BabyWhispererForums.com
SLEEP => Night Wakings => Topic started by: babyfinn on March 16, 2010, 17:58:05 pm
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Ok, finally getting around to posting in here in hopes for some advice!!
I have had 8 months of terrible sleep and have gone through many, many dfferent attempts to correct it. Started with the 5 S's, then to babywhisperer, then at 4.5 months we started sleepeasy and ahve even tried to just let him cry... and now we are trying BW again but am not having even a little bit of success :(
Here is our schedule - (with the new time change) We are EBF
8:30am wake
8:45/9am - nurse depending on when his last night feed was
9:15am breakfast - doing baby-led weaning so he eats whatever I feel like having
10:30am - nap - but sometime he only makes it till 10am, sorta depends on hwo long he was playing by himself first thing int he morning before I heard him and woke up myself - I discontinued using the monitor since he wakes all.the.time
12pm - wake from nap and nurse
12:30pm - lunch/solids
2pm nurse
2:30 - nap
4pm wake
4:30 nurse
5pm dinner
6:30 bath/bedtime routine, nurse then bed by 7pm
then the night starts and it sucks... he wakes every 2-3 hours on a good night and generally eats well at 9;30pm, 1:30 am and 5:30am with often a wake in between each of those feeds looking to comfort nurse back to sleep.
He has ben able to put himself to sleep since we did sleepeasy, which we tried for 3-ish months with some breaks or illnesses/teeth/milestones, but the only reall success we had was that I am able to put him in his crib awake and he wiggles around until he falls asleep. But, this doesnt work for his night wakes. So we revisited BW and have tried shh/pat which has just resulted in a whole lot of vomit and crying, and absolutely no settling down...so we went to PU/PD which wasn't any better. I try sending my husband in to do it since we thought maybe the smell of milk was intesifying the desire to comfort nurse but that only made it worse and after 2 hours I had to go in. However, even I can't get him to settle down by picking him up, he arches his back and SCREAMS, like someone-is-trying-to-kill-me sorta screams. I have since taken him to 2 speerate Dr's to rule out any medical reasons, got 2 new prescriptions for his reflux but am still no where closer to getting anything close to good sleep at night. Last night he woke at 8pm and cried until 10:45 when I gave in and nursed him. I try to do dreamfeeds but he is SUCH a light sleeper, I can;t even walk to his crib without waking him, AND we have a white noise machine in his room and in the hallway right outside it...sigh...
We have tried sleepsac, night lights, feeding him dinner earlier, cutting out certain foods, co-sleeping, turning off the white noise, trying different types of white noise...
he uses a soother, and can put it in his mouth himself - I keep 8 of them in the crib and have never found that that was the cause of a wake, if I try to put a soother in his mouth when he wakes it causes hysterics. He also has a muslin cloth balnkie that he uses for comfort
Ok, so if you made it this far - congrats! If you have any advice, even better :) I am certain he doesn't NEED to eat all night, but have spent months trying to wean the feeds without any success and can only let him cry for so long before I have to end it...so that might be a hinderance to the whole thing (though I am willing to let him cry for a couple hours)
Thanks in adavnced!
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Personally, I would quit all night feeds at this point. If PUPD makes him worse, I would drop that too. Have you tried leaving him in his crib but staying with him, soothing him with your voice? At this age I used to dangle my hand down into the crib so that my LO could grab it for comfort if he wanted it, if it was making him mad for me to pat his back (he was a tummy sleeper by this stage).
The other thing is, I would try stretching out his daytime A times a bit not too much, and not too fast. But I would aim for at least 2.5hrs for the first A of the day, and then provided that is a decent nap (1.5hrs plus), 3hrs A before his second nap.
8.30am awake
11am nap
12.30pm awake
3.30pm nap
5.30pm awake
8.30pm asleep for the night.
What do you think?
