please help me to get my child to sleep!!!!!!!

[veganmum2be]

please help me!

my LO doesn't sleep.

i now havent slept for more than 4 hours apart from 3 occasions in a year. 4 hours if i am lucky some nights, like last night it was hourly wakings which means i just a say drift off and hes awake again.

i am an incredibly light sleeper and co sleeping did not work from day 1 we just kept each other up. i did desperatly try again when things got really bad but he just wants to crawl off the bed.

he barely naps in the day 2-3 hours most if i am lucky. and he would quite happily after hes had a 4 hour stretch from 7pm (he usualy always does this, and this is my me time i do housework and chill) just be up playing, feeding, then napping.

hes in my room i liked him there to start with now hes there because i think moving him to his room would mean i just spend the night running up and down the hall.
this morning i was threw with him though so i tried to drag the cot out but it wouldn't fit through the door so he got to stay

he doesnt eat much we are blw and hes hit and miss it seems the healthier the food and the more effort i put into cooking it the quicker it ends up on the floor, i know if i was to serve him a pile of chips or organix crisps he would eat enough to put him into a food coma.

i really am at my wits end, i am ehausted, last night i literally didn't sleep at all so its now 27 hours sinse i had my last stretch of broken sleep.
what can i do?
i have tried pick up put down, i feed him to sleep, i've tried not feeding him to sleep, i've tried leaving him in the cot stroking him, hoding his hand. playing music, offering a drink in a cup. routine and no routine.
i even in midst of pure ehaustion left him to cio 3 times and he never gave in.

help me please

 

[veganmum2be]

oh and he has no teeth so its not teething, i also think when he has teeth he might be able to eat better thus have a fuller tummy thus SLEEEEEEP.

 

[Thumper]

Wish I could help but Billy has decided to do the same lately
Hope you get it sorted chick x

 

[Rachel_C]

Try not to relate eating to sleeping - my LO has had lots of phases of eating loads/hardly eating and it's never made any difference to how much she wakes. I think they just sleep through when they're ready.

If you've tried everything else, I would seriously consider putting him in his own room just to see if it helps. It could be that you're waking each other. You may have a few nights or weeks of running from room to room but it might help in the end.

 

[tannembaum]

I think you should focus on his naps first s once they are sorted his night time sleep should improve.
at 11months Elsie was just changing from 2 naps a day (morning and afternoon) to just a long afternoon nap.
Elsie has her nap at 12 and wakes up between 1:30/2 ish if she sleeps any longer/later she will NOT sleep at night.


Hope it helps a little.

 

[Aunty E]

Okey dokey, some suggestions and questions.

What milk is he having, if any, before bed? Mine always have a good drink of milk before they go and it really helps.
Bathtime before bed works for most, but if he hates it, don't bother.
Put him in his own room - if you are a light sleeper, he probably is too.
Give him a bedtime toy if he doesn't already have one, something cuddly that smells like you.
Put up a blackout blind AND blackout curtains.
Get a light show/music box for the crib and put it on everytime you put him to bed. Eventually he will put it on himself
Put him to bed later. My two are night owls and bedtime is at 8.30 for Mog and 9 for Ted. If I try to get him down any earlier he will wake up at ten and be really hard to settle.

This is a total brain dump, so feel free to ignore any/all of it!

 

[veganmum2be]

thanks so much for the suggestions.

as for naps sometimes he doesnt nap at all, the time above is the most he will nap, it doesnt matter what time he goes to sleep or how long he slept in the day it just doesnt seem to have any effect. doesnt matter how much we do in the day/how much fresh air/temperature/people.
the 7pm thing just happened around 7 months he was really tired then so i just put him down then, he is always ready for bed around that time, but the odd occasions he hasnt been i havent forced him and just tried later.

hes still breastfeeding, he wont take milk in a cup though and hes never had a bottle other than the 3 times family had a go of feeding him EBM when he was teeny so i am screwed in that aspect.

