is/was your LO a really bad sleeper? support and advise thread!

[MrsHedgehog]

Another couple of bad nights here. The first was after her vaccinations and she just wanted to comfort suck all night. Last night was better but she still wanted to nurse a lot, maybe every hour or two all night. It seems like she sleeps better when we've been out a lot in the afternoon/evening. It's been raining the past couple of days so we haven't been out. Lots of fresh air seems to do the trick.

On the plus side, she has self settled twice today! The first was when she woke up this morning. She was still sleepy although it was 9am. She wanted to nurse but I'd had enough after nursing every half an hour since about 6am. She moaned for a bit whilst rolling about on the bed and then she just went back to sleep. Then this morning she woke early from her nap so I was nursing her back to sleep but after a while she 'spat' out the boob, making a face like it tasted bad, tried to roll out of my arms so I lay her on the bed and she cuddled my arm for a bit and went off to sleep. Hopefully this is the start of her not needing boob to get to sleep.

 

[MrsHedgehog]

So Monday night was a fluke.

She fought sleep again last night, we gave up in the end and just let her play for a while, after that she went off with a bit of a fight. Despite not settling to sleep until going on 11pm she woke at 7, I tried getting her back to sleep but she just fought it despite drifting off a couple of times.

I don't really know what to do any more, I'm exhausted, she's exhausted. Part of me keeps saying this latest round of bad sleep fighting and even more frequent waking is a development thing, but I've been telling my self that for nearly six months now.

I know she's having osteopathy, but that might not work, so what do I do then?!

It's really getting me down now.

Sorry it's not going so well.

What does your LO do when she's fighting sleep? Is she crying or just wanting to play? Our LO won't go to bed until pretty late. I used to fight with her trying to get her to sleep but now we just let her stay up playing until she's really ready to sleep which is never before 10.30pm and about 6 hours after her last nap. How long does she go between naps? I'm not sure if we're doing the right thing keeping her up later but it's certainly less stressful than the bedtime battles we have if we try to put her down earlier. If she wakes too early in the morning then usually she'll just have a really long morning nap to make up for it.

 

[AngelUK]

Mrs hedgehog I actually read somewhere that when babies go to bed really late and then make up for it during the day you should not let them. I read that you should get them up their usual time or even a little earlier if you want them to go to bed earlier and then let them only have their usual naps which shouldn't be longer than 1h30 in the morning maybe 2 hours after lunch and another 1h30 in the afternoon for the age my boys are, not sure what your "normal" is. This might be something to try? There will be grumpiness but at least that won't last for ever if one is consistent. But then mind you, this is advice from a baby expert, not a baby so who knows if it would work
xxx

 

[chocolala]

Certainly wouldn't work with lily, besides sleep is too precious to disturb her.

 

[chocolala]

So Monday night was a fluke.

She fought sleep again last night, we gave up in the end and just let her play for a while, after that she went off with a bit of a fight. Despite not settling to sleep until going on 11pm she woke at 7, I tried getting her back to sleep but she just fought it despite drifting off a couple of times.

I don't really know what to do any more, I'm exhausted, she's exhausted. Part of me keeps saying this latest round of bad sleep fighting and even more frequent waking is a development thing, but I've been telling my self that for nearly six months now.

I know she's having osteopathy, but that might not work, so what do I do then?!

It's really getting me down now.

Sorry it's not going so well.

What does your LO do when she's fighting sleep? Is she crying or just wanting to play? Our LO won't go to bed until pretty late. I used to fight with her trying to get her to sleep but now we just let her stay up playing until she's really ready to sleep which is never before 10.30pm and about 6 hours after her last nap. How long does she go between naps? I'm not sure if we're doing the right thing keeping her up later but it's certainly less stressful than the bedtime battles we have if we try to put her down earlier. If she wakes too early in the morning then usually she'll just have a really long morning nap to make up for it.

She struggles, hits, kicks, growls at my boob if she's nursing, switches from boob to boob, crys and rubs her eyes if she does start drifting off.

She goes 3 hours between naps, but I've recently started only giving hr 1 nap as she seemed to be going off easier at bedtime.

Lily used to go to bed no earlier than 9pm and wake for the day between 8 and 9:30, but suddenly she started waking around 7 in the morning. So from that we took that she wanted an earlier bedtime, on the couple of times when she's not fought sleep and gone off around 7, she's not woken for the day until 7-7:30 the next day.

She also seems to now need a large gap between nap and bedtime, last night it was 4 hours, but that obviously wasn't long enough.

If she's going to bed late, waking loads and then waking early that's going to exhaust me, which is what's happening now, but maybe it'll even it's self out.

I just don't know.