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hugs. i have been through exactly the same thing. when dd2 was 7 mo i was almost at the end of my rope. she was nw all night long despite no props (i thought) and being able to put her self to sleep for naps and night initially independently. she just could not put her self back to sleep when she woke at night. so i was feeding her much more than i thought she needed because it was easy to get her back to sleep.
anyway, i agree with anna re your routine and i would stop the cluster nurse. he does not need to nurse at 12, 2 , 4:30, and 6:30. this is too often and can lead to snacking which means he's not taking as much in which leads to actually needing to eat more frequently at night. i would switch to this (i'll use anna's sample nap routine but add in the feeds):
8.30am awake and nurse
9 solids
11am nap
12.30pm awake and nurse
1 solids
3 snack
3.30pm nap
5.30pm awake and nurse
6 solids
8 nurse
8.30pm asleep for the night.
4 bf per day, max.
and if after you switch to this you still feel he does not need the bf at night for food then i would cut them out. this is ultimately how i got my dd2 to sttn. i stopped feeding her. i was feeding her at night 1-3 times and resettling everyother time with shh pat but she continued to wake for nursing. it wasn't until after i cut out all feeds at 8 mo that she started sttn. it took 3 days. i wished i had done it sooner but i wasn't comfortable with her not eating at all at night until 8 mo.
i think you haven't been succesful because you go back to what you were doing. you try for 2 hours to get him back to sleep just to give in and feed. you cannot do this if you want results. it only teaches him to continue to cry for whatever prop he wants. in this case nursing is the prop.
i mostly used patting to get my lo back to sleep when she woke because pupd made her arch and fight me so i just settled in the crib. i also really let her fuss and mantra cry and ONLY went in if she was truly crying. i had been rushing in too quickly and not giving her a chance to settle herself.
hth
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Hmm, Ok I can try to get him to stay awake a bit longer and distract him for day feeds...but he only naps for 1.5 hours int he morning and then I am lucky to get an hour in the afternoon, so even tonight, when I am puching 3.5 hours of awake time before bed, he is rubbing his eyes and will still end up going to bed by 7pm at the very latest
I am totally OK with dropping the night feeds and letting him cry, but it is most often VIOLENT crying - makes himself throw up and eventually loses his voice... feeding has been the ONLY thing that will put him back to sleep.. so do I do one night and just leave him by himself to cry? The longest I have been able to wait it out was 3.5 hours and he cried the entire time. Because he had/has reflux, he is so used to taking in small meals so it has been a struggle to space his feeds out during the day. Often it becomes necessary cause he has gotten so worked up, and is spitting up so often, that nursing him soothes his throat/tummy.
I followed sleepasy religiously when he wasn't ill or teething just to try to space night feeds to 3 hours but he always woke up 2 hours after his last feed, not at the same times each night, but always within 5 mins of the 2 hour mark. After 3 months we were still having him wake every 2 hours and crying for the whole hour till it was time to feed. While I knew this would send mixed messages, he was also much younger back then, and we hoped that if he was only fed every 3 hours, he would adjust to that schedule overnight... no luck!
Since he is such a light sleeper, I can only hope to shh/pat till he calms down, he has never been able to fall asleep with me int he room (even as a newborn, he NEVER just fell asleep somewhere like other babies, he's been wide awake since the minute he cam out!)
I will try to space out his day feeds tomorrow and extend his awake times.. btu I am a little nervous he will be overtired... we tried to make him stay awake for 4 hours yesterday and it ended up in over 3 hours of crying before he finally fell asleep last night!
