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....

ho hum....hi chulita, hi feral girl. it seems i have to graduate from the 4-5 month thread to 6+. I can't bear to read the posts on here at the moment - i am going to assume that they're all along the lines of 'everything's getting so much better, we're getting half an hour more every night' etc etc and don't want to know if that's not the case. Hi everyone else. misery guts from staines here.

Night 3 of no "booboo" tonight. Night 2 was definitely better than night 1. Night 1 woke and cried at 11pm 1am 3am 5am. Night 2 woke at 11pm 4am and 5am.

I'll keep you posted.

Ha ha hello Staines, lovely to see you (you know what I mean). Sorry baby staines is still giving you a hard time. Solids not helping at all? feral baby is definitely less inclined to wake needing to be fed these days.

hi fg nice to see you too! - whilst he loves his food he seems to love chewing my boob off throughout the night slightly more.....plus have had stinky cold, upset stomach, mouth ulcers and now another cold since we last spoke....am convinced it's the sleep deprivation. i just know i'm going to have to end up doing cc and hate the thought of it. and go back to work in two weeks.

hi, my name's staines and i'm sorry for myself.

FG We have had a couple more all nighters and then last night she woke at 4 for a quick feed then back to bed.
I am still shattered, maybe if she keeps it up all month then I might feel a bit more like normal.

Staines If you really don't want to do CC then don't. We are trying the No Cry Sleep Solution. It is a long patient approach but in two weeks we have gone from a no day-napper to one good hour long nap and 10pm bed with 4 wakings to 8.30pm bed with 1 waking. I breastfeed and she will only go to sleep on the boob but there are tips to help wean her off the dependency.

hi debs - ncss is a lovely book, just can't seem to bring myself to do the sleep logs.

tbh, his sleep has changed since solids have been introduced. He's still feeding a lot at 12ish, so i can't see me dropping that one, but middle of the night feeds are definitely about comfort, but now rather than a root round and a feed we have an hour long fight with the boob with thrashing and kicking. is it teething? is it cause we're co-sleeping? did i do something bad in a previous life? i think it's time to move into his own room, just need to sort out black out blinds and curtains. which are apparently on their way.

ps, sorry, am really not a negative person, but it's pretty hard to tell from my posts recently!!

Reading these posts has been an eye opener for me.
I have felt such a failure because no one else in my circle of friends have had a sleep issue.

I know now i am not the only one and i feel much better. This may have rubbed off on my son as he slept from 7pm until 5am. This may be a one off but there is light at the end of the tunnel. X

ccfc - Believe me, you are so not alone! I started this thread (slightly different name back then) as I was feeling quite sorry for myself as I thought I was the only one without a snoozy baby - my friend's DD, slightly younger than my DS used to sleep through and sometimes even had to be 'woken up' at 9am! It gets you down.

Anyway, when I actually started properly talking to other friends, I realised that most of their babies didn't sleep though either at six months!

Light at the end of the tunnel? Well, my DS started sleeping through at about 7.5 months (he is now 9.5 months and currently wakes at 5.15 but that's a whole other sleep thread!) Most of the babies I know of a similar age or slightly younger (8-10 months) sleep through now, after a fashion - not all the time, not every night, but mostly. Never trust a baby though!

I don't post on here really now (the last thing you all need is me smugging on about my sleepy baby ) but pop back occasionally to administer soothing cups of tea.

7pm until 5pm is brilliant BTW! (Only 15 minutes better than my little rotter!)

Staines you and I are going back to work at the same time; I'm so scared of working full time and dealing with sleep deprivation.

My plan is to have DH do any night waking (his job is much less demanding than mine) and I'll do the dawn feed at 4.30ish.

DS woke himself up flipping over last night at 11.30; I knew he hadn't woken from hunger - and he's done several nights where he's missed the midnight feed - so we did a bit of CC which was a bit grim but over in 20 mins. Although it would have been a lot quicker if DH had remembered to put the white noise on straight away (our equivalent of the booboo!)

