I cannot calm our baby any more (father)

[A pair of Charlies]

Okay. It could be that shh patt is too stimulating for him now. Have you got a feel for his personality type? That might help you decide what to do as spirited babes (and touchy too I think) tend to be easily stressed out by being helped to sleep a bit. For babes over 3 months old PUPD works well. Again, some parents find that this is too stimulating for their LOs (I did) and wound them up a little BUT the majority of parents I've seen on the boards have fantastic success with it.

And there's always the option of modifying your shh patt to suit your baby. So either shhing or patting. Or using shh / patt to settle them, but treating the sleep issue in a PUPD way - i.e. shh patt and lay in cot to sleep. When worked up, shh / patt til calm and then lay down again, etc. I haven't done this so can't really advise beyond that - I've just seen threads where others have advised 

So. In case this gives you some ideas... with my spirited DS, the shh patt got modified down to a patt only I think. And then a hand on his chest etc. I did become his sleep prop though, so not a great tale - he wouldn't sleep without my hand. Perfectly happy to go into his crib, but had to have my hand  . I found that my boy couldn't do the A times of 4EASY at 4 months; he needed lower A times especially that first Awake time of the day - it was always 15mins shorter than for the rest of the day.

Errr. What else. Winddown. Ours once was long and involved singing and a book, but he just fought out of my arms. So, as someone here advised, we cut it right down to a 5min WD and had great success with it - he doesn't fight. We go upstairs, nappy change, go to the window and say "goodbye sky, goodbye clouds, goodbye sun", close curtains, put on music and then would be shh patt or quick cuddle and straight into bed. 5 mins. When he's really tired, that cuddle would go straight out of the window as he'd be desparate to get on with it!

A cooldown at the end of A time. Up until around 7 months (I think), I did a bit of a cooldown towards the end of A time, before we headed upstairs. So any noisey flashing toys, baby gyms, bouncers etc all went off / hidden away. We'd play quietly or, more often, look out of the window for 5 mins or take a slow walk up to bed. I found this worked for us - even now, I still can't take him from 'doing something' to put to bed or nappy change or anything. He goes crazy. Easier to encourage him to break off what's he's doing and then take him off to bed or wherever.

Another thought is that at 4 months, not all BF babes can go 4h between feeds. All Mamas, like babies, are different - some don't produce enough milk to last a babe that amount of time, some babes don't take enough milk to last 4h and some babes just don't seem to like being full up at each feed, etc etc. All different. So if you track the EASY tomorrow, see how long the feeds are apart and how content babe seems. At this age, most Mamas start feeding from both sides per nursing session if they haven't already.

HTH

Charlotte

[adamdad]

Thank you Charlotte for the long reply!

I agree with everthing you say! I had similar conclusions. It's good to have a good, long wind-down, but i have to be careful not to overdo it. I think this is why he wanted to get out. I kept it too long and walked around with him too much. Also, i noticed that it's harder to have too little A time than too much.

There are three little success stories that are in tune with what you said. Well, a normal day i would consider them failures but in light of the last days it's a success:

1. last night around midnight it was impossible to calm him. We kept passing him to each other with my wife. In the end i said i'll try to make it through. I had to pu/pd about 20-30 times, but finally he did calm down, then had a huge burp, then fell asleep...

2. At 6 am. again, he was half-awake. I picked him up, he calmed in 30 seconds, put him back, stayed with him for 20 minutes and he slept. (Only to wake up 30 minutes later, but he wasn't tired anymore)

3. This morning i put on the white noise that mooglimoo suggested. I kept him in my arms, but i stayed still, no walking around. He settled and fell asleep on my shoulders. Wouldn't be proud otherwise, but this time i am!

So, yes even a winddown can be too tiring if not done right.

Now the bad news is that his mommy is completely fed up with the BW method. The last days were too much for her as i couldn't help as much with the calming. She need more room to experiment with other methods (sleeping with the baby, but the same time she's considering CC too). Right now i have to let her do how she wants it (except for the CC - not even through my dead body).

[A pair of Charlies]

Congratulations on the successes!!

