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

[AngelUK]

exactly, that's my point. i don't think you (we) created a bad sleeper, he already had problems sleeping and we tried to help them.

Yeah but we made it worse didn't we?

 

[sequeena]

For the first time ever Thomas (sort of) slept through last night. He fell asleep at 10pm and woke briefly 3 times. I had to wake him up at 12pm today! He had his mmr jab today though so I don't expect him to sleep through for a while.

Wow that is a long sleep! I hope you got some sleep too in the meantime?

I couldn't sleep until 3am and kept waking up but I got more sleep than usual

 

[kosh]

exactly, that's my point. i don't think you (we) created a bad sleeper, he already had problems sleeping and we tried to help them.

Yeah but we made it worse didn't we?

mm yes, maybe. but what else could we have done if they could not sleep otherwise?
anyway, i def think it's a personality thing too.

 

[kosh]

For the first time ever Thomas (sort of) slept through last night. He fell asleep at 10pm and woke briefly 3 times. I had to wake him up at 12pm today! He had his mmr jab today though so I don't expect him to sleep through for a while.

Wow that is a long sleep! I hope you got some sleep too in the meantime?

I couldn't sleep until 3am and kept waking up but I got more sleep than usual

it's funny how when they DO sleep one is still awake looking at them in disbelief!

 

[AngelUK]

I am off to bed. OH has the nightwatch and I will put in my earphones not really listen to my audiobooks and sleeeeeeeeep! Night ladies xxx

 

[kosh]

I am off to bed. OH has the nightwatch and I will put in my earphones not really listen to my audiobooks and sleeeeeeeeep! Night ladies xxx

enjoy your night off!!!
xx

 

[sequeena]

For the first time ever Thomas (sort of) slept through last night. He fell asleep at 10pm and woke briefly 3 times. I had to wake him up at 12pm today! He had his mmr jab today though so I don't expect him to sleep through for a while.

Wow that is a long sleep! I hope you got some sleep too in the meantime?

I couldn't sleep until 3am and kept waking up but I got more sleep than usual

it's funny how when they DO sleep one is still awake looking at them in disbelief!

I kept thinking he woke wake up and when he didn't I got worried

 

[firefly15]

I think I count as one of the sufferers of total crap sleep!! LO is 9.5 months old and BF. He started out brilliantly, waking 4 hourly from newborn and then sttn from 6 weeks waking at 4/5am for a feed and then back down til 8.30 ish. Then we had the sleep regression

We've had the odd night where he'll do a 4 hour stretch but mostly it's 2 hourly wake ups all night long.

We're staying with my in laws at the moment and because he's in with us he's waking at 6am for the day instead of 7 so even less sleep being had here!

Flippityflop that cc worked! Like Lisa1980 I'm worried that I'd not be able to stick it out but that is FAB that you've had success, you must feel like a new woman!

Edited to add: haven't had chance to read through all the posts as on borrowed laptop but I will catch up when I can. to all the sleep deprived mamas and especially all of you that usually help me out when I'm having sleep related melt downs on here!!

 

[lisa1980]

Firefly - I wondered where you were?! Have you tried any sleep training stuff? Are you planning to?

Kosh - I couldn't believe it when he held his arms out to go to sleep! He's NEVER done that before (and prob won't ever again ) but it gave me so much hope that he's 'getting' it somehow . I'm going to really try to continue to settle him in the cot (I was getting a bit slack last week as it didn't seem to be working) as maybe it's getting us somewhere.

I also agree that it's a personality thing to some extent. I was a nightmare sleeper and nothing worked to get me to sleep better. My parents were advised to try CIO and even that didn't work cos I could scream for hours, literally. They say now that they think I just had to grow out of it in my own time, which is maybe true. I think there are things we can do to facilitate good sleep or to make bad sleepers worse, but ultimately I don't think it's all in our control.

