Misguided Illusion Part II - Baby still not sleeping through by six months? Come and join us!

[MomOrMum]

Thought I would start a fresh thread as, sadly, we have almost filled the first one.

Feral, Kiwi, Chulita, et al...shouldn't we have graduated from this thread by now?!

Now welcoming a new crop of 6 months+ babies determined to help us reach new heights/depths of sleep deprivation.

Here is the original thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/sleep/713951-Support-thread-for-those-who-were-under-the-misguided-illusion

Thanks for the kind words ladies. IsItMe I think you are right, my first step will be stretching feeds, and indeed, last few nights, DT2 has woken every 4 hours instead of 3, at 11 and 3am, which is a bit more bearable, so I've decided to try to see if I can get her to stick at that and move DT1 to a similar schedule. Wonderful news that your DS has slept through the night. It is a wonderful feeling. DT2 has done so twice at around 5 months and although DT1 did wake, it was at the time that she was only waking once, so I was up once for 15 mins - oh I'd kill for that now! A funny story: when she did that last, I was so engorged the next morning that I expressed half a litre of milk!!! Two does build a good supply.

I am at my parents' for 10 days whilst DH is skiing. The good news is that I have lots of extra help for 10 days. The worry is that we'll be in a different environment and the sleep will be worse.

Can't be much worse than last night though, which was horrendous with DT1 refusing to go down after her second feed at 2.30 and keeping us up until 4.30. DH took her into the spare room so I could get some sleep and then DT2 woke at 5.30 so I only got 1 hour! Such is the challenge of twins...

Best wishes for a peaceful night x

Hmmm. Okay, so DS woke up shortly after his bedtime feed, cried for 4mins then off to sleep. Woke again about 9.45, cried for 3mins then off to sleep.

Woke again at 1.20am. Fed for 40mins, seemed to be asleep, but obviously woke up after I put him back in his cot. Was chatting quietly to himself for about 40mins. Cried for 5mins, so DH went in to him and he quietened down. Think I fell asleep after this, but DH tells me that DS was awake for over 2 hours in total, just carrying on with the quiet, intermittent, chatting to himself. He woke for the day at 6.40am.

Does anybody know what these kind of night wakings are about?!

dycey please can I add damn cats? Our evil kitty woke us up with a horrible yowling at 5.30.

DD woke at 11pm for her feed, then at 4am. Then up for the day at 7:30am. Good luck with the twins, 1stMrsF, I actually found that being in a different environment didn't change DD's sleep habits too much while we were away over Christmas - just try to keep bedtime routine, etc the same.

IsItMe, not sure about the wakings, but as long as he's just chatting quietly to himself, I guess it's not too much of a problem.

I'd like to add damn snow to the list. I'm not too steady on my feet when it's icy, and so I don't feel safe taking DD out in the carrier. I can't put her in the pushchair cos the snow's too deep, so we haven't been out since Tuesday lunchtime. DD is always harder to settle during the day when we haven't been out so I'm dreading today! Ho hum.

1stMrsF OMG you could be talking about me and DT's!!!

They are just over 6 months old now and so far had been okish at night. DT1 slept through regularly and DT2 woke once for a feed at 3am. Then they got colds! And ever since they have been up and down all night. They have good bedtime feeds and eat well during the day (3 meals) but suddenly DT1 is screaming for a feed at 10pm and 2am and DT2 is wanting milk at 12am and 4am then up for the day at 5.15am. It is worse than when they were tiny and like you I cant seem to sync them so I am up every 1.5 hours which is just ridiculous.

I dont really know where to start with sorting them out. I am up for CC but it is tricky as we are still squashed in our 2 bed house with older DS too.

So good to read that I am not the only person up in the night, to listen to the mums at baby group you would think mine are the only babies that have EVER woken in the night!!

london sorry to hear that you are suffering, but also pleased not to be alone! It's so annoying to hear about other people's 'sleeping through' babies.

It's the very bright children who don't sleep. All those mothers at baby group might be sleeping but they'll be raising very average children!!!

