Author Topic: Success stories?  (Read 88902 times)

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Offline Colin Macs Mom

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Re: Success stories?
« Reply #30 on: December 02, 2008, 00:20:07 am »
Jessica
Mom to Colin Ronald, August 18, 2005
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Offline graemesmom

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Re: Success stories?
« Reply #31 on: January 09, 2009, 14:26:11 pm »
I have a success story! 8 days to sleepyland!  8 really tough days, but worth it!

My 7 month old was waking a lot, and since 4 months had been mostly sleeping with me -this started with an ear infection and I was worried about him so although I gave him something for the pain I also took him to bed. Then he started crying every time I tried to put him in the crib, so we started holding him for naps. I have a busy 3 year old too, so we just sort of lost track of his schedule for a while, since he is generally very easygoing during the day, bu tthe nights were getting worse and worse.
Here's what I did - starting 8 days ago only!

-did pu/pd in crib and didn't take him into my bed again, not even for a cuddle. I nursed him only once around 4 am. did this for 3 nights, and I could tell it was taking fewer and fewer times to pu/pd. Counting helped me not give up - I set the expectation low, I told myself I could do it 100 times if necessary. But I didn't have to.  He did wake up about 10 times the first few nights, but less and less each night. 

-He was waking a lot, so I thought maybe he was OT from all the Pu/pd so I had to concentrate on extending his naps
-To complicate it all, he got constipated for a few days and I think he woke more - but sorted this out and then he slept

- he still has a paci, but I don't think he uses it as a prop - he doesn't wake when it falls out.
-After 3 nights, I settled him with just my hand and voice, don't pu unless he really cries

-now after 8 nights he has slept 8 pm to 530 am for two nights in a row!  He is hungry and goes back to sleep after nursing at 5 ish.

I'm a very very happy mummy!!! and thanks so much to all the posts I read in my sleep deprived haze, the info on this site helped enormously!

Offline jana224

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Re: Success stories?
« Reply #32 on: January 09, 2009, 14:37:33 pm »
Just wanted to share that last week my 6 month old, who sleeps 12 hours straight through normally, was waking 6, 7, or 8 times a night for two nights.  I was at my wit's end trying to problem solve:  teeth, growth spurt, gas, reaction to solids, etc. etc.
In the end you know what it was?  She was cold.
Normally she sleeps in a fleece sleeper and sleeping bag at home because her room is chilly, but we are staying at a different house and I thought the room she was in was warm enough so I didn't put the sleeping bag on...
By the third night, I put it back on, and no more night wakings.  She sleeps in an undershirt, a fleece sleeper and the sleeping bag, and it was 21 degrees in her room, so she must like to be toasty warm. 
Just one of the things we might forget to check when dealing with NWs.
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Offline fireflymama

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Re: Success stories?
« Reply #33 on: October 25, 2009, 16:46:54 pm »
I can't even believe that I am posting on this thread.  I honestly never ever thought that things would improve.  My LO is now 10 months old.  For the first 5 1/2 months he woke every 30-60 minutes, EVERY night  :'(  I was an exhausted, depressed, stressed out and completely hopeless new mom.  At 3 months, after desperately reading every sleep book i could get my hands on, I found BW.  I charted everything...probably a bit too obsessively, but I was determined to make things better.  It took some time and A LOT of patience but at 5 1/2 months LO went from waking about 10 times a night to waking up just once!!!  I was beyond thrilled but also completely skeptical that this would actually stick.  To my surprise and joy, my LO has never gone back to waking up every hour.  We do have some rough nights here and there from teething, or colds but even then, it's nothing like the first 5 months.  I can't speak highly enough of this website and the support that I have received here.  The moms who have helped me through my tears, my rage, my desperation...I will never forget.  For those of you who are fumbling through sleepless night after night, please believe me when I say that it does get better and that the techniques in BW really do work (especially pu/pd for us.)  Hang in there.  I know how hard it is.  I know how frustrated and frantic you can feel.  I know how enraging it is to hear other moms talking about their 8 week olds who STTN!!!  You want to just punch them.  Only after I started sleeping better did I even realize that I wasn't fully enjoying being a mom and bonding with my new baby.  Once I started sleeping more and more, I noticed that my love for my baby grew exponentially.  It wasn't that I was mad at him and that's why I wasn't feeling the love.  I loved him but I was so, so messed up from the ongoing sleep deprivation, that I was barely functioning and just on autopilot.  Now that things are so much better, I can look back at that time (still with a pit in my stomach) and see that all of that difficulty, all of those sleepless nights spent with my baby, actually deepened our bond beyond words.  Sure, I would have loved for him to STTN months earlier but I feel like we worked through all of that difficulty together and I truly understand every bit of him.  I love him so much that my heart aches.  I am proud of him and proud of myself for making it through.
I won't lie.  I am terrified of having another baby.  I'm terrified of having a repeat experience but I don't think it's actually possible.  I will follow the advice of BW from day one with baby #2.  I have a much better sense of how to handle numerous, numerous sleep issues.  I know it will be different...but the internal damage that was done during those first 5 months is still hard to completely get over.  I see a therapist and I started on zoloft about 2 months ago.  I feel like I'm working through a lot and everything is just getting better and better.
Stay strong, stay positive but allow yourself to breakdown and cry.  It's not easy but it really, really does get better.  Sending my love and support to all of you.  Words cannot express the gratitude I feel for all the moms who have helped me during these past 10 months.  You truly are my angels.
All my love  :-*