I do think that sometimes you can hit upon the 'sleep training' (I hate that term but ykwim) method which works for your child's personality, as I think Flippityflop has done (I'm so glad this is still working out great for you btw ). That's why I personally think that you really need to do whatever feels right for you and your child, as it's such an individual thing.

Sequeena - that's amazing! Hopefully next time he does it you'll get some sleep too

Angel - I hope you enjoyed your night off

As for me, he actually slept pretty well last night. He went down at 8.30pm and didn't stir again until I went to bed at 10pm, when I put him in the bed. He then woke to feed at 12.30am and then again at 5.30am then up for the day at 7.30am which is excellent. I am very happy with 2-3 nightwakings if he'll feed and go straight back to sleep - I can handle that.

I'm starting to think that it's OH disturbing his sleep (he's a loud, snorey, farty, talking-in-sleep, sleeper). He's working nights atm and LO has slept much better Hopefully this means he'll sleep better once he's in his own room. We're planning to move him at the weekend once OH has finished his night shifts as I don't want to deal with any fallout on my own

Hope you all had decent nights

 

[chocolala]

Bid - I have the whole dog hair every where thing as we have a black lab too. The amount of fur she sheds on the carpet is amazing, I'm surprised she's not bald!

I also have ffs moments on a daily basis, I'm having on now in fact as I'm trying to get Lily to sleep, but as usual she's fighting it!

Anyway, I finally had Lily's tongue tie assessment today from milk matters, it was really interesting. Because its only done with photos and a questionnaire she can never say 100% that there is or isn't a tongue tie, she needs to see the baby in person for that. But she can't tell with Lily whether is a tt or not as Lily cannot lift her tongue up at all, infact her tongue when crying is totally flat, which is unusual and suggests there is a lot of tension in her tongue, mouth, head area. There could also be a tt as well, as suggested from the information I gave her. The tension, she reckons would have been caused by our long labour, Lily being back to back and 3 hours pushing. All this tension that Lily is carrying is what causes her to fight sleep so much as she just can't relax.

So, we're going to get Lily some osteopathy to sort the tension out, then we'll look into the tt again, as hopefully Lily will the be able to lift her tongue so we can see what's going on under there. She also suspects Lily may have an upper lip tie, which i have suspected too, having done a fair bit of research into this.

I feel so relived now, to finally have possible reasons as to why Lily fights sleep so hard, though I wish we had done something sooner, but we didn't know that what we are going through with Lily really isn't normal.

Kosh, a question as your little one had a tt, when you were pregnant did he get hiccups a lot? Apparently hiccups in the womb can be an early sigh of tt.

wow, I didn't know this - yes he did!!

i remember reading the 'milk matters' pages re. TT. I couldn't believe how my LO hadn't been diagnosed at the hospital as he was a text-book case!
you didn't have problems BFing? that was our main issue, he could not latch correctly and it was soooo painful! have they said if she is TT then? we too took LO to a cranial osteopath and it helped so much with his latch it was amazing. she also did some work to help him sleep better but the improvement was not consistent unfortunately. hope it works for you.
oh - i read and replied to your thread re. painful latch and teeth - i know that it shouldn't affect it but it did affect us! and now taht i know about your case, i'm tempted to say that maybe LO with TT and/or high palate find it more difficult to adjust? there was another girl in that thread that had the same problem. actually i'm wondering were she is as she is one of my 'initial 4'

I had totally forgotten about my post on teething and latch! Charlotte at milk matters said something about teething, tension and tt yesterday, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was I think in Lily's case it's because she has such a shallow latch that it takes her a few days to get used to the new tooth being there, if that makes sense. So yes, I do agree that babies with tt do take longer to adjust to getting teeth.

Lily got hiccups too, in fact she had them most days, several times a day, she even had them when we were having our 20 week scan.

Charlotte couldn't say one way or another whether she thinks Lily has a tt as Lily can't lift her tongue high enough to be able to see what's going on underneath, this is because it's so tight with tension. I personally think there is some degree of tt there as we have a few of the classic signs. I also remember reading somewhere, and Charlotte mentioned it as well, that if there is a tt that when the baby is crying only the sides of the tongue will lift, as opposed to the whole tongue in a normal baby. Lilys tongue used to lift at the sides.

