Help! When feeding to sleep won't work

[dorisbonkers]

Briefly, my 13-month old daughter has been breastfed to sleep, or walked around for ages in an Ergo for every nap and every bedtime. She's never slept through but we co-sleep and although I've had some awful patches, we get by, and I've tried to make my peace with it.

But what used to take a half hour to an hour to get her off at night has been taking 2-3 hours. I lie in the pitch black and silence with her wriggling on and off and nearly pulling my nipples off as she finally winds down -- taking hours. I've got her up, then repeated.

I'd made my peace with broken sleep, I'd made my peace with breastfeeding to sleep. But I can't cope with much more of this.

She has just walked -- I understand rough patches are connected with development. And she has a cold. So yes, I understand this may be a blip in the great scheme. But I've not had ANY sleep last night (bobbing roughly on and off all night half asleep) and the previous 3 nights I've had so little I'm beginning to lose the plot.

This is WAY more intense than anything the newborn phase had to throw at me.

Any ideas? Anyone relate to this? I realise it will pass but I need something to get me through the next few days.

Thanks

My DS dropped to one nap a day around this time, I don't suppose this could be the reason why she is suddenly taking so much longer to drop off? DS has always been bf to sleep - for the first time ever (!) tonight he just had a cuddle (he is 2.6 yo though....now I am stressing that he may be ill tonight!!), but I found when he was dropping from 2 to 1 naps it was taking ages and ages to get him to drop off.

Other possibility you may have thought of but I will throw in - don't suppose she is teething? DS would chew my nipples off all night when he was teething, but if I gave him some Calpol it helped massively.

Hi again. That's great that the nightwakings aren't your biggest problem - sorry I misread that in your original post.

I think you will be amazed at how quickly she will be able to figure out falling asleep in her cot at bedtime. I reckon if your DH is able to perservere for the next 4 days there will be a huge difference.

Our guy was in an Amby too and he loved it. Slept so well in it. The transition to a cot was hard, but by Day 3 the difference was incredible.

This might sound crazy, but my DH wore his IPOD when he was doing the shhing/comforting for the first couple of days. He said it helped him remain calm. He did exactly what others have described. Comfort with hands and voice, pick up and cuddle briefly if upset, then replace in cot, repeat, repeat.

You say that you don't know if she can relearn such an ingrained habit, but she really can. If there's absolutely no improvement and it is still taking her 3 hours to go to sleep in 4 or 5 days, then maybe reevaluate...but seems like you're ready to give it a good try!

One more thought...does she have any kind of comforter/cuddly toy for sleep? We have a little taggy blanket thing that I always wore down my top when feeding so it smells of me and reminds him of cuddling. He only has it for sleep and it really seems to help. As soon as he goes into his cot he grabs it straight away and rubs it on his face.

I'm sure some would say that he should be attached to me instead of a cuddly toy, but you need more than 2 hours sleep a night so something has to give! It might take a while for her to take to something, but could be good to get in the habit now.

Hello - I haven't got a lot to add, just wanted to say that DS went through a similar phase at about the time he really "got" crawling and it was just a phase, he has gone back to feeding to sleep now (and will even fall asleep feeding in my arms and allow me to put him down asleep in his cot - a sidecar one - without waking up) - so I can only tell you what we tried, and we tried everything apart from controlled crying etc.

DS will sleep in a pushchair so I started putting him in the pushchair, in his pyjamas, in a footmuff, and taking him for a walk in the evenings to get to sleep. I would then wheel the pushchair into the house and unzip the footmuff so he wasn't too warm, and leave him until he stirred at which point he was sleepy enough to be carried up to bed and fed back to sleep.

After a while of this he was happy to just be strapped into the pushchair and pushed back and forth, then after a while of that he was actually happy to be strapped into the pushchair and as long as he couldn't half-hear something interesting going on, he'd fall asleep quite happily. It was like being strapped in, he knew he couldn't crawl off to find anything interesting so he just relaxed and went to sleep.

Sorry - keep being distracted, may come back and post more later (didn't want to delete all this) - good luck!

She could be teething yes -- impossible to say sometimes isn't it. I have administered Calpol (I'm a rare doser, but thought I'd give it a go) as she has a cold and a very, very slight temp.

She is seeming to be dropping naps. She's not a huge one for naps anyway and never longer than 1.20 mins. Maybe that is why.

Walking, learning 5 new words a day, teething, cold. I suppose it could be all these things. All I know is I lurch from one awful sleepless patch to another, but now something's got to give.

She doesn't have a comforter, I guess I'm her comforter. I don't even have a pram yet so she's either on me, in a sling on me, next to me in bed or playing near me. Only time we're really apart is when we're in the car, and that's once a week. Mind you, I'm going back to work part time so she'll spend her days with husband. I'll try to work on a comforter. Can only try!

BertieBotts, what age was your kid when he fell asleep in the pram? I ask because I may get a stroller thing soon (she's getting a bit heavy to sling everywhere) and have heard they fall asleep in them.

I'll let you know how I get on. Thanks so much for taking the trouble to reply, all of you.