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....

sorry to the people from the dec thread, I'm just going to cut and paste this as I'm in a rush:

Something strange happened last night, for once he drank well yesterday in the day so I decided to make the effort and to try to get him to sleep some other way than feeding when he did his first wake up at around 1am....I was all jazzed up, I was going to try for at least 10 minutes...and then he never woke up, not until 6am! Don't worry though sleep deprived friends, he once before slept from 11pm - 7am and it appeared that he was catching up on sleep in advance of the worst stretch of sleep he ever did from the next night onwards for a whole week. So I'm not optimistic that this is a new era, but I feel great today and I'll take my one night's sleep right now! We did have the fan on him last night, not sure if the white noise would have helped, but I'll definately try it on again tonight.

Well it's great that quite a few of your little ones are starting to sleep better. well dones all round! And best of luck to those going back to work.

Baby Peb is all over the place at the moment with teething and being too hot. Apart from regressing to having to feed her to sleep, eveyr now and then she's going through phases of waking every ten minutes for about an hour, and even once she's gone off properly she's waking two or three times and then up for the day at six. Hmmm. And last night she steadfastly refused to sleep until half-ten. I think it was the heat but DP reckons she wanted to watch the tennis (which she did in the end).

We did CC when we needed to break the feeding to sleep pattern as it was going on till 11 every night, and it worked really well and really quickly (one night crying for 20 mins, then just complaining for the rest of the week, then fine for another month) but now she's absolutely refusing to go to slepe without me feeding her. Her crying is different too if I try and leave her: really upset really quickly, turning to sobs and gulps. And she lies there holding her arms up waiting for one of us to go in and pick her up. We can't leave her like that . So I'm just going with what she wants right now in the hope that it's teething/separation anxiety related and we can fix it again sometime before I have to go back to work!

naomil, how old is your DD?
Baby Chulita's done 4 good nights in a row with only one feed between 6pm and 6am but I'm reluctant to call it a new routine just yet. I'm waiting for the separation anxiety to kick in at some point...

Baby Peb is 2 days short of 6 months. Well done on the 4 good nights Chulita !

Ah...was just wondering with the 'holding her arms up'...I'd like to get to that stage but DD doesn't seem at all bothered about holding her arms up to be picked up, she flaps like a bird when she wants to be cuddled ...not half as cute!!

Hi all - well. Have been keeping a sleep/nap/feed log the last week or so just to see if there is any pattern - and it appears - to my surprise - that there is! She tends to sleep in a 24 hour period for about 15 hours, and her night sleeps are anything from 11 hours (with 2 feeds thrown in) up to about 13 and then she makes up the difference in naps. And I re-read NCSS and have decided that her waking twice a night (she goes down about 6/6.30, wakes at about midnight and about 3 for feeds, gets up about 5.30/6) could be considered completely normal for a 6 month old big baby (she was 10 pounds when she was born and has stayed on the same percentile (98th) ever since). Hark at me casting around for reasons not to try and change anything!

But as she goes for naps in her cot with minimal fuss, goes down awake at night and goes off after feeds in the night without any problems, have decided I have an expectation problem - DD doesn't have a sleep problem.... What does everyone reckon? Am I hiding head in sand?

After being pootly last weekend we now have the bloody heat to cope with. She is crabby as bfing makes her hot so it is taking her an hour nearly to get to sleep. Naps in the day are gettingbetter for time but still have to bf then stay holding her. Managed one nap today where she fell asleep in the car just as we got home so i whipped her into her buggy and walked for an hour, big mistake in this heat, she woke up as we walked in the front door.
Am thinking about trying her with a dummy when a feed her to sleep. What do you think?

debs75 we used a dummy with DD for about 4 weeks from when she was a couple of months old and it was brilliant - but then started causing more problems as it started falling out every hour to hour and a half and she needed it put back in. We went cold turkey with it. BUT - while it worked, it was brilliant - and some babies never have the problem of it falling out... If you think it may work then go for it.