We had a lot of trouble with bf, at one point I thought part of one of my nipples was going to fall off it was so cracked. It was all very painful and nothing I tried made any difference. When lily was 10 days old I started using nipple shields, I used them until Lily was 4 months old. We still have problems now, I occasionally get blisters and frequent discomfort from her shallow latch.

Lily was never checked for tongue tie. It was all put down to positioning and attachment. It wouldn't have done anyone any harm to have checked and could possibly have saved me and lily at lot of pain, dark times and her inability to relax, shut off and go to sleep.

With the next baby I'll be making sure its checked out.

 

[chocolala]

With Lily and sleep, I don't think I've made it worse or created bad habbits by helping her to sleep. I think that partly as things keep changing with Lily, one week she just needs feeding and she'll go off, the next week she needs rocking, a few times she's put her self to sleep, etc.

Ive always just followed her lead in what she needs. And besides, if I didn't do anything to help her she'd never sleep.

This doesn't mean that I haven't questioned my parenting style though, but I always come to the same conclusion, it's what she needs, it's got nothing to do with how I've done things.

With Lily I'm now questioning how much of her terrible sleeping habits is part of her personality and how much is to do with her birth and possible tt.

Lisa1980 - glad you had a better night

 

[AngelUK]

I know that we do what is needed at the time. But I do think I would have fared better had I always put down Dominic when he was soothed and drowsy but before he was fully asleep. I am trying this now and it works to a certain degree but he still wakes up for his dummy throughout the night. But I am not prepared to take it away from him completely as I know it helps prevent SIDS and for a harrassed mummy of twins it can be very useful to have something that soothes them so quickly

 

[firefly15]

Firefly - I wondered where you were?! Have you tried any sleep training stuff? Are you planning to?

Kosh - I couldn't believe it when he held his arms out to go to sleep! He's NEVER done that before (and prob won't ever again ) but it gave me so much hope that he's 'getting' it somehow . I'm going to really try to continue to settle him in the cot (I was getting a bit slack last week as it didn't seem to be working) as maybe it's getting us somewhere.

I also agree that it's a personality thing to some extent. I was a nightmare sleeper and nothing worked to get me to sleep better. My parents were advised to try CIO and even that didn't work cos I could scream for hours, literally. They say now that they think I just had to grow out of it in my own time, which is maybe true. I think there are things we can do to facilitate good sleep or to make bad sleepers worse, but ultimately I don't think it's all in our control.

I do think that sometimes you can hit upon the 'sleep training' (I hate that term but ykwim) method which works for your child's personality, as I think Flippityflop has done (I'm so glad this is still working out great for you btw ). That's why I personally think that you really need to do whatever feels right for you and your child, as it's such an individual thing.

Sequeena - that's amazing! Hopefully next time he does it you'll get some sleep too

Angel - I hope you enjoyed your night off

As for me, he actually slept pretty well last night. He went down at 8.30pm and didn't stir again until I went to bed at 10pm, when I put him in the bed. He then woke to feed at 12.30am and then again at 5.30am then up for the day at 7.30am which is excellent. I am very happy with 2-3 nightwakings if he'll feed and go straight back to sleep - I can handle that.

I'm starting to think that it's OH disturbing his sleep (he's a loud, snorey, farty, talking-in-sleep, sleeper). He's working nights atm and LO has slept much better Hopefully this means he'll sleep better once he's in his own room. We're planning to move him at the weekend once OH has finished his night shifts as I don't want to deal with any fallout on my own

Hope you all had decent nights

Been offline due to internet problems a couple of weeks ago and then we've been up at the in laws since last week so haven't been on for ages!

So far we haven't done any sleep training, I'm so convinced that it won't work as LO is so stubborn that I kind of don't want to try. It feels like the last bit of hope to change things and as long as I haven't tried it and failed then the hope is still there if that makes sense?!