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ok
BW is NOT about crying it out or leaving lo to cry by himself. it is about teaching your baby to go to sleep independently and being there with him while he learns how. if he can't fall asleep while you're in the room that's fine but if he's crying hard you should be in there with him soothing him whatever way helps him. leaving him to cry is not teaching him anything and is scary - obviously if he is making himself sick by crying that hard. it especially is backfiring on you because you have left him to cry and then gone in and fed him. BW techniques are shh pat, pickup put down and walk in walk out while doing one of the other 2 techniques (ie baby cries, you walk in and pat or pickup putdown until crying stops and then walk out, stay out if baby is fussing or mantra crying, go in when crying hard and repeat). have you read the BW books? you mention using shh pat, how do you do it?
it is probably going to be harder on you to do the sleep training now because you have done cio in the past and then given in and gone back to the props. if you start it this time you will have to be very consistent and give it a week or 2 without giving in. BW techniques do work but not if you aren't consistent.
i think if you increase his A time you may get a bit longer naps. my lo never does more than 1.5 hour naps and at 8 mo was still able to do 2 naps even though one was long and one was short (chronic short napper, 1.5 hours nap was really long for her). you just have to reduce the A time after the short nap. 4 hours awake is way too long. 3.5 hours awake after a short nap is probably too long as well.
at 8 mo my lo was doing this for naps:
7 awake
10:30-12 sleep
3:30-4:15 sleep
7 bed
i'm not familiar with sleepeasy...
my 8 mo finally sttn when i dropped the night feeds. when she woke up and was fussing or mantra crying i would leave her. if she escalated and was truly crying i would go in and comfort in the crib. picking up made it worse. i would pat her back and talk to her until she stopped crying and then i would leave the room as she did better when i wasn't there as well to go to sleep. we went from 8 wakings a night and 2-4 feeds to sttn in about 3 days after i stopped the night feeds.
consistency is key. you have to pick a technique that you think you can do and stick with it for a couple of weeks.
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Thanks Brenda - I will giev it a try tonight.. I am a bit skeptical, I must admit, as we have been trying everything to get him to go back to sleep without nursing and nothing has worked, he is always frantically crying, there is never any fussing/mantra crying in this house!
Sleepeasy is a modified CIO - meaning when he wakes I give him 5 mins by himself, then I go in and spend up to 30 seconds reassuring him, then wait 10 mins before going in again, then 15 min intervals till he falls asleep...he almost never fell asleep.
One of the main reasons we took him to the Dr's was that his crying has suddenly escalated to being severe over the past month.. usually he would settle down at least if I was in the room with him and we were just dealing with the fact that I would be too stimulating for him to fall asleep or he would start to drift off and I would wake him by trying to leave the room. Now he goes from waking up to full-on hysterics and when I go in the room it almost makes it worse, he kicks and flails in his crib screaming when I try to do shh/pat and PU/PD is even worse than that with back arching, trying to root and getting frustrated when he can't.
Last night we revisited BW for the 3rd time once we got him new reflux meds and it was 3 hours of Shh/pat and PU/PD cause we were totally confused as to which one to use, neither seemed to be working in our favour!! He finally passed out, but I suspect part of our problem is that he is so overtired, but we are still having a lot of resistance in reducing him to the 2 naps a day... he was taking 4 for a loooong time, then we finally managed to get to 3 and just recently tried to switch to 2. Hopefully it will get better - he just seems so tired during the day cause we both aren;t getting any sleep at night with all the wakes!
OK, so shh/pat in on the schedule for tonight, so far he has been asleep for 2.5 hours and is just starting to stir now, but has jammed himself in the corner of the crib while sleep crawling...
SO I guess a question I have for tomorrow night in case tonight is a bust is what do I do about the hysterical crying? how long do I let him do it for? I can try to give up a few nights of not getting any sleep, but I am picturing a whole lot of screaming and one even-more tired Mama!
alright - he's up, gotta go give it a go!
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hugs
it is tough. i hope tonight goes ok for you.
basically if he cries and it is all out cry go right in, don't wait, just go in. if pupd doesn't work for him (it didn't really work for my dd2 - she just arched her back and fought me) then just comfort in the crib. this may be patting or rubbing his back, or just a hand on him, or soft talking to him and reassuring him that you are there, sleepy time go to sleep. if he starts to calm down you can leave but be sure to go back in when he starts up again.
tracey believed that cio can break the baby's trust so you will have to win it back from him and prove that if he needs you you will be there and he's not goign to be left alone again.
yes it could be hours, just don't give in. if you think he's hungry in the early morning hours you can offer a feed when he first wakes, but if you decide not to feed then follow through and continue with settling him until he is asleep, don't do it for hours and then feed.
good luck. :-*
i've been there with both my girls and it is really hard, and hard to know what to do too.
oh - you're sure he's not in pain when he's crying like this? make sure his meds and the reflux is under control before you do any sleep training...
