please help me! nobody helps me in my country about sleep.

[foreignmom]

Hi! I'm writing from abroad, so excuse me if my English isn't good.Noone in my country has heard of a solution to sleep problems.According to them parenthood means lack of sleep, and without sacrifice you can't be a real mom.They say we all lived these things when we had a baby and this is destiny.I don't believe sleep problems is a destiny so I read Tracy's books and tried to apply.But its so hard with noone helps me around.
 I was successful around 3 months, my baby would sleep though the night with a dreamfeed.But then her sleep became worse and worse day by day.Now she is 7 months and 1 week, couple of times at night and sometimes don't sleep back like 2 hours.Most days she has an early waking too.I'm trying to drop the catnap but it's very hard because my baby has always been a short napper.I try to extend her naps by going at the 30 min.and patting if it doesn't work, turning on the white noise machine and if it doesn't work swaying.Sometimes I can extend like 1hour 15 min sometimes 1 hour and half.Sometimes I can't extend and she fully wakes at 30 min. If I don't intervene she always wakes up at 30-45 mins.Also she eats very little.This was yesterday:
  07~ wake up and feed 4 ozs
  08:00 breakfast (very little like 2 table spoons)
  10 :00 sleep 1 hour 7 min ( I managed to extend)
  11:15  feed
  12: lunch (very little like 2 table spoons)
 14:30  sleep 1 hour 15 min
  16:00 feed
  17:00 dinner(very little like 2 table spoons)
   18:30 last milk feed 3-4 ozs
  19:00 sleep
   19:40 wake up resettled with pacifier
   21:45 wake up resettled with a feed 2 ozs
  03:30 wake up feed 2 ozs didn't resettle until 5 she was up 1.5 hours
 05:00 restled with 2 ozs more
06:30 wake up
please help me because I have noone to help me here 

[brummum]

Hi, sorry you haven't got any real life support for this! 2 things jump out to me 1) perhaps you need to bring that first nap earlier as LO's nights are short (10hr with night waking if I'm reading correctly??) so they are probably starting the day OT and this might give you a longer nap. Have you checked out:

Average A times and "Is my baby ready to increase A time?"

2) At 7 months my LO was still on 4 milk feeds a day, am right in that you aren't giving a milk feed at bedtime? However, with the amounts your LO is eating during the night it doesn't look like they are waking from hunger. Don't know what other people think?

Does your little one go to sleep independently for naps/bedtime or do they need rocking/feeding etc.. to sleep?

Hope you can get some more knowledgeable eyes on this but in the meantime *hugs*, sleep deprivation is awful.

[foreignmom]

sorry I'm editing before bed she has 3-4 ozs too.First nap was earlier, and that was worse.I streched the first A time with the knowledge from this website to prevent early waking.Thank you for your reply.

[brummum]

Okay, perhaps the ladies over on the bottle feeding forum could help with suggestions about how to get more oz's in during the day? Is she/he happy or upset on waking up? I always found upset wake ups were overtired. Could you try shortening the activity time after the 1st nap if it is a short one? say 2 - 2.5hrs? Will she/he let you APOP one of the naps to get a longer stretch for a few days to let LO catch up on sleep?

[foreignmom]

She won't let me extend any longer even if I rock etc. I already do wrong by letting her sleep with a pacifier and I can't wean it. If I shorten the A time after the second nap there is a lot of time until bedtime , she resists the catnap and she is overtired.If I try early bed time as this was the case yesterday she wakes up before 6 am. and the next day becomes a very long day too.

[ZacsMumme]

Does a typical day include a CN still? If so it's likely this is the problem can you post your typical routine if the one above was not the usual?

[foreignmom]

No, she won't take the catnao eve if I try, she won't sleep for it since 2 weeks.She is over 7 months now.
Typical routine depends according to waking in the morning anywhere between 6 and 7 am. It changes half an hour or so. Usually like

6:30 wake and feed ( expressed breast milk)
8:00 breakfast
09:30 first nap ( somtimes 30min sometimes 1h7min somitems 1h 15 min sometims 1h 30 min. I try very hard to extend )
11:00 milk feed
12: solids
14~ second nap earlier if first nap was short, later if first nap was long. Again imposibble to predict the lenght, I try to extend ) if the first one was short this is longer and vice versa.
15:30- 16:00 milk feed
17: solids
18:00-19:00 feed and sleep ( depends on when the second nap finishes)
she won't take catnap any more

[weaver]

So sorry you feel so isolated.  My home country is pretty much the same! 

First, don't worry about the pacifier.  Plenty of LOs use them. 