we have a blackout curtain but not a light show i can just imagine that would make him even more excited and awake though

i should move him into his own room, im just reluctant now because that means i have to dismantle the cot move a spare bed out of his room and store it, put the cot back together and i just see myself going back and forth and finally wanting to bring it back through cos it didnt work.
idk guess i just gotta do it and try, anything that involves great effort with me isnt a hit atm

i actualy find myself wondering if there is something wrong with him, cos it cant be normal, i have literally tired everything, and his behaviour isnt the normal behaviour of a baby?
i did everything 'right' never left to CIO i was in the same room with him constantly 24/7 until 7 months then he went to bed on his own at 7 so he woke without me being there for a few mins till i got upstairs.
i fed on demand, did blw, i answer his every need in seconds, the only thing we didnt do is co sleep but it didnt work so what was i supposed to do? as soon as he woke he fed anyway so i dont see why it would have caused a problem.
i thought the whole attatchment parenty thing = content baby?
mine isnt content.

sorry im so woe is me atm im just so low about it all now.

 

[Aunty E]

Aw different things work with different babies. If he doesn't eat much BLW, you could try spoonfeeding one meal at bedtime to see if it makes a difference? You could try giving him a bottle, even if it's just to play with at first. Ted refused the bottle until I went back to work a couple of weeks ago. We use the music box bit of our cot mobile to cue Imogen off to sleep. She knows it's bedtime once it goes on.

Mine aren't great nappers either, it's frustrating I know! Have you got a travel cot you can put in his room to give it a try without having to do the whole dismantling thing first?

 

[Bayleaf]

thanks so much for the suggestions.

as for naps sometimes he doesnt nap at all, the time above is the most he will nap, it doesnt matter what time he goes to sleep or how long he slept in the day it just doesnt seem to have any effect. doesnt matter how much we do in the day/how much fresh air/temperature/people.
the 7pm thing just happened around 7 months he was really tired then so i just put him down then, he is always ready for bed around that time, but the odd occasions he hasnt been i havent forced him and just tried later.

hes still breastfeeding, he wont take milk in a cup though and hes never had a bottle other than the 3 times family had a go of feeding him EBM when he was teeny so i am screwed in that aspect.

we have a blackout curtain but not a light show i can just imagine that would make him even more excited and awake though

i should move him into his own room, im just reluctant now because that means i have to dismantle the cot move a spare bed out of his room and store it, put the cot back together and i just see myself going back and forth and finally wanting to bring it back through cos it didnt work.
idk guess i just gotta do it and try, anything that involves great effort with me isnt a hit atm

i actualy find myself wondering if there is something wrong with him, cos it cant be normal, i have literally tired everything, and his behaviour isnt the normal behaviour of a baby?
i did everything 'right' never left to CIO i was in the same room with him constantly 24/7 until 7 months then he went to bed on his own at 7 so he woke without me being there for a few mins till i got upstairs.
i fed on demand, did blw, i answer his every need in seconds, the only thing we didnt do is co sleep but it didnt work so what was i supposed to do? as soon as he woke he fed anyway so i dont see why it would have caused a problem.
i thought the whole attatchment parenty thing = content baby?
mine isnt content.

sorry im so woe is me atm im just so low about it all now.

Emmett will be two next month and he still wakes every two hours on a bad night. He will do 4-5 hours stretches a few times a week.
I didn't STTN until I was 4 years old. So I suppose it runs in the family.
We saw an improvement after I nightweaned him last month although it's not recommended until they're at least one.
Elizabeth Pantley's No Cry Sleep Solution has got many good ideas although it never worked for us.
Hang in there it will get easier

 

[T-Bex]

I bet you've already tried this/do it already, but Bethan was always a sod for not sleeping, so I just always breastfed her to sleep, and kept her in bed with us. Whenever she woke up, I stuck the boob back in. It's the best way I found to get maximum sleep. Bethan also didn't really eat much at all until she was a good 15/16 months, so I can totally empathise.

 

[jen1604]

Aw different things work with different babies. If he doesn't eat much BLW, you could try spoonfeeding one meal at bedtime to see if it makes a difference?

I did this with Lennon when he was littler. We did BLW too but he was never very interested in food til about 16 months.Him having a little bit of food spoon fed really helps.It may work for you,it may not,but it must be worth a try?You sound exhausted

 

[lozzy21]

Do you have much of a bed time routine Bex? That might help him know its bed time.

I dident think we had one or that it mattered to Niamh but on sunday she was shattered so i thought that id put her to bed and give her bottle as a dream feed so i put her to bed and would she hell go to sleep, she screamed blue murder. In the end i took her down, gave her a bottle, took her back up and she went off with no problem what so ever. So even something as simple as pj and bottle can count as a routine. Maybe bath, story/boob and then bed. It might take him a week or two for him to realise that those things mean its bed time.