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The thing is, if you always calm him down by nursing, he will always need to nurse to calm down iyswim. If he cries until he throws up, you need to clean him up, give him cuddles, walk the house if you need to, do anything, but do not nurse. This might happen one or two nights, but it will get easier - as long as you do not back down. He NEEDS to be able to calm down without nursing.
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ok, another question (and an answer)
I really don;t know for sure if he is pain or not... his reflux doesnt seem to change his naps at all, and he never cries during the day... so giving him his meds before bed is all I can really do to hope it is solving the issue. He went for months without any meds and we only put him back on once the crying got so severe. I also have tried motrin and tylenol and it doesn't make a difference... but again, I couldn't say for sure that he isn't in pain, but I would bet that he isn't, as he settles down if I allow him to come out to the living room to watch tv with me ;)
so, last night wasn't terrible, but not great... and I could only make it so long before I had to get some sleep. I just don;t think I can cut out the feeds cold turkey without letting him have a chance to eat more during the day - kwim? will this mess everything up? I was planning on stopping the comfort nursing cold turkey, but for the times where he was waking and eating a large meal, just reduce the time I let him eat in half each night (so normallyhe would eat for 10 mins, last night I let him eat for 5) He is so used to getting the calories at night, I don't want to do it suddenly.. I figured I would keep the 10pm feed and the 4am feed and work on the other wakes, reduce nursing time and hopefully then have eliminated the other wakes by then and can do the feed wakes.. sound reasonable or do I have to go all or nothing?
so last night went -
6:45 nurse
7pm - bed
10pm - wake and nurse for 5 mins - cried when I took him off but settled a few mins later and was asleep shortly after leaving the room
12;30 - wake..shh/pat till 2:30 am, he cried HARD the whole time... then I had to pee so I left for a min to do so and he had settled down while I was gone so I didnt go back in - asleep about 10 mins later on his own.
4:30 wake - 5 min feed, no problems getting him back down, he didn;t seem very hungry
6:30 - my husband woke him up and I was too tired to fight with him without feeding so I caved and it got me 2 more hours of blissful sleep
so, not a great night, and I know a big part of my problem is I do still feed him.. I just don't know how to function without any sleep... my husband is gone for 12 hours a day and when he gets home I need to get dinner ready in order to feed Finn before bath time, then its right to our bedtime routine.
so alright, let me have it... I need to cut them all out cold turkey don't I and just deal with all night crying for a few nights (hopefully just a few!)
My other concern is that since he prefers to not have me around in order to fall asleep, I feel like I am a hinderance to him when I am shh/patting him - he literally will.not.stop.crying if I am in the room with him. Should I try another form of sleep training?
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If you don't quit cold turkey that is fine. BUT what Brenda said is really important. When he wakes at night, decide straight away if you are either going to feed him and resettle him, or if you're going to get him back to sleep without feeding. Then do either one or the other - don't try to calm him down for two hours and then decide to feed.
That was a pretty good night though! What time is his bedtime? 10pm after an 8pm bedtime is really pretty early, I would try not to let him feed more frequently than every 4-5 hrs through the night. You could keep 2 night feeds for a couple more nights, then cut out one of those feeds. This is a process that should take days, not weeks. Then in another week cut out the second night feed. How does that sound? The process of getting more calories in during the day isn't one you have to 'manage' - if he is waking because he really is hungry, he will do that himself - if he's not genuinely in need of those calories in the course of 24 hours, he won't. It's not something you need to be concerned about, unless he has serious weight gain issues.
