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....

[tiptoes quiet as a mouse onto thread, checks DD isn't listening...]

Two of the last three nights she's slept from 7pm - 6am. She woke up at 6am just now, fed her, and she went back to sleep...

[tiptoes away again knowing she'll be back moaning again soon]

wow, kiwi, how old is she again? Have you done anything different?

Last night we were back to 3 wakings and after the third I ended up sleeping on the sofa in his room for 2.5 hours just to get some kip. It's not the most comfortable sleeping place...oh well, once he is walking I going to make him walk all day long and maybe that will tire him out.

Bah and pish. DS has got another cold and woke up at 4.45 this morning

AIBU to be a bit pissed off that BFing is supposed to increase their immunity and yet he's now having his 8th cold?!

My story is: dd1 slept thro from 5 months. DD2 was fab from birth (sleeping 6 hrs in the maternity home when 3 days old!)carried on the 6 hrs.......but unfortunately never progressed. So when everyone else's 6 month old was sleeping thro she was STILL stuck on 6 hrs! We had screaming tantrums for hours on end if i didn't give her milk or take her out of the cot - and with dd1 at school I couldn't leave her to scream. I did absolutely nothing different with one baby to the other - worked same amount of days, had same routines, same childminder, she was just a totally annoyingly willful baby.
Things I blamed: teething, colds, noise from dd1, noise from dh, flushing the toilet, dogs barking outside, motorbikes, noisy people coming home from pub, not eating enough in the day, eating too much in the day, not having long enough daytime nap, having too long daytime nap.....etc, etc.
Books I read: baby whisperer, gina ford, no cry sleep solution, toddler taming.
For two years and two months she had NEVER slept through the night! The nearest we got was 8pm to 4am which she did three times.
Six weeks ago, aged 28 months, she slept through from 7.30 till 7 for 3 nights. On the 4th night she woke up and asked for milk. I re settled her and she went back to sleep. Ever since that night she has slept 7.30 tilL 7......SOMETIMES I HAVE TO GO AND WAKE HER AT 7.45AM!!!!
Know this is a ridiculously long post but the fact is: I have done nothing different with either child, I tried all the advice / books going in the past. It just happened.
And although I have, without doubt, had the hardest 2 years of my life it's over now. Thank God. And I totally feel for anyone going through the same from the bottom of my heart but one day it really will get better. x

My DS is a bouncing, happy, BIG baby boy at 6 months, who NEVER cries during the day, and turns into a completely different child at night! Crying loudly two or three times a night. Most of the time it's not hunger, unless it's 4am-ish. I gave up bf at 6 months cos I just couldn't take the lack of sleep anymore and thought it might help. It has made bugger all difference! The worst part was when my MIL said "so and so's twins are sleeping through from 11pm til 7am" as if to suggest that I must be doing something wrong!

My only advice is to go to bed at 8pm, get partner to do as many dreamfeeds as possible and to take one day at at time.

Love to all you other sleep-deprived tearful Mums out there!
x

4.30 this morning.

4:09.

This is NOT a competition that I'm interested in winning!

Two theories: A. overtired at bedtime (in my DSs case I think this) or B. too much daytime sleep (definitely not my DS's problem).

Who's kidding who. None of my theories ever pan out.

I think I need to join you lot. I cant remember my last good nights sleep. I have 4, the youngest is one this week, I have also a 2year old a 3 1/2 and a 6 1/2 year old. Eldest has special needs (autism/adhd).

At least one child wakes every night. Usually 2. Not always the same 2!!

Nothing we have done has made any difference so we have adjusted our lives to suit. As they get older things do improve, school and nursery tire them out. But there are no guarantees and sometimes in an evening the 6 year old just wont settle to sleep and feels lively at 11pm.

The way we cope is we have a childminder, paid for by tax credits, and when they go to her I catch up with my sleep. Sometimes DH has a day off in the week instead of the weekend, when its his day off, I have an afternoon nap. That way Im not so grouchy. Sometimes DH has to get up at 6am with the baby, when this happens he gets her toys out, makes sure there are no hazards in livingroom (mostly babyproof) takes her downstairs, lies on the carpet, she crawls all over him, he often dozes off, then she sometimes curls up beside him and sneaks another hour.