I'm also missing going out for a walk

Not a terrible night last night, so being in a different place doesn't seem to made too much of an impact. DT1 didn't wake for 1st feed until 11.45, which is unheard of, but DT2 woke at 9pm and DT1 was up for the day at 5.15! I am focussing on day sleeps today as I think they are not napping well lately and it may help.

DD slept from 6:30 till 2:45 then from 3:15 till 7 last night!! Woohoo! Unfortunately, I was awake from 12:30 with a rotten stinking cold, and didn't get back to sleep till 4.

Well done Galena's DD. Shame about your cold (Damn colds!).

DS slept well last night also - took a few minutes to settle at bedtime, and then woke about 8.30 and took a few minutes to resettle. Then he slept until 6.05am .

Damn cat woke us up again around 5.30 and I couldn't get back to sleep. She had somehow managed to lock herself out of the catflap. No idea how.

Well done IsItMe's DS. Here's hoping they're both learning better habits. As for the cat - if she was outside how did she wake you? Can't help though - ours is a neurotic beast too!

Thanks Galena, I think she was head-butting the locked catflap vigorously. We didn't get one of the brighter kitties. She sleeps most of the time, confirming the 1stMrsF's theory.

1stMrsF & London11- breastfeeding twins. Superimpressive!
And so is half a litre of milk!! No wonder you're not getting any sleep with 2 of them. Still must be wonderful breastfeeding twins I am trying to imagine it now.

1st My DS started sleeping from 11-5/6 - well, sometimes - when I sorted out the daytime naps. Only wish it worked every night.. last night he woke up at 4, 5 and 6, but the night before not at all. Just wish I knew WHY!!

Yes Santa we're going to start dropping the dreamfeed... I only hope it isn't hellish. Have so far dropped length of feed from 30 mins to 15 mins as if to make sure that DS isn't hungry. So far so good.

IsitMeOr - (love the name by the way) Sounds like Thursday night went well....!

OK, I really should be in bed...!

DD is doing well at the moment, except for (as some wise woman once said) DAMN COLDS!

We've managed to get her napping in her cot during the day for an increasingly decent amount of time. She has started just waking once overnight - generally around 2. (So bed at 6:30, wake at 2, wake at 7:30 - never have done a dreamfeed) Last night she woke coughing at 11 and I thought we were in for a hellish night. No - woke again at 5 where she fed and went down again until 7:30.

We're hoping to get out today to a baby group so that should give us a bit of a break and a change of scenery.

Hope everyone's well.

No internet for several days but the nights have been quite good . Obviously helped by the fact that my mum is helping me with the getting up this week, but by and large they have slept from 7 - 11-ish and then 'til 3-ish and then 'til 6-ish for the last 3 nights with minimal waking other than for feeding. DT1 has gone down after feeds awake and soothed herself to sleep which has been particularly impressive. She has woken up at 5.30 several mornings though and whilst I've been shielded by lovely Granny & Grampy that will be grim next week! However, if they can keep up this 2 feeds instead of 3 (and almost in sync these last 2 nights) I will be better able to cope with an early start. I attribute the improvement to better napping (I've been putting them down or going out in the car 2.5 - 3 hrs after the last waking) and also that they are eating better. This could be because with extra help I'm better able to plan meals, make sure they get their meals on time etc. Still, I'm very pleased with their progress and thanks to help from parents, am feeling quite well rested which will help next week!!

mummy thank you, it is nice to have 2 lovely, close, snuggly bf relationships at once! Galena and IsItMe great news

Sounds like there are some happier stories out there now. Galena, doing really well!

More of the same with us - two nightly feeds at around 1am and 5am.... am tired by it still (nearly 11 months now). But his cold and cough mean I have been twarted in my plan to drop night feeds and I start work next week and can't tackle it then.... So a little longer as we are, I think.

Had my first three hours without DS today - went shopping. Left him with his future carer (lucky me as it is his Granma). So feel refreshed! Such a good feeling - tho I find it hard to leave him at all.

Hope so much other babies sleep long and soundly tonight.

that was thwarted obviously

dycey sorry to hear things aren't improving - but I guess at least they aren't getting worse!

We've had a couple of 2-feed nights as DD has a cold. Bah. I think the major problem is that, having been getting better at daytime naps, she's now getting stroppy about them and flapping her arms, screaming and not napping. This means she's foul all afternoon as she's so tired.

