Needing support...at a loss

[eager4baby]

hello

I am new to this board and I have recently read the "Baby Whisperer Solves all Your Problems".  I have a 6 month old (27 weeks) who is giving me a heck of time.  His sleeping and eating patterns are all over the map. I wrote out the routine listed in the book, but my ds just does not stick to it and I have a hard time making him. Currently, he eats every 1.5 hours, but feeds for about 2-3 min.  He also has solids (breakfast, lunch, dinner).  He wants to sleep after 2 hours of being awake and gets seriously cranky if I don't put him down to sleep on time, or if I do it too early!  If I don't get it just right, it takes me an hour to put him down for a nap and at night.  He has been nursed to sleep until now.

I have decided to continue to nurse before sleep as that seems to be the only thing that calms him down (I have tried swaddling the legs, holding, walking around the room, reading and just laying him in the crib) He just gets really excited about all of those things. What I am doing now is nursing him and once he is finished I take him off and put him in the crib.  60% of the time he will just go to sleep.  THe rest it is instant tears.  I started the PU/PD technique with him since Sunday. The first time it took me 1.5 hours.  The second time 20 min, but he woke again after 10 min.  Since then he has nursed and then gone to sleep fine.  Then last night at 1am he woke, I nursed him but he wasn't really taking anything, so I put him back in the crib.  Well, all hell broke loose and I started PU/PD.  This just caused him to cry even harder.  50 min passed and my DH got up and stormed in telling me I am doing it wrong (he hasn't even read the book).  I told him to get out as he was a distraction.  HE did and about 15 min later DS calmed down and finally went to sleep whimpering.

This afternoon I had the same thing...I actually got in the crib with him to calm him down.  He thought this was great.  But he finally went to sleep after I got out of the crib. 

I am at a loss.  I feel like crying because even my DH doesn't support me.  He has never put DS down to sleep and never fed him (exclusively bf).  I just feel like he doesn't get how exhausted I am.  DS has been waking in the night every 2-3 hours or more due to teething, a cold etc.....I need him to learn to go to sleep.  wakings at 1am and 5 am are considered a good night.  :!

DS's routine: approximately

7AM - wake, change diaper, get dressed
7:30 Eat (cereal (1tsp), breastmilk)
7:45 PLay
8:45:Eat (breastmilk)
9:00 Sleep
10AM Wake, change diaper
10:15 Eat (breastmilk)
10:25 Play
11:30 Eat (vegetables 2 tsp)
12 noon Eat (breastmilk)
12:30/1:00 sleep
2:00 Wake, change diaper
2:15 Eat (breastmilk)
2:25 Play
4:00 Eat (breastmilk)
4:30 Sleep
5:15 Wake, change diaper
5:30 Eat (breastmilk)
5:45 Play
6:00 Eat (vegetables (4 tsp), breastmilk)
6:45 Bath
7:10 Eat (breastmilk)
7:45 Sleep
12/1AM Eat
3/4/5AM Eat
7AM Wake

Thanks
Desperate to have some support. 

[Katet]

Gosh what a little snacker you have on your hands... 10 feeds in 24 hours. At his age he  ideally would be on 5 bf & 1-2 solid feeds, moving towards 2-3. As you already have 3 that is fine to keep them as they are

Ok the problem seems he never takes a good feed & so needs to feed much more frequently as your milk supply has adjusted to your little snacker... I am guessing (like I did with my ds#1) you have miss read tired cues for hungry cues & so he often feeds for comfort

What I would suggest is offering him 2-3 times over the course of 1/2 hour (in a quiet dim lit place where ever possible to avoid distractions) & if you can pump doing that for about 5mins after each feed- but only do this for 4 - 5 of the day time feeds so you can 'drop the others - these ones only offer as little as possible' (I'd do the 7am, 10.30ish one, 1.30ish, 4ish  & the last one of the day as the "big feeds" ( ... that should bring up your supply... do this for a few days
Then after say 3 days do what ever you can to get him to go at least 3 hours... take him for a walk give him an extra nap, what ever you can... then maybe over 2 weeks try to extend out to feeding a milk feed every 4 hours say 7,11,3,7 & then an evening feed.

I won't say this will cure the night wakings, but one would hope with less bigger feeds in the day the night feeding should reduce & you may feel confident about not feeding.

[debandbrian]

My ds is 7 months and he is still a bit all over the map, but his schedule was exactly like yours 2 months ago and I really had to bite the bullet to cut out all the bf snacking and bf every 2-4 hours at night.

I would say up his solids if you can. When I told the dr at our 6 mo checkup that we were doing 4 tbsp of solids (3x a day) she said I should be offering double that. I knew there was no way he'd eat 8 tbsp, but I make it and sometimes he comes close. A bit wasteful, but the dr said if he finishes a smaller amount then he may lose interest while you are trying to make more.

The other thing that worked for us was cutting out the night time feedings from what was in the Ferber book. This was before we discovered Baby Whisperer and knowing what I know now I might not have ds cry it out, but it did do the trick. Eliminating the night time feedings does not have to involve leaving a crying baby abandoned, though, and at the time we were desperate to get more than 2 hours of sleep in a row.  There's a schedule in that book wherein on the first night you allow feeding every 2 hours, for 8 minutes at the breast or 8 oz from the bottle. The next night you increase the time by a half an hour, and decrease the minutes/oz to 7. So by the 6th night you are up to 8 hours between feeds. There was a lot of protesting but during this you can still comfort with pu/pd, sh/pat or whatever works. My husband had to do a lot of the comforting bc the lo was so upset not being able to nurse. Within 2 weeks though, we went from being up every 2-4 hours to getting an 8-9 hour stretch.

Lastly when you get the naps longer - which we are still battling ourselves, he can't snack as much bc he is sleeping.  After 3 weeks of working on this he is still crying at naptime bc he wants to nurse, but I am doing my best to do the bf after naps instead of before, and it's slowly getting there.

Hang in there and good luck. It's hard to deny a crying baby a feed but if you can get him to bf longer and take more solids during the day then you can be confident when you are denying him the breast in the middle of the night. It's tough - I know - but it will get there.
Deborah