Please is there any other way to change sleep patterns than controlled crying?

[BertieBotts]

I need your help once again!

DS is 10 months old. He sleeps with us or in a sidecar cot on my side of the bed. He is breastfed on demand and does nurse at night, but he can go a whole night without nursing.

The problem we are having is that he either hasn't been going to sleep at all, or when we have managed to get him to sleep at 6-7ish he has then woken up and wanted to get up 2-3 hours later, as if it was a nap.

There is a difference between him waking up, just wanting a feed and going back to sleep and him waking up and staying up and it is very difficult to influence this. If he wakes and just wants a feed and I try to pick him up and take him downstairs he is very sleepy and tearful and will fall back to sleep in my arms or fall asleep if I feed him again. Likewise if he is waking up properly, no matter what I try to do to keep him asleep he will wake up.

I am happy to stay with him until he falls asleep, even if it takes up to an hour (longer than that and I would not be too happy!) though long-term the goal would be for it to take less time. I am happy to feed him to sleep, rock him, sing to him, whatever it takes - I had been taking him for a walk in his pushchair which worked but then he started waking 2-3 hours after this as though it had been a nap again.

Eventually he will go to sleep at night when DP and I go to bed, sometimes by this point (about 11ish) he is so tired he is just crying at everything and anything and falls asleep as soon as I lay down and feed him, but other times he still wants to play and will crawl around on the bed, climb on his cot and us and we both pretend to be asleep as much as possible, I keep offering the breast and it can take up to about 40 minutes before he finally falls asleep but when he does, he will almost always nurse and then roll over awake and fall asleep himself in the cot, or just lie down in the cot and go to sleep by himself. This is quite stressful and I just want to go to sleep myself at the end of it! So not ideal to do earlier in the evening, and also when I have tried it earlier in the evening he has kept it up for 2 hours at which point I gave up!

I haven't tried blackout blinds as the window in our room is very large and at the front of the house, and he will sometimes go to sleep in the light room anyway and sometimes not go to sleep even when it is dark and quiet so I am not convinced it will help and so it seems an expensive gamble to take.

Any ideas?? I am reading the NCSS but I think I need to go over some bits again.

I lived with this book by my side, in fact, I still do!

Controlled crying is a suggestion within it but, ignore that bit, its very helpful to explain sleeping patterns.

Once you have looked at what times his day naps are and the duration you can see what tweaks you can make that might encourage him to be more sleepy, and therefore more likely to fall asleep quicker and earlier at night.

His body needs taught the routine of short naps and a big long sleep. It could be that he's just stuck in a habit of nursing/falling asleep with you there. Whilst controlled crying is probably the quickest was to correct the habit, its not the only way.

Blackout blinds can be really helpful but sleep is sleep and they never had them when I was wee!!!

dr jay gordons night weaning programme

Much as I like Dr. Jay's gentle night weaning method in theory, I think it's a bunch of crap in practice. My dear boy is 2.5 yrs now and night feeds are well past their sell-by date AFAIC, but he throws a paddy on the floor for five min if i refuse him (which I do unless he has acute teething pain). So much for 10 days and so much for cry-free!

I used the book Frumpy has linked to with my Dd, I did the CC and it was nothing like I thought it would be, 3 nights in and she slept through.

I have just done it with Ds2 10 months, he has never slept through since he was born.

Its taken a little longer with him, although a difference was noticeable staraight away.

We started nearly 2 weeks ago, and he has slept through the last 4 nights in a row!

I know its a tough desision to make, and it won't work for every child, but when I did it with both of mine, (who liked to feed to sleep!) their cries were more angry than upset, and I never left them as long as the book suggests, longest was 10-15 mins.

Hope you find the magic cure I only wish I had the answers for you, I know how tiring it is! x

'The No Cry Sleep Solution' by Elizabeth Pantley....she's a marvel and her book advocates 'gentle' methods to get your bubba to sleep.

Recommend it to everyone I know...