I wonder if it's all to do with the weather... For the past 3 weeks we've not been going out to baby groups, etc firstly due to holiday and last week because of the weather. Yesterday and today we went out...

Hmmm.

I can't stay in with her 24/7 though. I need my baby groups as sanity savers!

THanks Galena, think DS is just comfortable with his pattern - 5 hours then 3 or 4 hours and then a little more sleep before up for the day.

Wish I had taught him to settle himself for naps earlier but now it is a bit late as he can keep himself awake for ages! I dance / cuddle him to sleep which is fine for the day but I regret it at 2am when he has woken coughing and insists I cuddle / dance him back to sleep! If I ever have another baby I hope I will be tougher! I find it so hard to be though.... I am a weakling who is all emotional through exhaustion.

As for the nights, when he is well I can manage this 2 wakings business - but will find it hard once I am working next week.

Have decided that when the spring is coming and I am settled into work routine I will stop picking him up and stop feeding, just pop in and out to remind him he is ok! In a way I feel there is no point now as he just picks up every little bug that is going around.

I need to hear some stories of people who did it as I really feel that I am stuck in a rut now. Been doing this for so long I feel it can never change!

Well, DD had the swine flu jab yesterday, and I was worried about last night. In fact, she slept till 4! Unfortunately, with the cold she's had recently she has been very unsettled after waking overnight. She feeds, then goes down and 10-30 minutes later is crying again. if I go in I have to feed again, if DH goes in she finally settles then wakes again an hour later. After an hour or two of this whe'll finally go back to sleep.

ARGH!

Oh galena sounds v similar to my last 2 weeks.... DS would wake for his 2 feeds but cough and not settle afterwards - now a tooth causing the same thing. Getting up is no longer the problem, it is getting him to go back to sleep. Nightmare. Realise I have now been lucky til now as bf always knocked him out. But I have totally weaned him in the day so think my night milk is a small amount hence his not settling. Last night I rocked and let him suck and rocked and so on for so long and he wasn't sleeping so once I had let the nurofen work for 20 mins I just left him. A tiny bit of crying and he was asleep. I have maybe been keeping him awake with my presence?

Going back to work tomorrow but I feel I may just have to toughen up now. BF in the night no longer sending him back to sleep so maybe I will just stop the whole thing in a week or so.

Still need to work out what my actions will be though!

Mixed here: night before last DT2 woke at 12.15 and 4.00 and DT1 at 12.45 and 4.15! Brilliant! Some teething in the last 2 days though and last night ended up having DT2 in my bed because she was waking very frequently and at least next to me I could soothe straight away. Early waking from here and disturbing her sister meant back to 3 feeds at 10.15, 2ish and 4.30ish though We will see what tonight brings.

We are also finally going home tomorrow (I hope - do you see that band of snow across the country on the weather forecast tonight? That's exactly the journey I have to make from South Wales to East Surrey...) - we stayed a few extra days as DH had to travel with work and it seemed silly to go home and be alone when we could stay here. I will miss the granny hour at 6 when she plays with them until a reasonable hour for breakfast and also when I have to do bathtime on my own tomorrow for the first time in weeks!

Must go to bed, but wanted to say that DS has been doing much better at night since we repeated our controlled crying.

The nightly wakes of up to two hours stopped after about a week (phew!). And now he wakes for one nightfeed and is pretty good at getting back to sleep after that and any other little stirrings in the night.

Daytime sleeps are a completely different story! Will try to post tomorrow for some advice.

Ladies, can I join you? I've posted various despairing threads on here, but feel here is my spiritual home.

DS is six months. Until 18 weeks, he slept through the night, 8 til 8. From then on he's been pretty bad, waking between 2 and 4 times a night. Went through all the possibilities: growth spurt, sleep regression, distractibility when feeding, teething, etc etc, but addressing them didn't seem to make any difference. A couple of weeks ago I realised he was cold at night, and gave him a fleecy sleepsuit, tucked-in blanket over gro-bag and lighter blanket over his arms. It seemed to work - he started waking only once.