Secondly, she shouldn't be doing a catnap at this age so don't worry about that either.  It should be gone and it is gone, that's a good thing.

Naps for an hour and a half are fine at this age, don't worry too much about that.  Many problems with naps at this age are to do with A time (awake/activity time), getting it wrong and getting baby to bed too early or too late.    Can you see what the difference might be between the days when you have a 30 minute first nap and a 1 hr 30 minute one?  30 minute naps usually mean overtired so perhaps LO was awake early or was tired at nap time for another reason.  Do you know what her A time time is (probably somewhere around 3 hours)? 

Hugs, these babies are cute but tricky sometimes!

[ZacsMumme]

Yes, as Anne says, I was basically trying to work out if you still offed it from your posts. Glad Is gone e cause they cause trouble at this age

Your routine looks good what is your A time your aiming for - this will help Anne and I

[foreignmom]

my awake time is around three hours but when she wakes a lot of times at night she is sometimes ot. But then, it's hard to reach at least six pm for bedtime.
It is morning now in here. Last night was the worst night ever. I cold turkey paci as I had to reinsert it several times at night.I don't know if it was the reason but She woke up more than ten times and we didn't sleep even for one minute. I tried  to shush pat and used the vibration of the bed to settle but she woke up every half an hour. The day was fine we had 2 good naps comparing before.It was was like:
6:00 wake up and feed
8:00 breakfast
09:15 first nap 1 h 15 ( seemed so tired but 1h 15 is ut you say)
11:00 feed
12:00 lunch
13:20 second nap 1h 45 ( for the first time in her life) ( I tthought she will sleep better without a paci)
15:15 feed
17:00 dinner
18:00 last milk feed, bedtime routine
18:30 asleep without a paci in 5 min
21:00, 21:30, 22:00, 24:00, 1:30, 2:30, 3:30,4:00,4:30,5:00,5:20, 5:40  wake up and resttled very hard but without a paci by the help uf vibration and white noise machine
5:40 woke up for today.

I'm at the point of giving sleep medicine to her, please help me.Why did she wake so much?

[amayzie]

Hi hon- I'd strongly suggest making sure you've spoken to your Dr or medical profesional before offerring any medications for sleep. Do you think she's in pain? When my guy is teething i will usually give him some nurofen as i've found other things don't work for my guy...

[foreignmom]

She cries like she's in pain but no strong sign of teething. Can paci weaning give her so much emotional pain? Should I not wean? But then she wakes for it too? Should I commit a few days more?

[weaver]

Hi foreignmom, hope you're ok today and hello to baby too.

I'd say, yes, paci weaning could cause her this sort of emotional pain.  She might find it distressing.  And it could be that she 'looked' for it every time she entered a light sleep during the night and woke when it was not there.  That would explain the frequent wakings which are usually due to discomfort or pain.  It's your decision whether you wean the paci now or later but be careful about introducing a new prop!  Have a look at the props board and the FAQ there to get information to help you decide.

I was coming back to this board to say that it might make sense to think about what you want to concentrate on.  Is your main question about night wakings? Or about naps? Or about the paci? If you look at the boards for those issues, and post questions there too, people will be able to reply more clearly. But of course keep this conversation going if it is helpful to you.

For now, I'd say if she's overtired in the morning, get her to bed earlier (in the morning) and hope for a good nap. Then she'll be better able for the rest of the day, and her pm nap, and the night.  I think Tracey always said to fix daytime sleep first!

Hope that helps.

[foreignmom]

thank you very much for your replyIt really helped to know. I didn't know weaning paci could give her so much stress, I felt very sorry for my baby now, but I have to. She wakes for it so much.
I don't know what to concentrate on first.Tracy advises to fix naps first but I trying to extend them for over 2 months now with rare success.Its very rare that she sleeps more than a hour, despite trying all combinations of A time.
For a few days now I think I'll concentrate on the paci weaning, but its so tough.I wrote on the props board but noone helped.
I pray tonight would hopefully be better , altough we had 30min. am nap 1 hour pm nap and we had to do 30min catnap.
I would still be so grateful for any helpful ideas.

[teddy13]

@foreignmom, I hope this advice helped you out. Reading your post hit close to home, I am in Greece and moms here don't really believe in sleep scheduling but a lot of them do CIO (Cry it out) Something that I cannot do. It sounds like you pretty much have it under control. I would say just like the other ladies did tackle each problem one at a time and in an order that you think you can stick to. Maybe leave the paci for the last one and when she is a little older to understand that she no longer needs it? I took my daugthers away and said it went on vacation and that was it one day no more paci. ~goodluck with everything