Offline ArdenJean

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Re: Success stories?
« Reply #34 on: December 16, 2009, 20:58:22 pm »
First night trying to resolve NW in my 9-month old DD and already a great success!  I admit I was relying on memory instead of consulting the BW, so I thought the recommended solution to NW was only to increase daytime feedings, but DD is stubborn about eating and when she's done, she's done plus we BF so I thought that just didn't apply to us.  Then last night I was flipping through the BW and saw that I should try wake-to-sleep since she was waking at the same times consistently every night.  So I set my alarm to wake an hour before her 1:00 am wakeup and went to jostle her and stick the pacifier back in her mouth - she grunted and rolled her head back and forth, but stayed down, and then slept through her normal wakeup.  For the second waking, I wasn't able to pry the pacifier into her mouth without fearing to wake her completely so I just left it.  I believe if I had been able to get it in (she was rolled onto her tummy) she would have likely slept through the second waking as well.  But I still call sleeping from 7:40 - 4:30 with a 9:30 dream feed a great success!  My alarm will be set for wake-to-sleep tonight and I'll be sure to get that pacifier in her mouth to see if that was the difference or if she just needed to keep one NW for the beginning.  I'm cautiously hopeful that she'll again be STTN by the weekend, since she's responded so beautifully to PU/PD and other BW techniques.

Offline ArdenJean

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Re: Success stories?
« Reply #35 on: December 18, 2009, 13:24:51 pm »
Day three of W2S and I haven't been able to get her to sleep through the second NW.  I decided to address them one at a time, so last night I only set my alarm to go for the first one and let her wake on her own for the second.  She went through the first one as she had since the first day of W2S and then woke an hour earlier than her normal wakeup.  I plan to give her three days on her own hopefully only NW once and then try to W2S and get the second NW resolved.  Cross your fingers!  Already great improvements!

Offline Flossie's Mum

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Re: Success stories?
« Reply #36 on: March 21, 2010, 22:15:04 pm »
I’ve finally fulfilled my ambition of posting something on the success stories section as my dd has now been sleeping through for 3 weeks, so I consider that to be pretty much established – hooray! I’ve had some amazing help and support from the BW community through this site, especially these experts and moderators who I can’t thank enough:  Sara (Tersaseda), Emma (Brodie’s Mummy), Jo (Caleb’s Mummy), Yazzie (Adam’s Mum), Jane (Jay3), First Time Mom and Evgenia. I’m nowhere near their level of expertise, but thought I’d share what I’ve learnt in case its of any use to anyone reading who is in the same position I was in 4 months ago when I first started BWing with my then 5 month old.

My dd is 9 months old and although we aren’t 100% perfect on the sleep front, I’m more than happy with it. She currently sleeps for between 11.25 and 12.25 hours each night, rarely wakes, but if she does she settles herself within a minute or less. She usually only takes one decent nap (sometimes am, sometimes pm) and the other is usually short (always 35 mins) but she seems happy with the sleep she’s getting, so maybe that’s all she needs (she usually gets about 2 hours sleep in total during the day). When I started BWing I was absolutely desperate, although determined not to use CC/CIO, and I was fairly sceptical about it working even though I spoke about it confidently to my dh. I think in the back of my mind I was hoping we could just hire someone to come to our house and solve all our problems like magic (like Tracy used to do)!