It if helps, I came to BW after I had tried another approach that everyone I knew was banging on and on about. It wasn't working for me or my DS - it felt all wrong, he seemed miserable, overtired, unsettled and hungry. I listened to what other friends were doing and those methods didn't work for me. Listened to family - my sister is a huge co-sleeping fan but has one success (her DS1 decided he wanted his own bed aged 2) and one child that still has her as a sleep hostage, he's now 8 (he's finally out of her bed, but she has to sleep next to his bed instead. I kid you not.)

Anyhooo. I digress. I found BW. Well, my DH did. And I don't know how I'd have survived without it. It's about watching and listening to what your baby is telling you, and tweaking the EASY to fit their needs. BW has my vote! I hope your DW returns to us sometime. 

On another note. My DS is now 20months old. While I was his one and only for some time - for sleep, comfort etc he now wounds me everyday with the constant asking, looking, hunting and crying (the stamping feet, real tears kind) for Daddy. He's usually had enough of Mama by 11am. By 3pm, the tears start. By 5pm I'm at screaming point. And with luck, DH makes it home for bathtime at 6.30pm. DS doesn't stop grinning all Saturday morning when he has Daddy all morning.

I imagine your wife, will at some point, feel as I do. And you will be the Daddy that all the crying, stomping, hunting around the house, is for. 

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

Congrats on the success!!

Even Spencer, who is a die-hard Mommy's girl, at 3 pm every day without fail starts chanting "daddy daddy daddy" until DH gets home from work! (how she can tell time is beyond me!)

[adamdad]

Thanks for the replies!

(we just changed ISP, i couldn't reply before)

My wife tried co-sleeping a couple of times but she has given up. Especially at night the baby is just making so much noise that it's impossible to sleep next him. And we keep making noises too, when turning, whatever, so it's not a good solution for either one... She also stopped napping with him.
I heard a lot of stories too about how co-sleeping became a never-ending routine.

About the calming:
I noticed that the more tired he gets the more he needs his mommy. So it's around bedtime, when he would only calm with his mommy. During the day as he gets more and more tired he needs her more and more.

We've also made some good progress with his OT and sleeping. There are a lot of little things that have to be right. He should spend only about 20 minutes playing on his carpet and the more time he spends on us, the better. He would never go through the three phases of going to sleep, just jump to the OT phase. Also it's like he needs to be filled up emotionally too (when he is on us).  Of course we are happy to oblige!
So very slowly we're getting out of the OT hell. And DW could also experiment with different methods herself. It's not just a book that tells her to do things in a certain way. She tried different methods or props and finally settled for a BW as the most sustainable...
It's really hard to get out of OT by the way. Two or three times i had to wear him on the sling and was walking around with him in the park in the snow for three hours to put some sleep into him...

Ok, i have to go, thanks for all the encouragement.

[strangy]

Don't forget to look after yourself Balint. Your wife is very lucky to have such a supportive husband and you sound like a terrific father but babies really do notice when we are stressed or apprehensive. Going for a bike ride to get some fresh air is a great idea.

Maybe this month your baby has decided to favour his mother a bit and next month it will be your turn :-)

I would say that as long as one of you is able to get him to calm down and sleep, I wouldn't worry too much. It is early days yet and pretty soon things will get a whole lot better. Good luck!

[MummyToBen]

Hi there,

Since you are having such difficulties settling you lo have you ruled out things like reflux/heartburn?  My little boy has had this since he was very tiny, and our first few months (until he was medicated properly) were very very tough.  Might be worth checking on the reflux and colic board.  Hopefully it's nothing like that though, but just wanted to mention it 

[bovi]

Szia Bálint!

A big HELLO to a fellow Hungarian! You are the first one I have come across on the boards and the first man too.

My DS is 15 mo and we have been through so much with his sleeping issues. At your lo's age I did sh/pt, it worked but only after a very detailed long post exchange here, I still appreciate so much the help I got back then.