Debs75 - We used a dummy with DS from the beginning until 5.5 months, when we got rid of it because it was really disrupting his sleep and also not working anymore. You could certainly give it a try, though she may not be keen at this age to start with one and you may also find yourself worrying about dummy weaning a few months down the line! Have you tried any of the Pantley Pull-Off approach from the No Cry Sleep Solution...i.e. a gentle, bit by bit, approach to helping her fall asleep without the nipple. We used this as a precursor to ditching the dummy cold turkey. Must be very hard for her having been ill and now so hot.

Fufulina - I really think that I need to stop complaining about sleep until I make the effort to do exactly as you have done! I expect there is a bit of a pattern. In fact we have had a decent string of nights (down easily at 6:30ish, dream feed at 11, one feed at 3 or 3:30, up at sometimes 5:30 or 6:30). The nights don't seem decent compared to many of the babies I know who are going 12 hours straight through, but maybe for his age it is totally reasonable. A case of the problem being my expectations not his sleep patterns!

Oh and Fufulina, forgot to say that the big baby part is true over here as well. He's still on nearly the 95th centile, so maybe he'll just be hungry at night until he is eating full 3 course meals 3 times/day!

MomOrMum - have you tried dropping the dreamfeed for a night? When we dropped it he went all all the way to 4 immediatelu, it was like we were programming him to expect food or to wake up every 3/4 hours. Obviously since then he has regressed due to other reasons but for a week it was brilliant!

Row - No kidding?? I might try it tonight. Mostly because my DH is out and I hate doing the dreamfeed (potentially waking sleeping baby = wrong). We only started the dreamfeed at 5.5 months and it seemed to get rid of that 12:30/1 am waking that is such a killer, but maybe we would have gotten rid of that anyway. So far the sleep vibes are not good this evening - been up and down 4 times already resettling him. Very rare as he normally sleeps well for the first half of the evening.

Will let you know how we get on with no dreamfeed!

Mom - I know! We thought it was impossible that that worked, but it did for a while. If you have managed to get him out of the 1am habit using the dreamfeed then you never know - he may not need it anymore.

Fingers crossed, I know how much of a killer a feed just after you have gone to bed is. Get an early night just in case! My son is the same, usually sleeps wonderfully for the beginning part of the night, then all hell breaks loose after midnight.

The worst part is that we had a couple of months starting when he was just 7 weeks old where he slept from 7 pm - 4 am, quick feed and back to sleep until 7. Somewhere around 4 months things went belly up, and pretty much never recovered.

Will take your advice about the early night!

Interesting result from dropping the dream feed. He woke at 1:15, had a good feed, and went back until 5:30 (chatted until 6:10, when I got him up). So instead of dream feed and 3:00 am, he had the one feed at 1:00. He has been getting up at 5:30 even with the 3:00 am feed, so no change there. Might stick with this for a bit and see if I can push the 1 am feed earlier bit by bit.

This heat is a sleep killer isn't it? I never thought I'd resent a sunny day but I soooooo do now. DD's room was 29 C yesterday and nothing we did made it any cooler. We ended up with two gigantic fans and her sleeping in just her nappy and she still felt hot. She's (at the moment) down to 1 feed between 6pm and 6am but when she woke up at about midnight it was horrible feeding her cos we were both so hot, the air was sticky, yeuch!! She was up at 3 as well last night but I don't blame her.
I've never attempted a dreamfeed, mostly because it takes so much to get Baby Chu to sleep it goes against everything in my body to wake her up. Well done momormum for knocking it down to 1 feed, hope it lasts!!

arthymum I love this thread, thank you.

I can nervously report that once upon a time DS slept like a, er, baby. Now he doesn't.

I used to try mentally preparing myself up by thinking 'he'll wake up in a few hours'. But then he would invariably wake up far sooner, as if he heard the challenge.....