DD started off life as a great sleeper (she is spirited but I think there’s a bit of angel in there somewhere too) and often slept for 6 or 7 hour stretches from being only a few weeks old, even though she was exclusively bf’d. Then I began to have problems bfing, really BAD problems (thats another story!) which resulted in alot of broken sleep for both of us and feeding was always very stressful and tearful. It also meant I was very inconsistent with her sleep. Sometimes she came into my bed when dh was working nights, sometimes I tried to keep her all night in her moses basket, which was sometimes upstairs and sometimes downstairs in the (light, noisy) living room. We had no bedtime routine, no nap routine, I always put the lights on to feed her during the night, I did LOADS of ap-ing (feeding to sleep, rocking, music, etc) ... the list of errors goes on! I tried the No-Cry sleep books and just couldn’t get them to work, in hindsight this was because I kept on trying to feed her to sleep and she needed to break that association, but I wasted alot of time on them. This resulted in my dd being even more confused (and my dh) and me getting less and less sleep and doing more and more ap-ing. By the time I came across Tracy’s book by chance on Amazon (and was attracted to all the positive reviews) she usually woke over 20 times per night, only slept in her crib if she was sneaked in there asleep, and never slept longer than 90 mins. Her longest nap time was 15 mins and she was permanently grumpy and tired (as was I). She had extremely long NWs too, her record was 5 hours (I’ll never forget it, from 1.00am til 6.00am when the birds were singing and the sun coming up).

My relationship with dh was getting seriously rocky and I would have signed an affidavit to swear I would never have another baby. I felt I was letting them both down and I was a miserable, exhausted, depressed, snappy, pale, spotty, anti-social, wreck. I didn’t enjoy my dd as much as I should have done, we hardly ever left the house and basic things like cooking a meal or speaking to my Mum seemed like an effort. In short, other than throwing health problems into the mix (and luckily my dd has had no reflux or teething or anything else to make things worse) it was about as bad as it gets for my family.

To begin with the BWing was very hard to stick with, it was such a radical departure from what I’d been doing and although he was a great support, dh didn’t have that much time to help (working and studying combo) but I’m SO glad I carried on. It took no time to see small changes but longer than I’d expected (about 3 months) to achieve the success we’re now enjoying. If you are just starting and finding it hard going, STICK WITH IT, it really works. If Tracy developed this from working with over 5000 babies, yours will be no different (like mine wasn’t, although I was convinced she would be). DD now goes straight to sleep as soon as she’s lowered into her cot and it takes only a couple of mins (into the dark room, into her grobag, into her cot) to settle her for naps and night time sleep.

I have resisted using pu/pd partly because I know it would be exhausting and partly because I’m unsure it would work on my spirited lo, I just see it as a last resort that so far I’ve never had to use. So to begin with (dd was 5mo) we used sh-pat and followed the plan in the BWSAYP book on p.32 (except for the pu/pd part), radically changing everything about how we facilitated dd’s sleep.  She found it hard at first, had to be helped to sleep constantly, and still woke alot during the night. But within a few days there were noticeable improvements, as the new experience of consistency began to sink in for her. Her NWs reduced in number and length and she started to take 3 naps a day (albeit with alot of support). She still wasn’t sleeping independently but at least I knew what to do when she woke.

Sometimes the sh-pat sessions were themselves exhausting and I regularly leaned over her crib for 90 or more minutes at a time, gradually reducing my sound and touch, only to find she woke up again after 5 minutes, then I started again. But slowly, over the weeks, there were improvements and then they plateaud .... I didn’t realise it at the time but I was intervening far too much. I used to stay in the room for all her naps and sleep right beside her crib (at the foot of my bed). Whenever she moved, murmured or made any sound at all, I was so paranoid that she would feel alone that I leapt up and intervened, never giving her the chance to settle herself and probably creating (or cementing) an inability to transition through sleep cycles.

Throughout this I sought support and advice from the naps and NW boards and always got kind, patient and knowledgeable input. I could never have got where I am without their help, not least because my interpretation of Tracy’s books was often limited and it took a fresh perspective to make me realise why. In one of her sleep interviews, Tracy says that ultimately you can’t keep relying on books, instead you have to learn to read your baby yourself. Like learning a new language, at first I found this prospect so intimidating as to seem virtually impossible. I didn’t understand more than a few phrases  but the ladies on these message boards are all fluent, they translated for me, and now I can at least understand the basics.
Eventually, we succeeded in a few significant changes (in no particular order) which got us here:

1.   Dropping the cn (6.5mo) which had always been the easiest nap of the day, then one day, literally without warning, dd refused it and never took one since!