Oh god sh pat was such a hard work, it did work, but then I decided to switch to white noise. We downloaded 4-5 different kinds for us the fan noise worked best. I weaned it at around 8 mo and it proved to be no problem, so somehow it is not a prop (or was not for my lo)

We choose a player that had a remote so when DS fell asleep I did not need to go in the room to lower the volume.
Keep tweaking his routine though is the best thing you can do. Throughout my months with BW it always amazed me what a difference even 15 mins can make. For me it worked better when I kept track of the routine in a kind of diary, otherwise I got confused and did not remember the times.

You are doing a wonderful job! it will pay back so much I can assure you.

Ha bármikor kérdésed/problémád van nyugodtan írj emailt is.
Sok szerencsét és energiát. Kellemes Ünnepeket!!

Viktória

[MummyToBen]

Whereabouts in Hungary are you both?

I spent 3 months in Hungary a few years ago - in Biscke (near Budapest), and at the university in Szombathely.  I LOVED my time there, the country and the hospitable, warm friendly people, and the food!!  Never have I had such gorgeous pastries!!  I always say I will never complain about British weather anymore as it was SOOOO cold in Hungary in winter that anything in England is never half as bad! x

[bovi]

Hi there, we have moved from Hungary to Luxembourg some five years ago, but surely moving back someday, I was originally from Dunakeszi just a random boring suburbia of Budapest, but lived in Budapest before moving here. Winters are sharp in Hungary , can be as cold that your hand freezes to the door handle if you forget your gloves, but spring is flowery with sweet spicy air, summer is hot, and autumn is amasing. and even the winter is so enjoyably beautiful with the sprinkling whiteness of snow. oh gosh, can you tell that I miss home badly? I have not been to Bicske tough,

igotta go_ds is trying to take over the keyboard

[adamdad]

Hi All!

Sorry i'm replying just now, i have a crazy deadline for a job this friday...

I wanted to report on the progress before, but by the time i would sit down to tell you things are improving, the opposite would be true. Then i think that we are putting out fires again, then suddenly he would sleep better!

I reread all your comments and the book (and DW too) and this time i really think we are on the right track. He's on a 4 hour EASY routine, and starts to have longer and longer naps. He systematically wakes up after 25 minutes, but DW manages to put him back for another 1 hour - 90 minutes...

And about the original title, the calming part:
Just as Tracy wrote: we are sometimes so preoccupied about all the methods that we forget about the essential.

So i realised the best way he can fall asleep is when he is in his crib, well swaddled, my hand on his shoulder or his back and i just talk to him and encourage him with a very reassuring voice. This is working really well, he can actually calm himself better and better. Everything else like shh/pat, pu/pd is just too distracting. (Thanks Charlotte again! ) Also, no reason to keep him on my shoulder, it doesn't make anything easier... Well, i might have to pick him up once or twice just to reassure him that i'm really there for him, or just to reassure myself that i do reassure him...

It's really wonderful to see the power of your voice and the way you feel about him going to sleep. As long as i have a positive attitude he is going to be alright and he'll calm himself. If i start to panic, start to feel hopeless he will pick this up and no amount pickup, sh, pat can help him. This is what Tracy wrote: first start with a hand and your voice and a positive attitude.

Big Szia to you too Viki! Köszi szépen a segítséget! (Thanks for the support). We were playing the white noise through new years eve, when all the fireworks were going up just 300 meters from our home! He slept through the whole frenzy...

We just move down from Budapest to Pécs in the South. I used to live in many places and still come back to Pécs as the best place to live. Perfect size, perfect climate, great cultural life, 10 minutes from the hills and the nature...
DW is from France and we'll have to go back to France this April. The work conditions in France with their 35 hours and 6 weeks vacations is hard to match... Even if in Hungary maternity leave is 3 years, and in France it's 3 months. (DW is eager to start working, i can stay with DS).

If you are visiting Hungary, you should definitely go to Pécs as it's the cultural capital of Europe this year! Lots of great events coming up!

Happy New Year to you all!

Bálint

[A pair of Charlies]

Fantastic news on your successes!! 

I've always wanted to go to Budapest - and now you guys are making me desparate for a trip there!!