Tried most things, too tired to contemplate any new tactics, and about to return to work .

For all the hot babies, read somewhere that if you drape wet towels in the room it helps keep the temperature down. And to have fan in front of open window as then its helping ciruate some fresh air.

For some odd reason DD has dropped both her 10pm feed and her morning feed and is now sleeping from 6pm til 6am with a feed around midnight/1am. A bit strange but I'm not complaining! Just hope it lasts...

Chu, that's pretty much exactly what DS is doing.

He kept doing a big squawk at 1.30 which would wake me up, I'd do a bit of CC for 5-10 mins and we'd all go back to sleep until he woke properly at 4am for a feed. Then when it was really hot the other night I thought I'd better see if he was thirsty at the 1.30 yell so I fed him then and he didn't wake again until 6.30.

I figure that being woken once a night is better than twice so I'm sticking with the 1.30 feed!

Also DS has decided to drop his late afternoon nap and is just doing morning and mid-afternoon now with a 3 hour stretch of awake between the two (is that normal for a 7mo?)

Trust him to change his routine on the week that I go back to work, or maybe it's because of that...

Had a godawful night last night for the first time in ages. BUT it's no wonder considering the fact that, between them, my idiot MiL and father (who share our childcare on a Friday) only fed DS 3oz of EBM for the whole day yesterday! and

MiL clearly hasn't bothered to read the feralbaby handbook that i spent bloody hours over to try to make up for the fact that she has barely spent any time with him and my dad didn't feed DS when MiL dropped him off because "all our bottles needed sterilising"!

So poor little DS woke up screaming at 11pm, 2am, 3am, and 4.15 - when it took me 1.5 hours to get him back to sleep - and he then woke up still hungry at 6.30!

Seriously, if they've fucked up all mine and DH's hard work over the last 6 weeks then I am going to really think hard about sending DS to a nursery where they have to do what you bloody well tell them! Free childcare from grandparents is really not all it's cracked up to be!

PS I'm not really that ungrateful. Just knackered.

for you feral - it might just be a one-off til he sorts out his hungry tum, fingers crossed he'll be a full little boy tonight and sleep like a dream!
DD sometimes does a 3 hour stretch towards the afternoon. She used to go to sleep about 4 if she'd been up a couple of hours but now she cries if I try so she stays up til bedtime which can leave her a little grouchy

Feral - about only 3 oz EBM! No wonder he was hungry at night. I really don't think one day/night can change things. I find that if we have 3 bad ones in a row, we are probably in for 2-3 punchy weeks (and I think these kind of regressions just happen now and again no matter what you do), but definitely one or two bad nights does not a pattern make.

According to the Baby Whisperer, for what it's worth, your DS' napping patterns are exactly right for his age. She says that around 6-7 months they drop the third nap and just have two longer ones and should be moving towards 3 hours awake between naps. Now try telling that to my DS who is 6.5 months and still needs 3 naps minimum (all short, and all pretty much requiring constant motion with the buggy).

We have had a very good string of nights this week (WHY do I ever write those words...guaranteed to go tits up now). Very similar to what you're describing...either one feed at 1 am, or one at 4 am.

Sticking with Row's suggestion of ditching the dream feed and so far so good! Only problem is that I have stopped expressing (used to do it for the dream feed bottle) so worried that A. I am going to have to pump for ages if I ever want to get enough for a feed again and B. DS will decide to reject bottle now that he's not having one every day. But I really don't miss faffing around with the breast pump every night before bed!

momormum - I know what you mean about dropping feeds and pumping...DH just asked if I wanted to express so he could feed DD tonight. A lovely thought but I've not expressed for a while and I dread the thought of pumping my saggy, empty boobs for any drops of goodness that might be lurking in there. I don't think your DS will reject a bottle at this age. I go for weeks without giving DD a bottle but she's always taken it. Mind you, she's never had a problem where food's concerned!