Since Friday, however, it's been a nightmare. He's been awake at least every two hours, sometimes every 45 minutes. Sometimes he's hungry, sometimes he's screaming for a non-specific reason, sometimes he's just awake for a chat.

I assumed it was because I'd taken away his light blanket in a SIDS panic. So last night I gave it back, for supervised use. But it wasn't much better: he woke at 1.20, 4 (for an hour), 6.30 and 8. In the 4 to 5 hour I gave him Calpol, incase it was his teeth (he has one appearing), infacol (incase it was wind), fed him and changed his nappy. He woke up an hour and a half later. sob

He's just started weaning, but I'm ensuring he gets plenty of milk. He's mixed fed BF and formula, though I've just changed to follow-on variety. Could that be it? clutches at straws

He doesn't really sleep much in the day, either. Maybe 3 30-min naps. And because his nights are so disrupted, we tend to doze until whenever o'clock in the morning, making establishing any kind of routine difficult.

he's still in our room, as it would be even worse if I had to be up and down into a different room all night, but I wonder if we're disturbing him?

Etc etc. Give me encouragement to go on, ladies...

Welcome herbaceous, and sorry that you are joining our ranks.

I think it is so frustrating that there are so many possibilities as to what can cause them to sleep poorly. Going through the ones you mention, my perspective is:

weaning - yes, DS seemed to initially be disrupted by the introduction of solids. It seemed to take his digestion a while to get used to them. Each time he makes a step change in the amount of solids he eats, he seems to have a disruption to his sleeping, particularly daytime naps.

short napping - yes! It's so frustrating isn't it? DS eventually dropped to two naps (sorry, can't remember when exactly) and combined they were are least as long, and often longer, than the three he had previously done. Just before I figured he only wanted two naps, it got really, really, really difficult to settle him at nap time.

Morning wake up time - our problem has always been getting DS to stay asleep until 7am lol. But it could be worth a try of making sure you get DS up at 8am (if that's what you're used to) every day for 4 days or so, and see how that works for you. I found having some predictability about what times we'd be doing what during the day helped my sanity a little.

DS did settle better for us once we moved him into his own room. I have a comfy chair in there to feed him, and it's not so bad. Is a pain when they are up every hour or so though...

The only thing that made our DS wake like yours has been doing was really teething. Once that disrupted his sleeping though, it stayed disrupted and continued to get worse.

What helped him settle with teething was to give the Calpol by the clock, so we gave it at bedtime, then if he was awake 4 hours later and so on. It apparently works better this way.

HTH - got to go do bedtime feed.

Thank you IsItMe! The getting up at a regular time thing occurred to me just now, actually. He goes to sleep like clockwork at 7pm (the only bit about his sleep that seems to work), so he's obviously a man of habit. I may have to come over all 'routine', despite what I've always thought!

He does sometimes have a 1.5hr nap in the morning, but there seems no pattern about when he does this.

He has got a second tooth coming through that could be a problem. I'll start administering calpol in your way! And in the bath just now I saw that the base of his 'old chap' looked a bit red, so I've bunged lots of cream on it.

We shall see! He's currently spark out, and has been an angel all day, so hopefully the cuteness factor will see me through til morning!

hi, have just seen this thread and was wondering if i could join?? have just done a thread on ds night time antics...here it is!

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/sleep/898186-please-help-not-happy-with-hv-advise-reguarding-6-1

i should have mentioned in my other post that he sleeps 9.30 til 11/11.30 in the mornings then again 1.30/2 ish til about 3.30/4ish. maybe he is napping too much in the day?? having said that i am having to wake him from these naps!

Glad my fevered obsessing about sleep is of use to somebody herbaceous . I know what you mean about routine - I resisted it for ages as well. Now I have a schedule stuck up on the side of the fridge. It's more of a guide to the order things happen in though, as naps have always been, ahem, moveable feasts.

On calpol, just make sure you don't give more than the doses they're allowed in any 24 hours. I've been told that ibuprofen in combination with paracetamol is the most effective, but that makes me a bit anxious, so I only use that if DS is really bad. What a worrier I am!

For my DS, once the tooth has actually made it through, the worst is over.