sleep through until I was four years old and so therefore by her own rationale she must have been raising me on thin gruel and stale crusts. )

I was leafing through the NHS Birth to Five book earlier and came across this: "By the time your child is six months old, is is reasonable to expect him or her to sleep through most nights." So it's the government's fault that my hopes have been raised and dashed! Think I might sue them for providing false information... [greedy pound signs in eyes emoticon]

I looked at the first post, thought DS was too old for this thread - but have read on and see we fit perfectly. DS is 2.2, he slept through for three nights in April 2007.

Not only have contemporaries in my antenatal group slept through for years, but their subsequent siblings are also now sleeping through.

I'm now quite resigned to putting DS to bed, getting the evening to ourselves and then having him join us at any time from 10pm to 1am.

DH, my MIL tells me, didn't sleep through two consecutive nights till he was three. And, since she gave up breastfeeding at four months, she was often to be found walking him through the sand dunes to get him to sleep.

lmao Arthymum!

Now Neenztwinz, I know for a fact that your LOs sleep perfectly thanks to all the magic potion you have concocted from sweet potatoes and Oatabix - get off this thread forthwith!

my 8 month old ds has slept 8 hrs, 9 hrs, 7 hrs regularly - about once a month!!
fell asleep at 10 last night and woke up 2 hrly till 5.30 and that was it!!
anyway today i have upped him from 2 - 3 meals so tonight is def the night he will sleep through
i will let you all know 2moro after a lovely 8 hours i reckon !!!!

Since most people admit that it is only when they come on MN that they realise they are not alone with non-sleeping infants,.......

has anyone stopped to consider that the common denominator is MN and that perhaps it is in actual NOT MNing that ensures your child sleeps?

Just a thought!

Hi, my son turned 6 mths yesterday and I have no hope of him sleeping thru anytime soon. Currently he wakes a countless number of times, with twice a night being a good night. The second time he wakes he wont resettle in his crib and usually ends up on me. ( He has never really slept on his back on his own, either on me or DH, then for a while i tried the tummy (which did help) and now its swaddling. I also co sleep when i know its gonna be one of those nights, but that is not a good idea as he is such a light sleeper and wakes even more in the bed with me. All the questions run through my head, is the BF will weaning help, should i express.... finding it harder now than before, maybe just months catching up on me!

I have a 23 mo DD who has slept through the night 3 times since she was born!

We are co-sleeping and although I do realise that by continuing to allow her to BF at night I'm encouraging her to wake, I would still rather a 5 minute slurp and back to sleep than an hour of angry screaming and thrashing about (her, not me )

DH works nights so I'm stuck with it. Everyone I know in RL has babies and toddlers sleeping 7-7.

hi all dd is 15mths and has never slept through, ever. Her longest stretch has been 6hrs, she did that ONCE!

Only positive thing I can report is that since moving her to her own room she is only up twice some nights - this is a vast improvement! Of course teeth etc put us back to square one, but the own room thing DEFINITELY helped (she was 12mths, we'd been co-sleeping until then).

I work FT, have work home in the evenings so can't get an early night...I'm knackered!!

Can I second MrsMattie. DD1 was pretty awful, and I remember feeling bitter that I was still so knackered when all other mums were looking well-rested. Teething, colds, developmental milestones, were all setbacks. She barely slept at all for the two weeks after she learnt to walk at 1 yr.

DD2, on the other hand, "just" slept through at 4.5mths and (fingers crossed) still is at 10+mths. I didn't do anything. It was the luck of the draw. In this time, she has cut 6 teeth with barely a night-time whimper.

So if you have a non-sleeper, my heart goes out to you.

oh yes, the milestones....crawling=crawling around my bed for 2-3 hours every night for about 3 weeks. Now she's just learned to walk = standing up in cot crying every hour or so. Arrrgh!

LOL at this thread arthymum. I was just thinking earlier today that I should get the 4-5 month old sleep club thread back on my list, then thinking that actually DS is too old now and wondering where I could go to moan commiserate

I could have written much of sambo's post word for word, except that my DS has slept through, once, when he was about 2 months old. I think he did it just to prove that he could. Since then, nada. I never really had any expectations that he would be sleeping through by a certain time, but it's very frustrating that I know that now he can go decent lengths of time between wakes, but just doesn't. Every night when I get into bed, I listen to his lovely level breathing and think "maybe tonight will be the night...maybe..."...and then just as I'm dropping off (or worse, twenty minutes after I've dropped off) I will hear those little insistent squeaks...aaarrrrrgggghhhh.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. That is of course the demented laugh of a woman whose DS is 6.5 months, and has had two, count them, two nights of only having 2 feeds.

The first time he had viral meningitis. The second time was last week, and he had the start of totally gruesome D&V.

Why did I think I would get a sleeper the second time round? DD only slept through at 12 months.

Our next plan of attack is to get him into his own room, mostly to stop me from reacting too soon to the low grade whimpering.

lol Arthymum, yes sorry I will bog off with my sweet potato, oatibix and CC

uhhhh.... so tired with uni and work and DD I cant be bothered to add details but Im tired, DD tired, sleeping is nightmare, contant battle with the nap/no napping of DD

im off to bed but have now officially resigned myself that I wont have another full and decent night sleep till DD has a special sleep over at Nanny's house next month...

grrrrrr

DD is 2.4 btw, so to those of you who have DC's under this age and think it might get better soon - be strong, it probably wont.

I have tried CC, have routine in order, she eats, is normal, gets lots of attention and cuddles during the day - has bottles, a dummy, teddies, you name it I've tried it.

Pffft at parenting books rubbishness

DD is 2.4 btw, so to those of you who have DC's under this age and think it might get better soon - be strong, it probably wont.

I have tried CC, have routine in order, she eats, is normal, gets lots of attention and cuddles during the day - has bottles, a dummy, teddies, you name it I've tried it.

Pffft at parenting books rubbishness