Sleep Sense Support Group!

[jacs]

lyre - that is sooo sweet! You should get someone to film that!

Polaris, we found that his feed got later and later, but was really early last night. Maybe Thomas will go earlier until it's phased out, instead of later? Sending you sleep vibes for tonight

flowers04 - That's interesting about the fatty foods - I've never had any advice, so just playing it by ear, although I have started melting cheese into his lunch every other day. We have no routine either, sometimes I just have to miss out the last meal as he can have his 'lunch' so late, then it's bottle before bedtime! Not ideal, but he's never woken because of it, and once he has a nap routine, it'll fall into place...I hope!
I found that OH had got so fed up of rubbish sleeps, that he was happy to watch the video. I picked my moment though, after tea, when he wasn't too tired from work!

 

[lyre]

flowers04, oh hasnt read it yet, but will get him to watch the videos at the weekend if he has time.

polaris, night feed does seem to change - i find it depends on how tired he is when he has his last feed at 7....if he is not too tired, he takes more and then can sleep till 2 or 3. getting past 3.30 is rare......sometimes up at 11 but also rare, usually its between 12.20 and 3.30.

jacs will get oh to video it at the weekend, i think he learnt it from the racket my dad used to make to help him sleep. lol

one question....i find he only naps for 30 mins in the morning (roughly 2 hours after getting up) - do you think this is long enough? he cries constantly once he wakes up so i would like to just start getting him up when he wakes as he has no problem going to sleep in the first place.

also another thing...after seeing the sleepsense thing about having a favourite toy etc, max has to have his little crocodile toy to hug during naps, which also seems to help with his startle reflex, just in case anyone else is having that problem x

 

[lyre]

spoke too soon!! today has all gone t*ts up. think it might be a growth spurt and a little teething, he just doesnt seem happy today.

 

[polaris]

spoke too soon!! today has all gone t*ts up. think it might be a growth spurt and a little teething, he just doesnt seem happy today.

Oh no - hopefully it's just an off day though and he'll get back on track tonight.

That's interesting what you say about how tired he is going to bed affecting when he will wake up for night feed - Thomas was shattered going to bed last night, seriously overtired, and he had the earliest wake up for a feed since we started sleepsense. Could be something in that!

I'm sitting here listening to Thomas 'chatting' to himself on the monitor - he had a long sleep in the pram this morning because I had to bring him for his hip Xray, but he's only had 30 minutes nap now and sounds pretty awake. Fingers crossed he realizes he's still tired and goes back to sleep or we could have a repeat of overtired cranky baby this evening.

 

[lyre]

spoke too soon!! today has all gone t*ts up. think it might be a growth spurt and a little teething, he just doesnt seem happy today.

Oh no - hopefully it's just an off day though and he'll get back on track tonight.

That's interesting what you say about how tired he is going to bed affecting when he will wake up for night feed - Thomas was shattered going to bed last night, seriously overtired, and he had the earliest wake up for a feed since we started sleepsense. Could be something in that!

I'm sitting here listening to Thomas 'chatting' to himself on the monitor - he had a long sleep in the pram this morning because I had to bring him for his hip Xray, but he's only had 30 minutes nap now and sounds pretty awake. Fingers crossed he realizes he's still tired and goes back to sleep or we could have a repeat of overtired cranky baby this evening.

polaris, what do you do when Thomas wakes after 30 mins?


Max has had 2 naps of 25 mins today and currently on the 3rd nap, just getting to 25 mins, hopefully he wont wake. I hate leaving him in the cot when he wakes as he gets upset.... i read the ss program again and it says 25 mins....should i do that? do you think getting him up after 10 is encouraging short naps? x


here we go.......just got to 25 mins and he's awake and annoyed...

 

[history_girls]

Can I join?

I've read the sleepsense book thing and think it should work for us. Can I give a bit of background?

LO has never slept through and often wakes in the night and also wants to get up as early as 2.30am. She still has an 8oz bottle in the night. I am convinced that her problem is that she can't put herself back to sleep.