 

[MrsHedgehog]

Mrs hedgehog I actually read somewhere that when babies go to bed really late and then make up for it during the day you should not let them. I read that you should get them up their usual time or even a little earlier if you want them to go to bed earlier and then let them only have their usual naps which shouldn't be longer than 1h30 in the morning maybe 2 hours after lunch and another 1h30 in the afternoon for the age my boys are, not sure what your "normal" is. This might be something to try? There will be grumpiness but at least that won't last for ever if one is consistent. But then mind you, this is advice from a bay expert, not a baby so who knows if it would work
xxx

We tried this but she just stayed up really late anyway. We put her to bed at the earlier time but she just treated it like a nap and woke up and eventually went to bed even later than normal. And I hate waking her up, it doesn't seem right. We were starting to get her to bed a wee bit earlier by making gradual changes but then it keeps drifting later and later somehow. She has two naps a day and the second one often ends up being quite late as she'll fight it. For example today she woke for the day at 9.45am. She had her first nap from 12noon until 1.30pm. Now it's 6pm and she's finally gone down for her second nap. She'll probably wake around 7.30pm and then she wants to be awake at least 5 hours before going to bed so tonight she'll not go down before midnight. This means tomorrow she'll sleep even later in the morning and go to bed even later. The problem is that she's unpredictable. Sometimes she wants to sleep 2 hours after her previous nap, other times it's 3 or 4 hours. Mostly she has to have 5 hours between her last nap and bed but sometimes she'll randomly get sleepy and fall asleep after only 3 hours. I can never predict when she's going to get sleepy.

 

[lisa1980]

Chocolala - I'm sorry it's so cr@ppy for you atm. I WISH I had a magical piece of advice that would solve this for you (if I did, I've have sold it and be sunning myself in the Bahamas by now ).

All I can say is that I know exactly how you feel. I was crying all the time when LO was fighting sleep every night and screaming for hours. I used to dread the evenings all day and would feel sick at the thought of doing it on my own when OH was at work. I'm ashamed to say that I was really starting to resent him at times, although I hope it never showed. I'm a pretty positive person, usually optimistic and hopeful, but I struggled SO much and had some pretty dark moments when I felt completely hopeless and trapped. I'm lucky in that I have people around me for help and support, but noone can really understand what it's like unless they're doing it 24/7.

I don't know what to suggest for you, as I'm sure you've considered all options by this point. It will get better (it has to, right?) but I know it doesn't seem like it.

Have you tried any 'sleep training' type things? Are there any that you'd feel comfortable trying, or have you had a go in the past? (sorry if you've answered these questions before...I blame baby brain for my rubbish memory)

Mrs Hedgehog - for the bad nights but yay for the self-settling - that's promising

Gemma - sorry for your bad nights. There's always something to throw it all off isn't there? Teething, colds, tummy troubles, too hot, too cold, wonder weeks, developmental leaps etc etc etc. Seems like a miracle that any baby actually sleeps! Hopefully you'll get back on track soon.

 

[AngelUK]

Mrs Hedgehog I totally understand what you mean when you say you are reluctant to wake her. I am the same with Dom when he falls asleep for his afternoon nap too near to his bedtime. But I am pretty consistent with getting them up at 7:30-8. Thing is, after their 4 or 5am bottle both boys pretty much wake every hour anyway and always have, so that getting them up for the day is easy. And since Dom doesn't easily go down for a nap, the keeping them up part is also quite easy. What is remarkable however is that no matter how badly or how well Sebastian has napped, he sleeps like an angel at night. Today at bedtime I wanted to hold him and rock him and he didn't want me to and arched and looked around the darkened room so I thought I'd lie him in his cot for a bit and see what he does. What he did was close his eyes and fall asleep in about 3 to 5 minutes. If only Dom was a fraction this easy! This evening we put them to bed at ca7 and we had to resettle Dom with his dummy at least 10 times.

 

[Lulu1982]

Angel ... I feed her nd change her if she needs it and then try and settle her as normal and most of the rest of the times her practising rolling and crawling in her cot!! Sometimes she really treats me and practises her screeching too ... Lovely!

I try and get her nice and relaxed and stroke her face until,she's chilled but as soon as I leave the room she's playing. That then turns inot tiredness so we go back to a mild version of controlled crying where she never really gets upset, just owns, but takes an hour to fall,asleep!