Our sleep is still amazingly crap. Ever since we had teething, then illness, then heatwave and then more illness he's been in a pattern of waking every 2 hours - sometimes more often, sometimes we get 3 hours from him but he always wants to feed when he wakes now no matter when the last feed was

To answer a few of the questions from earlier in the thread:
1) did you have any stress/complications during your pregnancy/birth?
Pregnancy was straightforward. I had to be induced at 42 weeks as he had no intention of appearing on his own. Labour was awful - no contractions to blocks of 3 with no gap between them and coming every minute in a very short time so ended up with an epidural and a long time to dilate. I had to wait an hour after I was fully dilated to push as LO was still quite high up and then 2 hours of pushing before they worked out he was coming down with his head turned sideways and so forceps to get him out. Not at all the experience I wanted and it still makes me shudder.

2) are you FF or BF? I have the impression this problem is more common in BF babies
I BF exclusively. I haven't tried formula but not convinced for my LO it would help!

3) tiredness aside - do you feel overwhelmed, worried, anxious, etc? do you feel you have enough support or you're doing most of the looking after LO on your own?
I feel all of these things at different times. Some days are fine and others really aren't. DH is pretty good most of the time and does as much as he can, but he has to work so I do have days when I feel like I take all of the responsibility and difficult crap with hardly any help. That's not really very fair to him but the lack of sleep makes me quite irrational sometimes!

I have found out from MIL this week that LO is EXACTLY like DH was as a baby. Apparently he slept like utter crap until 18 months and then was still fairly bad for another couple of years. Really not what I wanted to hear, but at least now I know who to blame DH was FF after the first month or so, so it certainly wasn't connected to BF in his case. MIL is very, very sympathetic but unfortunately they live miles away from us or she would be there to help out all the time if she could!

Kosh - just realised that I'm up in your patch at the moment! MIL and FIL live about 20 mins outside of Newcastle!

 

[kosh]

Been offline due to internet problems a couple of weeks ago and then we've been up at the in laws since last week so haven't been on for ages!

hi firefly! i've been wondering where you were!?! you are def one of the 4 mums i was thinking about!

Our sleep is still amazingly crap. Ever since we had teething, then illness, then heatwave and then more illness he's been in a pattern of waking every 2 hours - sometimes more often, sometimes we get 3 hours from him but he always wants to feed when he wakes now no matter when the last feed was

same here...
i was actually v happy the other day when i managed to get him back to sleep WITHOUT always feeding him (i think that night I only fed him twice!!)

To answer a few of the questions from earlier in the thread:
1) did you have any stress/complications during your pregnancy/birth?
Pregnancy was straightforward. I had to be induced at 42 weeks as he had no intention of appearing on his own. Labour was awful - no contractions to blocks of 3 with no gap between them and coming every minute in a very short time so ended up with an epidural and a long time to dilate. I had to wait an hour after I was fully dilated to push as LO was still quite high up and then 2 hours of pushing before they worked out he was coming down with his head turned sideways and so forceps to get him out. Not at all the experience I wanted and it still makes me shudder.

your birth/labour was v similar to mine. induced at 42, and went from no contractions to 1 per minute in a short time. i too ended with a forceps delivery

Kosh - just realised that I'm up in your patch at the moment! MIL and FIL live about 20 mins outside of Newcastle!

where are you??

 

[firefly15]

We're in Stocksfield

Well done getting him back to sleep with no feed - to me at the moment that sort of thing sounds nothing short of miraculous!

Also, is it weird that I feel kind of happy to be one of the 4 mums?!?! Obviously I am not happy that the sleep sucks so badly for all of us, but I always feel so much better after 'talking' to you all about it!!

 

[lisa1980]

Evening all!

Well LO went down at 8.30pm. Took a couple of attempts but managed to get him to fall asleep in the cot holding my hand without too much fuss so I'm pleased with that. We'll wait and see how the night pans out though.