2.   Dropping the df (at 8mo) which I phased out gradually. By this time, dd was having one bottle of formula a day at the df (dh loved to do it), so I watered it down more and more over about 8 days then stopped it altogether. All in all it was a success and totally painless, she woke around that time, habitually, for a few nights afterwards but was easy to resettle.

3.   Dropping the night feeding altogether (8m 1w old). The first time she STTN was the first night with no feeding at all. She had been keeping up a habitual (but genuine ‘learned hunger’) feed around 3am for ages and I was having limited success in reducing the time I did it for (it was a bf). Then she slept through til 5.30am and the habit was broken, so I resolved not to give her any more NFs again. Instead she had the same quantity of milk before bedtime (before PJs) to ‘tank her up.’ It was tempting to give her a bit of milk when she woke around that time for a few nights, as it sometimes took up to an hour to resettle her, but within a week or so she slept through that time. A Peadiatrician told me that a baby needs to be about 16lb before their stomach is large enough to hold enough food/milk to keep them going through the night - this weight is reached at different ages for different LOs so its best to go by weight rather than age when working out whether its fair to expect your LO not to need night feeds. As it happens, my DD wasn't weighed on the day she first STTN, but from working it out on her chart she was about ... 16lbs!

4.   Sleeping in her own cot in her own room. DD was in a moses basket at first, then an intermediate crib, so when it was time to move her into her own room (7mo), I did it gradually by moving the crib a foot or so at a time, out of our room, across the landing and into her room over several days. The crib then sat inside her new larger cot for a few nights until she got used to that and finally she went into her big new cot. It worked beautifully and she accepted the changes easily. In hindsight she should have been moved sooner as dh and I really were tiptoeing around our bedroom, whispering, cautious of even turning over in case it made a noise!

5.   Sleeping truly independently. DD was about 6mo before I had the confidence and courage to really put her down awake and not intervene to get her off to sleep. She took to it instantly, I was amazed! From then on I did less and less to put her down and now its just the right wind down and atmosphere in the room forming a sleep cue, so I just put her grobag on, pop her in the cot with some goodnight words and she sends herself off.

6.   Resettling herself. I never properly identified the mantra cry so just thought she didn’t have one and that didn’t apply to us, but I was intervening too much when she woke (or before she woke). Sara the Naps Moderator switched the lightbulb on for me by convincing me to listen when she stirred and hang back, to really wait for the ‘I need you’ cry and not go in unless I heard it. I’m not very good at cries, but that one rises in pitch and volume and never lets up. It made an enormous difference immediately, as dd had been mantra crying about 90% of the time that I was rushing to her side! Overnight she started resettling herself most of the time once I let her and she never cried for more than 2 minutes maximum (usually more like 10 seconds on average). I felt terrible thinking of all the times she had been trying to settle herself and I dived on her, touching, patting, sh-ing, talking, etc. I must have been annoying her so much!

7.   Tweaking and almost perfecting the EASY routine, especially the A times. We’re still not quite there as her naps aren’t always great, but adjusting A times has been key in improving both day and night sleep for us. At first I didn’t see how they could make much difference, especially not adjusting by 5 or 10 minutes, but they really do, and sleep really does beget sleep. I can see now when my LO is OT (and that she was OT for months before this programme began to help us) and the EWs this causes are like the false dawn I get after a night of stress or a few drinks (a distant memory!), and truly cannot be helped by a later bedtime as I had tried at first.

8.          Not being changed at night. My LO has always been in real nappies, which are great for the bank balance/conscience, but need changing more frequently than disposables. Once I was trying to get her to STTN I started using disposables at night only, in the hope she wouldn't need changing. I tried every brand but every night at least once she had a soaked leg and clothing (she slept lying on her side) and everything had to come off and be changed, which was hardly sleep-inducing. All Mums who use disposables seem to be loyal to one brand and many won't agree with me, but I found when I tried them last (because they're the most expensive!) that Pampers night time ones worked! They fitted perfectly and can hold 12 hours worth of wee! And in the end they cost less, because I literally only every use one pernight, instead of 2 or 3 cheaper ones.

I hope some of this can help you if you’re in the same place I was in a few months ago, and however hard you’re finding it, it will pass quickly and you’ll be glad you stuck with it. Although I felt like I was in hell for a while, I can honestly say I'm glad to have gone through it all, as through trying to really understand my baby's communications, I feel miles closer to her, and that I know her so much better. One thing I read which helped me during long and difficult NWs was that you should imagine yourself in 5 or 10 years time looking back at this .... will you be proud of how you handled this situation?
Finally, here are some little tips that I learned the hard way!

