Calling any Gina Ford 'experts'

[Toadsmum]

This isn't intended to be a discussion on whether Gina's routines are good, bad or evil - I have been there, done that etc. What I need is some advice from people who have used the routines.

My 'problem' is this: I have a 6 week old baby girl who is being fully breastfed. She is pretty much 'in' the 6-8 week routine, apart from sleep. In the day I just can't keep her awake as much as recommended - she either falls asleep or gets to the stage where she's crying because she's so tired. Apart from late afternoon and evening, she sleeps really well. In the evening I breastfeed her and put her to bed - it was by 7pm, but I have brought it forward so it is now 15-20 mins before this. Typically she'll cry for a couple of minutes and then go to sleep for 20 minutes, then wake up and start crying. I have tried leaving her for 10 minutes, going up and feeding her, going up and cuddling her but not feeding her etc. She will then usually cry for 10 minutes, go to sleep for another 10-20 minutes, then the same thing happens. This goes on for 1 or 2 hours with me resettling her and her waking up.

Has anyone got any more suggestions - I feel like I've tried everything and have gotten nowhere.

Mine did this too (non Gf).

Is it wind> ? Mine just wanted to go to sleep on my tummy

If she wants to go to sleep and is clearly over tired if you don't let her sleep, then tweak the routines to allow her the extra sleep she needs. All babies are different and it may be that she needs an extra bit if sleep at this stage. Is she still in the sleep routine for a younger baby do you think?

(I'm not a GF mum either )

hi toadsmum

congratulations on your new baby, you must be so proud

this is the advice i would have despised at the same poont in ds's life... but must point out i am a GF-er...

she is still very young and GF routines don't always work exactly to plan as she says so dogmatically in the book... so it might be best to just leave it for a week/fortnight or so.

but if you can't... when you say you are feeding her in the evening when she cries, is this just a quick nip or a full-on feed? if the former, i recommend you switch to the latter and see how she goes on.

in terms of daytime sleep are you actively trying to keep her awake or get her to sleep or are you just letting it go with the flow atm? if the former, i would say just let her drift off when she wants, but get her up after the recommended amount of time, provided she is not too miserable at the prospect. perhaps as soupdragon suggests she just needs more sleep - it is not the end of the world.

as others have suggested, do you think it could be wind/colic? there are some hints in the book about what foods to avoid if you have a windy baby - nothing earth shattering, it is just what your hv would probably tell you. have to say, i had a windy one and could not pinpoint what food (if any) i had ingested more than any other to upset him... have you tried (a) cool boiled water or (b) gripe water, infacol or such like? otherwise, try walking her around lying face down on your arm (her head will be face down looking over your elbow - iyswim) this will relieve wind. alternatively, trying gently bicycling her legs - should have the same effect.

hth and good luck

sorry, didn't pick up on soupdragon's other point, ime your baby will not necessarily move on to the next step in the routine exactly when gf says. if you think she would be happier moving "back" (very deliberate use of inverted commas - no such thing as "moving back" at this stage in life) to the previous routine, by all means just do it until she is ready to make a change.

I did GF when DD1 was 4 months old. Couldn't make it work before that because she was too sleepy and GF is very stingy with her sleep times.

Anyway, just wanted to say that I always gave her a longer morning sleep than GF advocates, just because she needed it. She still had her afternoon sleep and went down at 7.30pm. She's now 2.8 yrs and sleeps 2hrs at lunch. Obviously born to snooze! So my point is that you can adapt Gina to suit your child and still have a very happy, settled baby in a routine.

Sounds like it may have wind/colic at the moment, in which case bossykate's recommendations are all excellent. Both my babies had lots of colicky evenings and needed feeding and cuddling till 10pm-ish. They grew out of it by about 10wks.

Sorry - that reads terribly - Sounds like IT may have wind/colic - of course I mean sounds like your dd has wind/colic!!!

Hi Toadsmum, I'm a GF fan, my dd who is now 23 months started on the routines at about 9/10 weeks and my ds who is nearly 10 weeks started at about 1 week. I don't know that many people who have followed GF but anyone I have come across say that their baby needs more sleep than recommended. My dd certainly always had a longer morning nap than the routines suggested and ds seems to need a longer afternoon nap i.e he seems to need about 30-40 minutes and not the 15 mins that GF states. Like Anto says, I think there is actually quite a lot of scope for adapting the routines to suit your baby's needs but sometimes that is hard to do especially if it is your first baby etc. My SIL followed GF with her dd, she actually slept 7 pm - 7 am from 6 weeks which I've never heard of before, not only that but she also had a full hour 4 pm - 5 pm. So, don't worry if your dd sleeps a bit longer than the routines. Also, I think sticking to the feeding times is probably more important i.e packing in all the feeds between 7 am and 11 pm. My ds was probably 6 weeks before he started to sleep well in the evenings, but he improved once I changed from breast feeding to bottles, I think he was hungry. Could you maybe give her a top up of expressed milk at the 6.15 pm feed or would you rather not introduce bottles yet? I did also let ds cry a bit for a few evenings, it's hard to do but after about 3 nights, he started to settle well at 7 pm and thankfully still does.
The other thing that I've found both dd and ds didn't do as per the routines is, they both continued with the "split" feed at 5 pm/6.30 pm, dd until she was weaned and ds still has the 5 pm feed, there is no way he would be "happy to wait until after his bath" !!
Sorry this has got rather rambling but I hope some of this helps. I found with ds that once he got to 6/7 weeks things started to slot into place with the routines - before this I seemed to be posting every other day on Mumsnet for advice on some aspect of the routines.
Good luck and keep posting, always happy to share experiences with other GF followers.