They all sleep in their own beds/cots, if they come into us, no matter how tired we are we make the effort to take them back (provided we notice of course!). Sometimes we think we have found something that helps, eg new grobag, extra milk feed, dreamfeed, carbohydrates at bedtime ... then our illusion is shattered after a few nights success. There isnt an answer, the only sure thing is that they will grow out of it, but they may be, 2 or 5 or 10 or even 17!!!

My MIL sympathised because my DH didnt sleep. ~She always said that when the other mothers used to say our so and so sleeps for 12 or 14 hours she used to think well, bless him, thats because he's not very bright, ours are too intelligent to waste time asleep.

If it got her through it, fair enough.

Feral and MoM thanks for the reassurances/advice from your end of things (i.e. a few months ahead) - sorry for the early waking! I have just resigned myself to the fact that nothing I do will help and for now just to try to pick up on her cues for naps and bedtime. She is consistent on her morning nap and we are now going to work on afternoon nap, so that she doesn't sleep later than 3.30pm, but does have a good nap, otherwise she's tired at 5pm before tea and then won't go down in the evening. Nothing is preventing the night waking, but if I can just try to assure she isn't just wide awake in the middle of the night for 2 hours for no good reason... - pipe dreams anyone

AP - my Mum says that about the intelligence thing too!

New joy is that DS (3) has just started getting into bed with DH in the mornings at about 6.15 (by this time I'm normally in with DD having fed her back to sleep at some early hour!) - he normally sleeps 'til 7. Thing is, he's still tired, so he needs the sleep and he will snuggle into DH and doze off, but we're going to nip this in the bud, as when I am back in our bed for a full night, there isn't room for him! He may only be 3, but he's already got his father's habit down to a tee - lying diagonally across a big double bed! Don't mind him coming in for a cuddle, but when he just still wants to sleep.... the time will just keep creeping earlier.

Ah well, enough waffle. Hoping some of you out there got some sleep last night.

Please can someone help?

Ds (2) refuses to settle in his cot and for the last few months ends up in the middle of our bed.
Last night was one of the worst as he was in and out of his cot like a yoyo and wailing the second he was put in to it.
Dh ended up sleeping in the spare room and I have been up since before dawn, ds had our bed all to himself.

This cannot go on. How can we get him to settle?
He rarely has naps during the day and does not fall asleep until around 10pm, sometimes later.

He is outside running about almost every day and eats well - we feel like zombies today, dh & I. Sorry if this is all waffley but I can barely talk and have to work in a little while.

How can we help him to sleep all night?

GentleOtter - didn't want your post to go unanswered and maybe this will bump it. Don't have experience of this myself, so these are maybe suggestions you've already tried - our DS went into a bed at 2. Has a bedguard on it (just one from Mothercare) - is that a solution? If so - could he sleep in spare bed from now on?

Baby whisperer suggests if baby does not like cot/bed to lie down in it with them - to start with you lie down and stay there with them and then do gradual retreat?

Am sure someone will come along soon with some more constructive advice. You may also be able to bring his bedtime forward gradually - maybe 10 mins per week? A lot of books say the earlier to bed the better they sleep - could you sacrifice a couple of weeks of going to bed when he does to try to encourage earlier sleeping and get him used to his own room?

Is he teething - DS was really unsettled at about 2.4 and we realised his back pre-molars were coming through.

Hope someone with experience comes along.

Thank you Starshinetiger.

We are going to try him in a proper single bed tonight (in our room as the spare bedroom is very unsafe for a toddler) and one of us will lie with him for his stories.

Other things I have tried today are chamomile tea and a run around the fields - he played outside for several hours but does not seem at all tired!

He does not seem in pain/ hungry etc, he just does not sleep. It is quiet here so no cars or streetlights to disturb him.

Fingers crossed it is a better night.....

evening all. just bookmarking

Hello all.

Ha MoM, I lose! DS slept until 6 this morning and wasn't up until gone 7 yesterday .