We have tried sleepsense before about 3 weeks ago and I have to say going to bed is cracked. I feed her with the light on keep talking, put her down and within 30 seconds she goes.

Our problem is waking in the night. Sometimes she cries but is asleep, other times she wakes up in a lovely mood wanting to get up - all last week it was 3am and it is killing me. I find it hard to leave her 10 mins so settled on 5 before going to her. I stay with her but when she sees me she stops crying and just moans. I also find it hard in the night to just let her cry as oh has to go to work and needs sleep!

any tips?

 

[polaris]

spoke too soon!! today has all gone t*ts up. think it might be a growth spurt and a little teething, he just doesnt seem happy today.

Oh no - hopefully it's just an off day though and he'll get back on track tonight.

That's interesting what you say about how tired he is going to bed affecting when he will wake up for night feed - Thomas was shattered going to bed last night, seriously overtired, and he had the earliest wake up for a feed since we started sleepsense. Could be something in that!

I'm sitting here listening to Thomas 'chatting' to himself on the monitor - he had a long sleep in the pram this morning because I had to bring him for his hip Xray, but he's only had 30 minutes nap now and sounds pretty awake. Fingers crossed he realizes he's still tired and goes back to sleep or we could have a repeat of overtired cranky baby this evening.

polaris, what do you do when Thomas wakes after 30 mins?


Max has had 2 naps of 25 mins today and currently on the 3rd nap, just getting to 25 mins, hopefully he wont wake. I hate leaving him in the cot when he wakes as he gets upset.... i read the ss program again and it says 25 mins....should i do that? do you think getting him up after 10 is encouraging short naps? x


here we go.......just got to 25 mins and he's awake and annoyed...

I really really hate leaving him in the cot in the day too. I haven't really been consistent in what I do for naps to be honest. I have found that if I go into the room and try and pat him or shush him back to sleep then that definitely makes him totally wide awake and there is no chance of him going to sleep at all. So I have been trying my best to just leave him for at least ten or fifteen minutes, at that stage I assess the situation by how he sounds on the monitor, if he is crying and sounding totally wide awake then I will get him up but if he is pretty calm and just crying on and off or grumbling then I will leave him for the full 25 minutes. He does sometimes go back to sleep in that instance. If he is getting himself really worked up though I find it difficult to even leave him for the 10 minutes and tend to go into the room which then makes him worse. So it's a bit hit and miss really.

 

[polaris]

Can I join?

I've read the sleepsense book thing and think it should work for us. Can I give a bit of background?

LO has never slept through and often wakes in the night and also wants to get up as early as 2.30am. She still has an 8oz bottle in the night. I am convinced that her problem is that she can't put herself back to sleep.

We have tried sleepsense before about 3 weeks ago and I have to say going to bed is cracked. I feed her with the light on keep talking, put her down and within 30 seconds she goes.

Our problem is waking in the night. Sometimes she cries but is asleep, other times she wakes up in a lovely mood wanting to get up - all last week it was 3am and it is killing me. I find it hard to leave her 10 mins so settled on 5 before going to her. I stay with her but when she sees me she stops crying and just moans. I also find it hard in the night to just let her cry as oh has to go to work and needs sleep!

any tips?

Hi historygirls and welcome!

Well done on getting bedtime sorted, I think that is probably the key thing to crack because that means she has self-settling skills, she just needs to learn to use them at night wakings too.

When you go to her at night and she stops crying and moans, what happens then? Does she go to sleep eventually if you keep sitting with her or do you have to feed her to get her to go to sleep? It might take a bit of time at first for her to figure out that nights are for sleeping but she will get there sooner than you think if you do just take a very consistent approach with her.

I think it is a lot harder to cope with any crying at all at night because it seems like it must be waking everybody up and two minutes of crying can seem like about half an hour in my experience. I think the best thing to do is to talk it over with your OH and explain the way the programme works and that there will probably be a few difficult nights - when you have his agreement and support then you won't be so worried about disturbing him that you end up not following through on what you have decided to do. Maybe a good time to start tackling night wakings would be on a weekend or when he has a few days off work? If your experience is anything like mine, you will find that there is actually a lot less crying than you anticipate, once you have a clear plan and stick to it your LO will respond quickly I would guess because babies actually are biologically programmed to want to sleep at night, sometimes they just need a bit of a push to get them there though.