It's the only time she has trouble settling, it's really strange! All,her naps and bedtime, she's no trouble at all now!x

 

[kosh]

hi all
well, it looks like I jinxed it! after a couple of rather good nights we went back to 'normal' on the positive side, he's def managing to self-settle more often now tonight at bedtime he actually talked himself to sleep

chocolala - hang in there

angel - is Dom settled now?

everyone else sleepy

 

[Gemmamuk]

That's great news angel that he's able to settle himself a bit now!
Alex is also settling himself better and I often wake up to him chatting

He seems to be a bit better this evening after his cold/virus. Me on the other hand, I feel like death warmed up - thanks for the germs Alex

I got him a karvol plug in which helped his chest enormously so tonight I'm sleeping in the spare double bed in his room so it helps us both - not sure if it's a good idea or not yet - ill let you know in the morning

 

[Lulu1982]

Urgh ... Easy to settle but up at 12 for 2 hours then tried to get up for the day at 5, and hour to settle and up at 7. Still better than it used to be but so frustrating now I know she a sleep through!x

 

[kosh]

well, not a brilliant night for us either, although better than yesterday.
he's gassy again. not as bad as before, but still quite gassy and now i can tell that THAT is what upsets him during the night. I'm still doing the exclusion diet, so it must have been something he had. no idea what.

as i said we're doing BLW - do you think I should do switch to purees in case the problem is that his stomach is not handling it very well?

 

[chocolala]

Thanks for all the understanding yesterday, it's really good to be able to come here and vent and know that you all just get it.

We found a lactation consultant yesterday, so we're going to make an appointment to either diagnose or rule out tongue tie, once and for all.

Well last night wasn't too bad, she had a long gap between nap and bedtime, about 5 hours I think and she didn't put up too much of a fight, she went to sleep around 8ish and she's still asleep now! So she definitely needs the early bedtime to get a decent amount of sleep. She did keep nursing a lot this morning though, which kept me awake.

How did everyone else do?

 

[chocolala]

well, not a brilliant night for us either, although better than yesterday.
he's gassy again. not as bad as before, but quite gassy and now i can tell THAT is what upsets him during the night. I'm still doing the exclusion diet, so it must have been something he had. no idea what.

as i said we're doing BLW - do you think I should do switch to purees in case the problem is that his stomach is not handling it very well?

Are you keeping a food diary for both of you?

Does be enjoy the blw? If so it might be difficult to get him to take purée, he also might not like being fed as he's used to doing it himself. Lily won't let us feed her at all.

 

[kosh]

glad you had a better night chocolala!

 

[firefly15]

Urrghh, a couple of horrible nights for us Tuesday night we were up constantly with 2 hours being the longest stretch all night. Last night LO was up from 1.45 til 4am. I must have settled him back to sleep 25 times but he just wouldn't sleep for more than 5 minutes at a time. Absolutely no idea what was wrong but resorted to calpol in the end after figuring that there must be something the matter to be constantly waking him up. He did then sleep til 7 but as usual when I've been awake for ages in the night I couldn't get back to sleep at all I want to blame teething, but his last teeth came through more than 2 months ago and there are NO signs of more coming through other than constant crap sleep. Teething is the easy culprit...even though it probably has nothing to do with it! Very disappointed as we saw the osteopath yesterday and he normally sleeps 'well' after an appointment. She was even really pleased with progress and we only need to go back once more at the end of the month. Guess it's not going to be our magic answer sadly.

Feeling really down about the sleep thing at the moment. I'm at the point where I'd consider doing cc but we have to take LO for a heart scan in October as the Dr picked up a murmur at the end of July and until I know whether or not things are ok I don't want to do anything like that if that makes sense?

for everyone having poo nights and yay for any improvements! I've just about caught up with the latest updates but my brain is so stupified at the moment that I'm struggling to remember details for more than 2 minutes at a time

 

[Boo44]

Angel, someone in here started a thread about which names on BnB have you seen and like, and some people have mentioned your twins' names

 

[kosh]

Angel, someone in here started a thread about which names on BnB have you seen and like, and some people have mentioned your twins' names

i've seen it and thanked her on your behalf angel!


mini rant -
there's a post re. asking advise so her LO sleeps longer. atm he sleeps 8pm-6/7am

 

[lisa1980]

Angel, someone in here started a thread about which names on BnB have you seen and like, and some people have mentioned your twins' names

i've seen it and thanked her on your behalf angel!


mini rant -
there's a post re. asking advise so her LO sleeps longer. atm he sleeps 8pm-6/7am

I love it!!

I always see threads asking how to make LOs sleep longer and you can bet they're either sleeping very well already (or were sttn but have woken more in the last TWO nights or something ) OR the baby is, like, 2 weeks old so EXPECTED to wake up all night anyway!!

It's probably bad to admit it but I totally stratify in my head how seriously to take someone by how old their LO is and what they consider 'bad' sleep. To me, younger than a few months is fair game for waking up all night and sleeping more than a 2 hour stretch is GOOD sleep