Hi Staines, good to see you again (although t'would have been nicer on the non-existent [my baby sleeps like the proverbial 'baby' and I'm so rested and smug] thread) [waves]
Baby Chulita stayed over at the grandparents' on Monday night and was as good as gold, she still woke up at 10, 2 and 6 but didn't cry once, just chatted and giggled. My parents were completely charmed.
Solids have made no difference to her sleeping habits however Yesterday she had a whole banana, slice of toast and some porridge for tea followed by 2 good feeds between 5pm and 10pm and still woke at midnight, 2, 5 and then 6:30. She eats like a monster but it doesn't make her sleep any better and she does feed everytime she wakes up even though they're not always huge feeds. DH has the week off so I'm at least getting a bit of a lie in but [sigh] the thought of not sleeping a full night til she's 2/3 sounds grim...DC2 might have to wait a bit!

ccfc - Oh arse! Just noticed your LO is 18 months - and there's me telling you it will probably all get better by 10 months! That will teach me for not reading anything properly.

In grovelling recompense, I am providing tea, sympathy, cake, sleepy dust and I'm adopting a stern but kindly tone and saying to your DS 'Go to sleep for Mummy.' Wishing you many more 7 til 5's. x

night 3 of no BFing was Baaaaaaaad (he was up four times)

but night 4 was FAB - only woke once, and didn't make a fuss when I declined to cater for his every whim

Roll on night 5

So I am still breastfeeding, she won't have bottled milk and is reluctant to take water. I feed to sleep on a night and am trying NCSS with a little success.

My Q is I want to stop bf at about a year old which gives me 3 months to wean her off bf to sleep.
Should I start trying to introduce bottles before sleep times so she starts to stop thinking of me as the only way to sleep?
Or should I go 'cold turkey' when i stop bf?

She hates being rocked to sleep but I'm not sure if that's because she can smell my milk and is feeling teased.

DD will take a bottle for her bedtime feed from DH but not from me and when we went away for the night she took bottles from my mum. She flatly refused to take a bottle from DH during the night up until then, we're going to try sometime this week to see if she'll accept it now. I've never managed to rock her to sleep, if I've picked her up I have to feed her, and if I haven't picked her up she'll keep crying. I feed to sleep all night at the mo too.
Maybe try giving her a bedtime bottle and putting her down awake - that's how we started with DD. Or will she drink from a cup if not a bottle?
Sorry that's a really random post with no advice whatsoever...I'm a bit bleary this morning!!

Hello! Lots of familiar names here from the 4-5 month sleep deprivation club, and here I am applying for membership too..

Actually DD isn't too bad - she's settled into a pattern of waking twice a night for a feed - the times are never the same two nights in a row (night before last bed 7, feeds at 2 and 5.30, last night bed 7, feeds 11.15 and 3.30...) but at least there's some kind of consistency (though saying that has probably cursed me to seventeen wake ups tonight)
It's not brilliant but I suppose it's ok.

Naps, however, are a nightmare. Unless I'm pushing her or carrying in BabyBjorn it's pretty much always a nightmare of escalating screaming, refusing dummy, and me eventually giving in and feeding her to sleep - though today lunchtime took THREE attempts at that before it worked. Sob. Any nap tips?

hi kiwi. was going to post re naps today. ds had two naps - in his own bed today. that is quite some shakes around here, let me tell you.

we do have a patented 'pat pat' method, which i am prepared to share with you. i hope it works. ds goes into his cot as soon as he shows he's tired and is patted rhythmically and quite hard- like a heartbeat on his chest or stomach, sometimes on the mattress if easier. this works within 2 minutes 80% of the time. if it doesn't work, i often give up. let me know if it works for anyone else, as i have been soooooooo proud of myself today!

ps, weirdly, this only seems to work for naps, no good at bedtime!

Hey hey all.

Well. Last night was the best ever. DS didn't wake until 3am, had a quick feed, then went straight back to sleep! I was out of my bed for less than 15 mins!

We have done a bit of CCing this week though as DS has demonstrated on several occasions recently that he is able to go 5 or 6 hours from going to bed without waking. DH got yelled at at midnight for two nights and then last night DS just muttered a bit and didn't wake. It's far from ideal and I was adamant for ages that we wouldn't do it and I feel guilty as hell about it too but it appears to have worked. DS is fine. No psychological scarring that I can tell.

He has flipped himself over every time I've put him in bed to nap today though and then refused to go back to sleep again which is bloody irritating...

