I’m a Mumsnet Dad (first post since our daughter was born) and I am looking for some help and advice about her sleeping, in particular her anxiety over leaving Mum since I took over at night to wean her from her night time feeds.
Mum is on maternity leave until March and goes back to work part-time for two months and then back to full time. I don’t work so will be taking over a lot of Mum’s duties in the long-term.
The problem we are having with the sleeping is that our daughter has been dependant on Mum’s breast during the night, resulting in an interrupted sleep pattern for them both. She is almost 11 months old and has been co-sleeping (with Mum only) since birth. The night time feeding is all done with Mum (in the bed) and when she isn’t feeding she likes to stay very close to Mum.
We have attended a sleep clinic (just once) and tried to implement a lot of the advice but without much success. This was things like Mum attempting to calm her back to sleep instead of allowing her onto the breast and also feeding her as much normal food as possible during the day (which was also difficult because of her love of the breast - so a a vicious circle). We also tried really hard to get her to nap at the right times (and not after 3pm), but again she was reliant on the breast to get to sleep in the first place.
5 nights ago we went for a semi-cold turkey strategy by removing Mum (and her lovely smelling milk) from the night time equation as much as possible. This begun with her stepping aside after we had both bathed her (the last thing we do before bed) and then me taking over. The plan was then for me to co-sleep with her in her usual bed (ours!) and for me just to play, sing and soothe he until she dropped off. On the first night this actually worked really well and after 15 minutes of play (possibly something that we should also try to eliminate?), and about 15 minutes of stories and songs she did drop off. Sounds great but the only thing was, the last phase (the songs) had to be done standing up as I just didn’t have any confidence that it would work whilst lying down. When she fell asleep I had to very gradually sit on the edge of the bed then wait a while until she got into a deeper sleep, then I lay on the bed with her on my chest until she got into a deeper deeper sleep and then I tried to twist her onto the mattress (which ultimately worked after going through the same routine 3 times!). Anyway, the net result was that she was asleep by 8pm and didn’t wake until midnight (a long time by her standards but she still woke up at “feeding time”). I was actually able to get her back to sleep again within a few minutes (using the same routine) and she slept for a further 3 hours until 3am (again very impressive by her standards). I did the same again and she slept intil 5.30am, at which point that was her up for the day (which is fairly normal).
On the second night it was much of the same, however, there was a 5 hour continuous stretch, which she’s only ever achieved a few times before.
The third night was much of the same but this time there was no co-sleeping so we thought that this was a good achievement. I was also able to get her back to sleep without taking her off the bed.
On the forth night there was no co-sleeping again and she smashed her previous best by sleeping uninterrupted for 7 hours.
On the fifth night it was the same again – 7 hours uninterrupted sleep and no co-sleeping.
All sounds great but, to get to the main point of this post, the fifth night (and now the sixth) have been very difficult in terms of separating her from Mum. She has clearly cottoned on to our plan and now anticipates what is going to happen and isn’t at all happy about it. She has become extremely clingy with Mum during the day and, just prior to bath time, she cries every time Mum passes her over to me. Although the sleep duration was good on the 5th night, it was a lot more difficult to get her down and it was a lot more traumatic for her, which is what our main concern is.
On a positive note, her day time feeds seem to have been a lot more substantial (less for comfort) but we really are worried about how she is reacting to this night time bond with her Mum being broken. This is particularly because we are only really on stage one of our long term plan, which is to put her in her cot (with us sleeping in our bed next to it), then to take that cot into her own room for her to sleep on her own, then for her to move from her cot to her bed and sleep on her own.
I know this had been a very lengthy post but is anyone has any help, advice or tips to help us make the separation from Mum at night time go smoother then that would be appreciated. Also, any tips for helping me get her off to sleep without having to pace around the bedroom and then put her down in stages!