If shush-patting is making him mad, just sit in the room with him. You don't have to pick him up or touch him or talk to him. It may be that his mantra cry is very loud and harsh and that he is trying to settle himself. If he can settle himself within a few mins without you when he is doing this cry, then it is probably his mantra, and you don't need to attend to him when you hear it - some babies do have alarmingly loud and 'my legs are being cut off' mantra cries.
On the cold turkey vs gradual thing, it's really up to you. Personally I was always more of a cold turkey kinda gal, just get it all over with in one hit. It took 3 days of sleep training before my little one was sleeping through 12 hours - and he had been nursing every 2 hours through the night. I figured, hunger fades. And, he's not going to die from being hungry for one or two nights. I was surprised how quickly it worked.
Can your husband help out with getting dinner ready, at least for a few days while you are dealing with this? Or get take out if he really can't? The sleep deprivation, oh it is hard for sure, but you know you have to deal with these night wakings and then you can ALL be getting some better sleep at night.
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great advice from anna
i actually don't think that night was too bad.
no you don't have to cut out all feeds colds turkey. i actually didn't truly go cold turkey, i agree with you. my lo was getting a lot of calories at night and when i decided that was enough of the nws she was not eating well during the day becasue she was up eating all night. so i did similar to you. after i decided to go for it, i only fed twice at night (instead of 5 , 6 times) all other times i shh patted (my lo would not let me pick her up). i did this for 2 nights- 2 full feeds. then did 2 nights of 2 half feeds (took her off before she was done). then cut them out cold turkey and it took a further 2 nights for her to be sttn. all in all it took less than a week once i had decided she needed to be sttn.
i also have no support at home (dh works full time, school part time, is not around much) and the nws were killing me!!! especially with s los, i have to be "on" during the day, not half asleep, and no nap time for me because when dd2 naps dd1 is awake! BUT what would you say if we said yes the nws are hard and sleep training will be harder, but put a week in and you will be getting 10-12 hours of uninterrupated sleep? i mean would you put up with short term pain for long term gain?
decide what is best for you and go for it. if you do cold turkey you will get results quicker. or do what you did last night for a couple nights until you feel he is eating better during the day and then go cold turkey no night feeds. i think you did great last night, good for you.
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phew.... ok keeping 2 of the feeds and gradually shortening them makes me feel soooo much better!
I am getting nowhere with extending his awake times right now, he just can't make it yet, but I am going to try to extend them in very small intervals over the next week or so. If he stays up too long he gets overtired and won't nap at all, which makes bedtime worse..so for now I am going to have to be a little flexible withthe naps (ie today he needed a 3rd cause he was melting down at the 2 hour mark after his 1st nap, and would have resulted in a 6pm bedtime, which I am trying to avoid!) So tonight he will go to bed at 8pm - which might help int he long run, that would give 12 hours of sleep at night, and 12 during the day...
If he goes to bed at 8pm, I am going to drop to one night feed. When he went to bed at 6pm, which he has been for months and months, but with the time change we were trying to make it 7 - it just isnt working out with 2 naps, I didn;t mid the 10pm feed, but hopefully a new schedule will let me take that one out.
Fingers crossed tonight goes well...the whole sleep trainign has been so hard, and we have been doing it for 4 months!
Do you think if I sat at the doorway, that would work? He could still see and hear me when I think he needs to, but it would be so much easier to get back to my own bed once he falls asleep - I can't even turn on twilight turtle without waking him up right now.
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good. you need to feel comfortable with the approach. just have to keep cutting the feed down and then eliminate it once he is making up some of the calories during the day. anna's right, a couple of nights of less food is not going to make him starve.
sitting in the doorway is a good alternative and soothing with your voice.
good luck tonight.