 

[history_girls]

Thanks Polaris!

Well she has three types of nightime waking (I know sounds like a scientific study).
The easiest is her hungry shout - loud call followed by moans and chatter
The worst is happy cooing wake up noise - dosen't really mean it though as lots of eye rubbing
Crying in sleep - i just stroke her head and two verses of Jerusalem and she is calm - but she isn't awake to start with iykwim - but if we leave her she cries so much she wakws up
The worst waking - is shouting / crying. I tend to either just stroke her head till asleep or if bad pick her up and settle then put down. the last two weeks were bad so I'v been naughty and cuddling her to sleep. but she often wakes up as soon as put down - this is what I want to fix. #

quick query though - you know you move further away each night, her room is so diddy that it is either next to her or on the stairs! wiill it still work?

How long do you give your lo to try and self settle if they wake?

 

[history_girls]

sorry sleep deprieved - 4 types of waking! lol

 

[jacs]

Hi history_girls!

I would say that apart from her hungry cry, you would be best to treat the other cries in the same way, so she always knows what to expect, and isn't thinking 'maybe this is the time I get a cuddle, I'll just keep going!'
It's sooo hard to do this at night, I agree with what Polaris said about that, but it would only be for a short time hopefully, as long as you and OH are totally consistent. We found that the first night really set things up for us, as we did the whole night together. That way we could decide together what to do, and knew that when we were on our own, we were doing the same things.

Evan's room is small too, our first night of moving to the middle of the room, was also the first night of moving to the door! He's been fine with it though.

xx

 

[jacs]

Polaris, I am very similar with naps. Sometimes it just isn't happening, and I can't bear the crying, other times he just grizzles, and I can ignore that for a bit longer!

How's everyone's day/bedtime going?

I put Evan down a bit earlier, as we'd been out this afternoon and he only had a short nap in the car.
Normally I sit with him when DH is driving, and keep LO entertained so he doesn't doze, but my friend's little boy was in the back too, so I couldn't. Anyone got any tips for keeping them awake in the car, when you can't sit with them? It makes such a difference to Evan when he isn't allowed these small naps - I used to let him and he was miserable and tired all afternoon, but too awake to nap!

 

[Elski]

Hello ladies, can I join you? Was following the other thread... I'm basically psyching myself up to start trying sleepsense but not quite ready yet

I think I need to set myself a day when I'll start

 

[polaris]

Hi Elski, you are very welcome to join us - we are getting a nice little group going here now!

I have been SO stressed out this evening, I don't even really know why. I find it SO stressful trying to leave him when he wakes up early from a nap - today OH made me leave him for 20 minutes and he still didn't go back to sleep. He was still totally tired and grizzly when I got him up and then I started to get worried that I had traumatized him by not responding to him and that was why he wasn't in good form, then I started worrying about going back to work (totally unrelated but adding to my stress), then I think Thomas was picking up on me being stressed and wasn't in great form, then he seemed to be starving at his bedtime feed and looking for more after he'd drained both boobs, then he wouldn't burp for what seemed like AGES, then the dinner was overdone because it took me 20 minutes longer than expected to get him to bed. However he settled down to bed perfectly as usual, he is so great at bedtime now, there is never any complaining and he goes to sleep so quickly now.

Anyway that is my little rant over with, just needed to get all that off my chest. I think the main thing is that I worry about whether I'm doing the right thing for naps, I know I'm not really taking a consistent approach with them. Foogirl - thanks for the reassurance that things will improve with naps - I really just find myself doubting what I'm doing a lot with regards to the naps.

 

[jacs]

Ah big Polaris. Sometimes things just go round and round in your head - it only takes one or two things to set you off on a huge self-doubt/thinking the worst cycle! Hope you get a chance to have a relax this evening.

