Hi everyone,
Just wanted to give people hope & reassurance that sleeping through IS possible even for babies (like my DS) who have always been terrible history.
My DS is almost 9 months now, and his sleep has always been bad, but after 6 months it had simply deteriorated to a horrible extent. He was very attached to his dummy & kept waking- usually every hour or 2 hours between 7-7- whenever it fell out of his mouth. Sometimes after we replugged the dummy he would stay awake. Invariably we ended up taking him in our bed (the first 6 months we solely co-slept) after 11, just because we were not getting any sleep. Still, even in our bed he kept waking. Our nights were so exhausting & broken that both DP & I felt horrible, were bickering all the time, were close to depression, were dreading the nights etc.
Last monday we decided to ditch the dummy & do it cold turkey. Here's what happened:
Night 1: 1 hour crying on & off at bedtime (with me sh-sh-patting DS). Then 4 wakings in the night, most of them not that hard, one including milk.
Night 2: 45 minutes on & off crying, with me going in every few minutes. 3 wakings in the night, even briefer wakings with self-settling, again one milk feed.
Night 3: 20 minutes on & off crying- most of it 'self-settling' crying, me going in at regular intervals. 2 wakings in the night, 1 milk feed & the other just self-settling within 2 minutes.
Night 4: 7 minutes very mild crying (I wouldn't even describe it as crying to be honest, just whinging). 1 waking in the night, no milk feeds
Night 5: No crying at all at bedtime, he just rolled over & slept!! No milk in the night. He slept through!
Night 6: No crying at bedtime again, he slept through (we only heard him once or twice coughing a bit & self-settling within 1-2 minutes)
Unbelievable. I never wanted to do any methods that involved even a bit of crying, but at 9 months it really felt we were going under with tiredness, so we decided to be brave & ditch the dummy. I can't believe how much easier it was than I expected (I was dreading the whole thing & obsessing about it for months).
If anyone wants further ideas / details about what we did & how it worked, please do email me. I'd be so happy to help anyone who's thinking of ditching the dummy. It led to such fantastic results in our case (even the once-a-night milk feed was dropped, as an extra bonus, just by ditching the dummy).