 

[AFC84]

Try not to relate eating to sleeping - my LO has had lots of phases of eating loads/hardly eating and it's never made any difference to how much she wakes. I think they just sleep through when they're ready.

It's not made the slightest difference for us either!

I definitely feel your pain though, F has started sleeping through at 15 months but he was terrible for so long.

Is it the getting him to sleep in the evening that's the problem, or just waking lots at night? F was always good to actually put down for the night - bath, story, boob/bottle, lullaby, bed with little/no fuss. But he kept waking at night so I know how draining it is

What do you do to settle him again during the night?

Not particularly NP but I must admit I started to night wean F at about 1. I started BF more during the day so I know he was getting enough milk to make up for stopping it at night. I then started using a little bit of formula just for a couple of days, cutting it by 1oz a time and eventually it was 1oz formula and 1oz water, then switched to just water. You can just cut the BF time of course, but I was at my wits end and wanted to make things as easy as possible.

Every time he wakes, once we'd stopped feeding [not trying to push you into stopping BF of course, just saying what worked for us] I went into his room, turned on his lullaby, picked him up and cuddled him, and said "shhh shhh night night shhh shhh sleep tight" and then put him down again, when he was almost asleep.

Then I gradually cut down the level of interaction I give him. Now if he wakes I just go in and put the lullaby on, give him his dummy [not ideal but hey] and lay him back down again, say the little mantra and walk back out. He usually protests for a second but he's silent again before I've even got back in my bed.

Bit of an essay there

 

[AFC84]

Ahh just seen that he won't take a bottle. Ignore that part then, sorry!

 

[veganmum2be]

i have tried to spoon feed him on occassion because the more sleep deprived i am the more i stress about food
but he wont let me feed him anything with lumps so i can give him a bit of puree or yoghurt but thats it.

yes a bottle is just a toy to him, no chance, and he'll only drink certain things in a cup. awkward childddd!

co sleeping wont work t-bex cos he wont settle with me, he just wants to climb on me or escape he would probably sleep next to me at 7 but i dont want to go to bed that early
and yeah its the night wakings that are the problem, he usually always goes down at 7 no problem, and the routine, which just seemed to happen, was jammies on watch in the night garden then up to bed feed and down.

last night i slept in the spare bed to see if it was me waking him (i dont know why i didn't think of that one sooner rather than stressing about draging beds and cots arrount pointlessly! ) anyway he was the same, so i dont know if it is that, but i think i am going to put him in his room anyway, he'll have to go there eventually anyway and we'e not sleeping as it is so no harm can be done.

thanks so much for the suggestions though, i suppose i knew my child would just rule out all the options with his awkward habbits, i suppose i was hoping for a miracle cure

 

[Aunty E]

Have you tried these

https://www.boots.com/en/Heinz-Fruity-Custard-Banana-pot-4-x100g_955182/

My two absolutely cane them.

 

[veganmum2be]

thanks but we're vegan and they aren't
he has had a bit of soya custard and liked that, but its sugary. i think i'd rather stick with the blw for now seem as we have done it from day 1 it would be a shame for me if he ended up only wanting to be spoonfed then trying to get him to eat himself again

i moved his cot into his room today (was a right mission bloomin mamas and papas 'special size' aka annoyingly large for no apparent reason) so will see if in time that helps

 

[Aunty E]

Ah, wasn't sure as you mentioned Yoghurt, thought maybe LO was having dairy!

 

[veganmum2be]

ah yeah should have said soya

thanks for all the tips people, and it is nice to know i am not the only one as it feels like it at times, and i suppose shoudl evrything fail i just have to learn he'll grow out of it in his own time

 

[lozzy21]

Niamh loved the apple and pumpkin fruit pots, eats them like there going out of fashion.

Im stuck for any more suggestions, i remember saying yesterday you had tried chamomile tea. Ermmmm Vodka (j/k lol)

Niamh is being a madam with sleep at the moment but iv got some one to share the wakings with. If your ever shattered and im not at work i dont mind taking the kids to the park or something for a few hours so you can have a sleep, thats if Frank doesnt mind getting snogged by Niamh again