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ok - last night went like this -
took a 3rd nap at 4:00 - 5:30 and I normally wouldnt let him sleep this long that late but he is soo tired from not sleeping as much at night now, I am going to have to slowly extend A times to prevent meltdowns!
so, 7:30 - feed
8pm - bed
10pm - dreamfed him since I was heading to bed and I know this will be the easiest one to wean, so I fed him for just a couple mins
10-10:25 cried from not gettig to eat as much as he wanted - rubbed his back till he calmed down, fell asleep with me waiting int he hallway
11:30 - wake, crying hard - tried to shh him from the doorway, cried till 1:30am then asleep
3:50am wake and feed for 5 mins
6;45 woekn up by husband so I fed him again for 3 mins
9am - wake for the day.. he has never slept this late!! but he was clearly exhausted
tonight I am going to try to stop the 4am feed, since he is almost always woken up by my husband around 6:30 and has to be fed at that point or he will just cry till wake up time. I will keep the 10pm feed, and keep it at 5-ish mins since I don't mind doing that feed and it is the only one that has always been at a consistant time - so it is the most habitual wake, but also the easiest one for me to make into a dreamfeed regularily prior to weaning it out.
I am so tired though! Feeding him at every wake was so much easier cause it mean I was only out of bed for 10-15 mins max and then I could go back to bed for a bit, last night I didnt get to fall asleep till after he went down at 1:30, the 9am wake was sure appreciated today!
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Yeh, it's hard work. That was a pretty good night though! You could consider playing white noise or running a fan in his room to prevent him being woken by his daddy?
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we have a white noise machine (air purifier for his allergies) in his room, AND one outside his door in the hallway - but he is a very light sleeper, even when I went in to do the 10pm dreamfeed, he woke up when I turned his doorknob and I was being careful!
I am going to make my husband have his lunch ready the night before from now on to avoid the cupboard door noises int he morning (cause apparently closing them quietly is too hard to remember :rollseyes:
we are definitely getting closer to him being used to not being fed all the time at least, and I noticed his 4am feed is getting less of a feed and more for comfort - the 6am feed is usually more of a real feed now... and I don`t mind if I have to keep the 6am feed since I am woken up by hubby at that time too!
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sounds like progress. i was scared to do sleep training too because even though i was feeding at every wake i was only up for 5-10 min and then back to sleep. but it's way better once they're sttn. totally worth the few nights of hours sitting there while they scream. it'll be better for everyone.
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OK, so it's 2am and we are getting less sleep than ever! I don;t know how much longer both of us can keep this up - he is getting so little sleep at night now, it makes it impossible to get him to stay awake during the day without being miserable.
I forgot to type out yesterdays, but it was something close ot this
7;30 eat and bed
9:45 - wake and feed
11:00 - wake - shh/pat in room - cried till 1:30-ish
3:50 wake and feed
5am wake - shh/pat and stayed in room - cried till 6:30
7;30 wake and feed
9am wake for the day
tonights is
6:30 eat and bed - there was no way we could get him to stay up any longer, he's so tired
7:30 wake - husband went in to sit in the room and shh/pat - cried till 9:00
10pm dreamfeed
10:45 wake - I have been in there since then doing shh/pat - finally fell asleep at 2am
Tonights plan was to get rid of the 4am feed but since he has had so little sleep, I don;t know if I should anymore - I don;t think either of us can deal with many more hours of lost sleep!
How many more days of this much crying? I'm all for trying to get him to learn to go to sleep without comfort nursing, but my happy baby is now unhappy all day long. We have rarely ever had a problem with naps and now he is so ovettired all the time, we end up doing shh/pat for every single one for a good chunk of time before he finally falls asleep, and he isn't staying asleep for more than 45 mins anymore.
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How long have you been trying to break this prop? Of course you can go back to nursing to sleep any time you like, but it may make it more difficult to wean the next time...
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last night was night 4 of this attempt, so I know it's still early, but it's only getting worse!
So he woke again right after I typed that -
2:30 wake, cried till 3am with pu/pd - he was content with P/u but not with p/d, he just kept trying to snuggle his head in my neck to go to sleep.
4am - wake and I fed him
6:15 wake and I fed him again
6:45 wake - shh/pat for 30 mins
7:30 wake and we let him wake for the day, but now he is ready for a nap after being awake for an hour...