Re the feeding every time they wake thing, my LO would feed every time he stirred (or managed to grab my nipple whilst cosleeping ) but each time he'd only suck a few times and then go back to sleep before the letdown so i'm sure it wasn't really hunger. He's better at settling with just the dummy now but it took quite a few nights of whinging while I tried to hild out feeding him until at least 3 hours after his last feed (honestly the frequency of feeds was getting ridiculous - worse than newborn. And he's on the 95th centile - greedy baby).

Do you ladies wonder whether the BF has anything to do with it? I obviously wouldn't change it for the world (am still doing it!) and I realise I was SO lucky to have minimal problems with it, but I wonder whether the very frequent feeding patterns of BF babies means that they're more liable to get into a 'pattern' (for want of a better word) of waking so often. Obviously not all of them, but it does seem, on this thread at least, that the majority are BF.

I've given formula sometimes in the hope of better sleep and it hasn't worked but i wonder if that's because the BF 'pattern' is so well established now...

 

[lisa1980]

Been offline due to internet problems a couple of weeks ago and then we've been up at the in laws since last week so haven't been on for ages!

So far we haven't done any sleep training, I'm so convinced that it won't work as LO is so stubborn that I kind of don't want to try. It feels like the last bit of hope to change things and as long as I haven't tried it and failed then the hope is still there if that makes sense?!

QUOTE]

THIS!!

I totally know what you mean... I also feel that proper sleep training is my last bastion of hope and I don't want to 'waste' it in case it doesn't work and I'm left with nowheree else to go.

 

[kosh]

We're in Stocksfield

Well done getting him back to sleep with no feed - to me at the moment that sort of thing sounds nothing short of miraculous!

unfortunately it only lasted one night!!
mind you he just woke up and i managed to settle him without boobs so who knows?

Also, is it weird that I feel kind of happy to be one of the 4 mums?!?! Obviously I am not happy that the sleep sucks so badly for all of us, but I always feel so much better after 'talking' to you all about it!!

absolutely!!
you know, i was thinking after you re-appeared, who was the 4th mum i was referring to (the other initial 3 were: you, lisa and flippty) and i came to the conclusion that the forth one was me!!
anyway, there's many more now chocolala, mrs edgehog, angel, bid, etc etc to all

 

[Noelle610]

Hi all! Just popping in to say that I don't believe feeding for comfort is necessarily exclusive to breastfeeding. My LO takes expressed breastmilk and/or formula in a bottle and she still needs to feed to sleep. I tried giving her a pacifier instead last night after she'd fed less than 2 hours prior and she was NOT happy! I'd love advice on how to get past the whole feed-to-sleep thing.

 

[firefly15]

Been offline due to internet problems a couple of weeks ago and then we've been up at the in laws since last week so haven't been on for ages!

So far we haven't done any sleep training, I'm so convinced that it won't work as LO is so stubborn that I kind of don't want to try. It feels like the last bit of hope to change things and as long as I haven't tried it and failed then the hope is still there if that makes sense?!

QUOTE]

THIS!!

I totally know what you mean... I also feel that proper sleep training is my last bastion of hope and I don't want to 'waste' it in case it doesn't work and I'm left with nowheree else to go.

I will be giving the gentle option a go when we get back home - so staying with him until he falls asleep in the cot and using methods other than boob to soothe him, but we've done that before and it only works for a little while and then goes back to where we are now. Having said that, he's more and more refusing to fall asleep after a feed at bedtime and wanting DH to put him to bed which is definitely new. Most of the time it's been on DHs shoulder that he's fallen asleep but ome of the time he will do it in the cot so I guess small progress is being made...maybe.

Tonight has started ok - he slept from 6.10pm (rubbish naps today so he was knackered) until 9.30pm and then had a 10 minute feed and has gone back down. That's a pretty long stretch for him so hopefully the rest of the night might follow that pattern?!

His daytime naps are much better than they were a few weeks ago so I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere with those, but sadly it doesn't seem to have made a difference to the nights so far