Starshine, I think your attitude is spot on. I reckon that, hard though it is, you've just got to roll with the punches until the DCs sort themselves out. It was 2 steps forward and 1 and 3/4 steps back for us for a very long time. And I'm not convinced that doing anything much makes a difference either. I'm not sure who it was a couple of pages back who said that babies all have their own strengths and weaknesses and it just happens that we all have kids whose weakness is sleeping!

Staines, hi! Lovely to see you dear girl. How are things? How's the co-sleeping? (Still btw). I'm curious, does Mr Staines sleep in with you? I never trusted Mr FG (who's a big lad) in with me and DS. Also could never have tolerated both of them snoring down my ear'ole all night.

RE our intelligent babies; I'm an English teacher and my big big boss at county hall says that non-sleepers are geniuses in the making and she must know what she's talking about!

PS hi Alysonpeaches and gentleotter, hope you had better nights last night?

Hurrah for your DS, feral! 4:57 here, but he has started having amazing naps all of a sudden! Over an hour in the morning and 1.5 hours in the PM for the last 3 days - and both in his cot. So nice!

Because he always has been a bad napper, he ends up going to bed really early (like 6:00 or 6:15), so on that basis 4:57 is actually quite reasonable. But hoping with the better naps and later bedtime, mornings might start to stabilise a bit?! How can I get my DS to understand that I will accept anything after 5:30...it's not asking that much is it??

well hello there sleep buddies. things are definitely improving here, we've had a few sleeps from 6.30 til 4am, which is a very favourable pattern here in the massif.

unfortunately, this seems to be accompanied by early waking, which i had hoped we'd left behind. culminating in in a wake up call for mummy staines today at 5am. i have bought some teletubbies dvds - they're the only thing he'll stay still for, though he only seems to like the bits with the teletubbies on, why can't they make a video of just them??? the difference between 5am and 6am is crippling tiredness. but you all know that!!

i am coming to the conclusion that they all get there in their own time regardless of what you do - i certainly haven't changed anything from the magical day that he did 10 hours straight.

hi FG, nice to see you - co-sleeping is still lovely, though he goes down in his own cot and comes in with me when he wakes in the middle of the night - i just don't have the strength of character to settle him at that time. and it's too lovely having a baby in bed! in spite of the 5 am wake up call and being bashed in the face as a cheery 'hello'. In answer to your question - dh sleeps in his lair (the spare bedroom)- which suits both of us and i think may well be the secret to a long and happy marriage! we have started 'trying' for our second - i hate trying for stuff, so will just say we've ditched the condoms - and he asked where we put another baby - i think he's worried that he'll lose his boy's bedroom!

hello to everyone else - i have my fingers crossed that we all get the good night we deserve tonight!

Hello - can I join (was on the 5 month sleep thread but DS2 now 7 months). Never slept through - but used to just wake once or twice a night for a quick bf and back to sleep till 5.30ish when he's ready to start his day. Went back to work 2 weeks ago and since then he's been refusing bottles during the day time and reverse cycling at nights - AND everytime he has a breastfeed being awake for up to 2 hours warbling away at the top of his voice. Am shattered. Can any of you lovely ladies give me hope that this is indeed just a phase and will pass?

Oh Staines, congrats on the ttc mission! How exciting. I am desperately doing some calculations to see whether we can afford to have another sooner rather than later. Once I've got my sums right then I'm going to start in on Mr FG. I've made a couple of pointed comments but he doesn't really do subtlety so we'll see how it goes. The XBox versus DC2 thing may well be a problem in our house too...

Dinky, I reckon it's all just a phase. Your DS will get used to you being back at work and soon he'll probably start eating more solids during the day anyway. I stopped feeding DS at night at 9mo - and he's slept through 90% of the nights since - but he was still having a dream feed and one more feed during the night at 7mo. I would just turn off the monitor and put in ear plugs when he started the 3am operatics! Can your DP do some night shifts for you? Sending sympathy and hopes for a reasonable night.