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OK well: how about introducing a paci to help him if he needs to comfort suck? I know it is quite late to introduce one but if he still has a strong need to suck it may help him, plus he should be about old enough now to find and replace it when he wakes?
With the PUPD, how long are you holding him for? You really need to try to settle him in his crib as much as possible, only pick up when he is REALLY upset and even then hold him for only a few seconds. Don't hold him til he is calm. There is also a sleep regression around 8-9 months so you may be contending with that too.
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With the PUPD, how long are you holding him for? You really need to try to settle him in his crib as much as possible, only pick up when he is REALLY upset and even then hold him for only a few seconds.
agree. you may be holding him too long.
when we sleep trained my lo we really did not see progress with how many times she woke at night until i stopped all night feeds and she got the picture that i was not going to feed her at night. and i really let her fuss, did not go in at all unless she was truly crying and then i only comforted in the crib, did not pick up (but picking up just made it worse for her, she would fight me so much i had a hard time not dropping her)
how long are you keeping him up during the day before you try for a nap? if he is not getting much sleep his A times will be short and if he fights you for a nap and then only does 45 min are you trying to get him back to sleep when he wakes early? would he sleep in the stroller/carrier? may be time for some APOP for naps so he can catch up on naps and not be so ot. ot will definitely make nws worse.
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Agree with Brenda, I'd be inclined to cut out all night feedings at this point. It can be confusing to them if you sometimes feed and sometimes don't.
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He takes a paci, and has since birth - we keep 8 or so in the crib at all time so he can always find one.
When I do pu/pd, I hold him for...maybe 10 seconds? just long enough to have him take a breath fromt he screaming and get his soother in his mouth again - but last night he was so tired, he would immediately calm down and attempt to sleep on my chest when I picked him up, so I had to cut it even shorter - but really it's just a way to get him to relax for a second and get him sucking on the soother, shh/pat isn;t working so well while he fails around in his crib ;)
Right now he has had 3 naps already today - so he woke for the day at 7:30
8:15 - 9:00 nap - woke crying and tried to shh/pat but he just treid to climb the rails of his crib the whole time to get out
so 9-10:45 A time, we had a few errands to run before we had guests coming from out of town today
10;45 was really tired and attempted a nap, but after 30 mins of shh/pat, and standing at the doorway we decided to take him for a drive to get him to sleep, he was too overtired at this point
11-12 nap
12-2 A time
2:00 showoing signs of needing to sleep again, so put him down, 10 mins of fussing and is now sleeping
I will likely have to give him a 4th nap this afternoon now too.
I am not against cutting out the feeds, but I can't have him crying the entire night, each day that passes, the more overtired he gets, and soon we are going to have him up all night and asleep all day!
Is there any other alternative? We are basically doing sleepeasy at this point since I spend most of the crying time sitting at the doorway, and we did that program for 3-4 months with no long term success either. There comes a point where listening to your baby cry isn't seeming worth it. So far the shortest crying time has been 30 mins, and that was only once!
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I think you need to give this at least a full week, maybe even two, before deciding if it's going to work or not. It's not like he's 3 or 4 months where you would expect to see results really quickly. And I definitely do think you need to try and stretch that first A time a bit. 45 mins is a pretty classic UT nap, even if he's TOTALLY overtired, 1hr15mins is just way, way too little for his age. Is there any other AP you can do with him to get a longer nap, ie have him sleep next to you?
The BW techniques for sleep are essentially shush-pat and PUPD for this age, with WIWO added when they are older. If you feel like this is really not for you then you could try looking at Elizabeth Pantley's No Cry Sleep Solution. Remember that staying with him while he cries is NOT like controlled crying or CIO, because you are there with him, reassuring him with your presence (even if it does not feel like he is being reassured) and trying to help him to settle.
I have one more question about the soother, can he definitely find and replace it for himself? He doesn't need you to do it for him?
I'll be interested to hear what Brenda thinks.