Hi Kiwi

ARGH!! feral I am so jealous. DD's been up 5/6 times a night for the last...I don't know...ages it feels like. Last night it was 5 times with only a pretend 5-10 min feed each time. I've got so rubbish at this now that I even pre-empt a feed cos I'd rather crack on and give her 10 mins the moment she squeaks rather than listen to her coughing/wriggling/chatting for 30-40 mins waiting for the inevitable crying session. It seems easier to leap up, 10-15min feed and back in bed than have up to an hour of lying there waiting before giving her the 10-15mins she needs to go back to sleep.
I was trying CC but DH was all for it in the day but at night would just go to sleep and leave me to it (fair enough cos he works all day). I found it impossible to last longer than an hour of going in and out and would give in. She is so stubborn, she'll cry for ages even with me going in every 5 mins. Thing is she's nearly 7 months old and during the day she'll often feed at about 6am and then not really be interested again til gone 12 so at night it's just become a habit and I'm not doing anything to help. Argh! I'm going to have a chat with DH and tell him that I either need him to go in and do the reassuring thing every 5 mins or I'm going to just be a really grumpy wife for the forseeable future! Fair enough he does offer but I find it easier just to crack on myself and in so doing reinforce DD's habit of feeding to sleep...sorry for long post, I'm fed up today!

Ouch Chulita, I know that there is no way I could last for a whole hour of toing and froing from a crying baby either so no wonder you give in. I'm all strong and full of confidence during the day but after 5 mins of grizzling my hand is on DS's door knob and my boob is at the ready! If it weren't for DH then I would cave immediately.

I know it feels really hard but I find that 5 mins just isn't long enough for DS to settle himself. After 7 or so you can hear him winding down, then at 10 he is settling and at 11 or 12 mins he's gone. If I go in at 10 mins then he starts again.

The two nights that DH dealt with it were before his days off (I figure I've not had a day or a night off in nearly 7 months so I don't feel guilty!) I slept in the spare room with ear plugs which has never worked before but I guess I was so exhausted that I didn't hear a thing

It hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be though; no hysterical crying, no real tears even, just a bit of yelling and grizzling. I think that if he was properly crying then I would have to pick him up/ feed/ rock/ sing to him etc. but when I know it's just habit that's waking him then it makes it much easier to justify the CCing to myself.

Yeah, I've got to grit my teeth and leave her a bit longer. Do the 5 mins for a bit then let her go a bit longer. The reason I was going in every 5 mins was mainly because I was recommended this sleep training thing by a friend who's done it with both of hers - it involves letting them cry for a maximum of an hour then going in, patting them and then doing it again. Apparently babies very rarely go longer than an hour before giving up...well...apart from making me feel absolutely wretched for letting her cry for so long, it did nothing. DD will happily cry for hours if I don't go in and do something so I know she doesn't give up easily! Their reasoning behind letting them go so long is that we disturb them by popping in every few mins and that they need to cry it out and learn to self-soothe. I've seen it work for my friend's two boys but it's not for us. It's horrible! So...back to the CC (which now seems so tame compared to the 3day sleep solution). I'll deffo take you up on the advice feral and space out the visits a bit!

i love this thread, ive been watching it for a while, my ds is 7.5 months old he wakes twice a night for a bottle and then refuses all milk in the day, he is on 4 large meals a day of solids but this has not helped at all, he has recently managed to do from around midnight till 6.30am so is improving slightly so just got to keep my head down and get on with it!! tried just giving water etc but he gets really angry when he realises its water and i end up going in and out for about an hour, its just easier to give him a bottle it only takes 10 mins. My DD slept through from 6 weeks for 12 hours a night so i was expecting everthing to be the same haha!!! it really puts me off having another.

fg, chulita, i knew it would come to this!! i really neeeeed sleep, going back to work in a week and i can hardly stand to talk to poor old dh. i say poor old dh, he hasn't offered to do a single night shift since 'paternity leave' - read football manager practice.

i keep hoping that the solids plus moving into his own room is going to do it (just waiting on black out curtains)...and now the talk of cc! mil has started to suggest it also - in a very nice way.

ds isn't even interested in co sleeping any more either. unless as a good opportunity to introduce his feet to my tummy. oh woe.

Hello. New to this thread but fancy a moan! It's not even the fact that at nearly 7 months DS is not sleeping through and that I have friends who have babies who slept through from 8 weeks and 10 weeks etc. It's that all the babies that were worse than DS (who actually I used to think was quite good as he's go 7pm to 3am or so from about 12 weeks) have finally got the idea at about 6-7 months (I am genuinely pleased for their parents) while my DS is having serious regression and now doing at least twice a night wakings and if I refuse to feed him (he eats and drinks loads in the day) he keeps me up for 1 .5 hours until I give in and give him his comfort suck on the breast. He doesn't fall for water. Then he's not hungry at 7am. And his nappy has leaked out the front the last couple of nights because he's taking so much fluid on board!! Pah.