I read somewhere (Baby Whisperer?) that it takes about 3 days for babies to establish habits properly. Like everything else you've done so well, if you're consistent with leaving or picking up after naps, I'm sure Thomas will settle down. Maybe he needs to know he will always be left a little while, if he hasn't slept much? It's awful to listen to, but if you think it will help LO in the long run, it can't be such a bad thing. Maybe email Dana, or have a read of the section about early wakings (I know this is a nap problem, but she goes over what to do when you aren't ready for them to get up).

Welcome Elski, have you got the book/videos yet?

 

[history_girls]

having said my LO was good at the gonig to bed bit - well tonight I thought i'd do putting down definately awake. It took 20 mins - ten mins of cooing and ten of screaming. not bad i suppose - she knew what i was doing and was unhappy with me the clever bean. just must keep it up during the night - 20 mins isn't that long. Perhaps I'll have a drink ready to try and wake me up when I'm with her or a little snack to give a sugar boost.

I shall treat all the same - will talk to OH tomorrow about continutiy - he does understand but his heart breaks to hear her cry and either gives in with cuddles and dummy or tells her off! Perhaps we shall do friday together too - might establish good habits.

Interesting about it taking 3 days to establish a routine.

 

[Elski]

I'd be the same, Polaris any other little stresses in the back of my mind would amplify everything and make it seem more intense.

Jacs - not yet, I've read through the website and it just seems too good to be true! I'm the worlds biggest cynic and am thinking "it'll never work, surely?" I've bought this book and that book and tried this bit of advice and that bit of advice, none of which have worked so far, so I'm kinda thinking why would this work but at the same time secretly thinking... maybe this is the answer I've been looking for, know what I mean?

 

[TennisGal]

Welcome History_Girls and Elski

Elski - I was sooooooo cynical, too. I'd almost written the plan off before starting, but I'm amazed at the results.

History_Girls - I agree, aside for hungry cries, I'd try and do suggested calming. It's so hard in the night, isn't it? Only thing I can say is that it does get better.

Polaris for you, too - and a big cup of tea with chocolate!

I'm with you ladies on the nap thing - I just cannot, cannot leave DD crying there. Somehow, her seeing me in the day seems to make her worse. We've managed brief naps - then if she's grizzling, I'm ok to do the routine for 20 mins...but if she's really crying, I can't do it Any advice? Good to hear it gets better, Foogirl - but I know I'm not very consistent, either.
We didn't manage any cot naps today, DD was far too interested in the visitors...and she's also having another dodgy teething day, she's been very bothered by her gums.

 

[history_girls]

well I;ve completely failed tonight. LO woke up as per usual 40 mins into sleep. Left her ten mins then went up to settle. stroked her head, picked her up and calmed, then put down but nothing would stop the screaming. Every time i picked her up and clamed her as soon as i moved to put her down screaming again so i thought son't pick her up. but then she got worse and worse.Top of her lungs pitch. Well after 45 mins i broke and gave her the dummy. Two seconds flat asleep. I can't let her cry like that it just makes me cry. Have I mucked it all up?

It jsut breaks my heart to see her so upset her whole body was shaking.

 

[jacs]

history_girls - my hubby was the same about giving in! He would end up trying about 5 different methods of settling Evan, and it got to the point where the poor child was so confused, he just would not sleep at all for DH! That's when we decided it had to stop, and thank God I saw Polaris' thread! It is also the reason why I suggested we do the first night together - I needed to know we would be consistent, and not go down the same path again!
Lol at the snack thing - just today I started taking a cup of tea up with me for getting through nap time!

Elski - I know what you mean, at first I thought 'I am such an idiot loser' 'cos I thought I'd wasted money on something that was too simple to work, and not really anything I hadn't heard before. All I can say is, it worked for me on the first night, which was a week ago; and LO now almost sleeps through, and has extended naps. Good luck!

TennisGal - crappy naps suck, how's the teething tonight? I reckon 20mins is long enough to try for a nap too - do you try again after a little bit of activity?