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Today hsi A times are super short, but he only got about 4 hours of sleep last night in total - so no surprise! Usually he goes 2.5-3 hours before a nap, and they are usually 1.5 hours long, but we seem to be in a vicious cycle of overtired right now with such little night sleep - even when he was waking to nurse all night, he still was only awake for mins at a time and was in bed for 13+ hours, so he's not adjusting well to not getting that length of sleep.
100% sure he puts the paci in by himself - we watch him on the monitor and if there isnt one right by his face, he does arm sweeps till he hits on - we use the soothie brand and it makes it really easy for him to insert. I only put it in his mouth when I am in there in hopes to get him to comfort suck on it and calm him down, but often he is too worked up to do it.
I guess my biggest concern right nwo is how little sleep he is getting, I know it wont be forever, but his eyes are red contantly, and he's just not himself anymore... here's hoping tonight goes better. i can commit to a full week for sure, 2 if we can get a bit more sleep than we did last night!
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i agree with anna...try to have strength and stick it out and be consistent. sounds like hell...
also agree that A times today are way too short but sounds like you know that and are going on cues. but even if he is ot he usually gives you long naps and right now he is doing all short naps so i think you do need to keep him up a little longer than you did today. hopefully he'll do at least one long nap for you and then get a bit caught up on sleep.
what are you doing when you sit in the doorway of the room?
are you going to cut out feeds tonight?
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Ok, so bedtime was totally messed up as we had to take him to the walk-in to see what was going on - he started tugging his ears and crying and hasn;t wanted to eat much all day.. so after 3 hours of a wait, we were told it is just irritation/inflammation from his extended crying times and were told to give motrin or tylenol for a few days. So now I don't know what to do and I feel guilty :(
When I sit int he doorway I generally wait till he is crying low enough to actually hear me and Shh him and say sleepy sleepy time, which is the cue we use every time he goes to his crib. Or I will say, "Shh, it's OK, sleepy sleepy time" sorta thing, never when he is dead quiet for fear he actually fell asleep, but when he isn;t in his hysterics cause I would have to yell to be heard.
I had planned to cut feeds and my husband was going to try to deal with wakes all night, but I don;t know if I hsould let him cry for as long as he did last night now, but also don't want to feel like we did it all for nothing either...bah, i guess I will have to make the decision based on how it goes.. if I decide to feed I will likely just abandon it for now and retry again in a few weeks to see if we have less resistance then. He was up for 7 hours before bed as we couldnt get him to go to sleep this afternoon for his nap, then my husband tried driving him around while I waited in line at the clinic and that didnt put him out either - so we are either going to have him so tired he doesnt have the energy to wake tonight or he is so overtired, he will give us a run for our money... fingers crossed for option 1!
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the waiting in the doorway and not saying anything while he screams blue murder just feels too much like cio to me, especially since you are saying it is for extended periods of time. it obviously isn't working as he is having a hard time calming down. i think you need to do a little more intervention. maybe standing beside the crib where he can see you and have a hand on his back or something, you don't have to pick him up, then when he calms a little bit you can move away from him and stand/sit by the door and talk to him. waiting there when he is calmer and can hear you repeating your phrase i think is fine. he can hear you, he knows you are there. i would just be uncomfortable with being away from him when he can't hear you for so long while he is so upset, even though you are in the room, it's not really helping him as he is basically left alone to calm down himself and he is having trouble doing this.
i know you say he calms down better when you're not in there but this really is more like cio and less like BW the way you are doing it. if he is truly crying hard i think you need to go to him and make your presence felt more than just sitting in the doorway.
hugs.
sorry it is so hard. good luck tonight.
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Thanks for the advice Brenda
Unfortunately we are going to take a break for now, until his ears and throat get better and I recover - I fell down and almost passed out while holding him and knew there was no way i could go another night of hours of crying. I am trying to stay positive that the past 4 nights weren't a waste - at least I know what really didn;t work for us and hopefully when we are all recovered from this round, we will have more success and less resistance.