Dinky - sorry you're having it so tough at back at work too . Have to say that once we'd ridden out the 26 week growth spurt I have gotten tough on night feeds too and will only feed her if she's gone at least 4 hours since last feed. Still not getting great sleep, but trying to balance her and DS' bedtime. Have seen some improvement on the whole being awake in middle of night thing, once she realised I wouldn't feed her back to sleep. I am lucky in that I have a bed next to her cot in her room, so I can just lie there while she's busy "Being awake" in the middle of the night and just let her be and then reassure her when she gets upset (was picking her up, but now I'm just reassuring her and only picking her up if she gets really upset). Feral is right - is just a phase and he will adapt, but is pretty tough when you're going through it. If you refuse feeds at night, he will take the milk during the day - he'll have no choice and he won't let himself starve. If he has still been having the odd bf during the night before you went back to work, then I would still do that, but no more frequently than you were. This week, DD has been doing her "I'm wide awake" about 1 hour after she's gone to bed in the evenings, so this evening I changed things round and fed her before DS' bedtime stories and then put her to bed after them and made sure she fell asleep on her own - we shall see how this goes.
On repeat: This is just a phase, it too shall pass...This is just a phase, it too shall pass...This is just a phase, it too shall pass...This is just a phase, it too shall pass...

P.S. Feral - wish I could only retain that calm attitude at night when DD is awake! Could feel myself wanting to shout at her yesterday evening, when I'd been trying to settle her for nearly 2 hours - just wanted to go to sleep. Instead, I found myself cuddling her and whispering "just put your thumb in and suck yourself to sleep, it works for your brother, it could work for you... just put your thumb in, etc..." - think this is officially sending me mad!

MoM - thanks for your way of viewing it - all babies having their strengths and weaknesses. I really like that. DD's strengths are smiling, babbling and crawling (at 6.5 months, she's off at a speed!). Weaknesses are sleeping (obv!) and taking to solid food (when compared with her brother). Hey, I get good smiles from her, so I can't complain.

Hope you all get the good night's sleep you definitely deserve.

aargh, i just posted eloquently on everyone's posts and rounded it off with my own update and lost connection. so i am just going to moan on my own behalf now.

have brought ds's bedtime forward from 7 - 7.30 to 6 - 6.30. very successful, he goes down happily, awake, whereas before it was a bit of a struggle, always feeding to sleep etc etc. however, he has consequently brought his waking up time forward for me. 4.30 today. i could cry. he's still tired. rubbing his face, yawning, resting his little body for a couple of minutes. but he will not allow me to persuade him to sleep. i even bf him for an hour between 4.30 and 5.30. that was nice - i now feel like i have frozen shoulder.

so what would you do? persevere with early bedtime or go back to a 6am lie in? i could cope beautifully with 6 - i was happy. at 4.30 i just think about how much i hate everyone in the world, starting with dh asleep in the other room.

Hi Staines! We're having the exact same dilemma here with the early wakes. It got a bit better - 5:10 the last 3 days (!). I might try that "wake to sleep" thing, where you set your alarm and go in an hour before they wake to try to disturb the sleep cycle? Long shot but worth a try.

Thanks ladies - definitely needed to hear it is just a phase. He was waking for 1 or 2 feeds before I went back to work - but would go straight back to sleep after them - its this 2 hours of being awake after them that is killing me. DS2 was awake again for 2 hours last night but think it was teeth as he didnt want to feed and finally conked out after some nurofen infants and bonjela teething gel being applied. Pesky teeth - why cant babies be born with a set of dentures they can just pop in?

Staines - DS1 was an early waker - I'd go for the 7pm bedtime and your boy should sleep to nearer to 6am.

Hope everyone else had a much better night last night.

Hi all, Staines, 4.30 is just wrong isn't it? 6.30 bedtimes are working beautifully for us and DS isn't going to bed tired as a result (and he's therefore sleeping until 6am ish) but it all depends on what they've been up during the day I suppose.

I've spent so much time saying "it's just a phase" about his crap sleeping habits and I've just realised that I'm beginning to get used to his new good habits when they too are almost certainly "just a phase"!

I'm going to have to stop posting on this thread aren't I? I feel like a bit of a fraud. I reeeeeally don't want to tempt fate though coz I went back to work today.