•   Get a chair or stool for marathon sh-pat sessions, otherwise your back may never recover! I found a small child’s chair was perfect for sitting alongside my dd’s crib

•   If you hear your LO stirring for a NW/EW you will have at least 10 or 20 seconds grace before you may be needed so use the time to sip your water/visit the loo, otherwise you’ll need to when you are stuck in there for ages!

•   Darken the room by really blacking it out, use foil, paper, anything. We currently have a blackout blind AND a black tablecloth nailed over the window in DDs room, It doesn’t exactly look like a showroom but it works!

•   Radio 4/BBC World Service on a low volume is a fine substitute for a white noise machine (lovely talking voices, hardly any music), and if you get it through a clock radio, you can always see the time when you’re in the dark with your LO

•   Grobags instead of blankets (once they’re a few months old and can’t wriggle inside them) can’t be kicked off or over the head. Genius.

•   Tuck your child’s lovey in between you when you feed so it seems safe and familiar, and picks up your scent too. I bf’d my dd and tucked the lovey over the other breast during feeds.

•   When your LO is tiny, cold sheets can wake them up when they are laid down, so dh used to take the mattress out of the moses basket and lay on it for 5 mins so warm it up while I was winding dd down. DH liked having this job and DD got the scent of Daddy on the sheets too.

•   If you have to get your LO to take a nap somewhere else (don't make a habit of it), make it the cn, and buy a travel cot. Ours was a pop-up one that folded up to a very small neat size in a little bag, and was £10 from ebay – the best and most well-used thing we ever bought, I think! You can take your familiar sheet, lovey, music, etc with you to make a home away from home for sleeping purposes.

•   If you have an ipod or MP3, put your wind down music on it for naps away from home, and get a battery operated speaker, so it can be used abroad, in the car, in a power cut, anywhere!

•   You have to be committed to see changes, and you have to make your LO’s sleep a priority, but sometimes its okay to do things to protect your mental/emotional health, like go out and let your LO have a sling/pram/car nap, see friends, get a coffee or go shoe shopping - take a break from baby/sleep obsessing, just for a couple of hours and it will recharge your batteries .... and if you’ve been really stressed it can break the cycle of transmitting this to your LO and I’ve found it can somehow reboot your BWing if you’re at that point.

Good luck, you can do it!
Louise
« Last Edit: March 22, 2010, 10:28:43 am by Flossie's Mum »

Offline ~Sara~

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Re: Success stories?
« Reply #37 on: March 22, 2010, 16:39:56 pm »
Louise, I am just bawling over here from happiness!!  I am so, so, so (ad infinitum) proud of you and Ms. Flossie :)  Thank you for sharing all that you've learned through your Baby Whispering journey!  Would you believe it if I said that YOU are now the expert? ;) *hugs*
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Offline bbandit

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Re: Success stories?
« Reply #38 on: April 16, 2010, 14:23:04 pm »
 ;D  I hope I'm not celebrating my success prematurely, but I'm just so thrilled w/ what my little man has accomplished.  He is 7 1/2 weeks old and has just learned to drift off to sleep on his own.  I'm so excited by this!!  Since about 3 or 4 weeks old, he has really struggled to fall asleep even if we are holding him.  He would squirm, kick and cry until he'd just give up in exhaustion.  Well, this week we REALLY started to watch his awake time and dialed it back down to just 45 minutes.  On a whim, while he was not settling in my arms I thought, "I wonder if he doesn't want to be held?".  Lo and behold, he was quiet when I laid him down.  He just looked around, sucked on his paci and got drowsy.  Eventually he fussed, I went in and did a quick hold and "shh", laid him back down and he drifted off to sleep on his own.  I could NOT believe it.  Naps are still a little bit more of a struggle, but with one or two visits from mom reassuring him, he's going to sleep on his own.  Who knew that my holding him while crying could be what was causing the sleep issue in the first place??? 

Thanks for all the advice!!  Now if I can just get him past the 20, 30 and 40 minute wakes up during nap time we'll be in great shape!! 

Thanks,
Trisha

Offline lilredhen89

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Re: Success stories?
« Reply #39 on: June 06, 2010, 16:35:32 pm »
Well, I didn't post the first time DS started STTN at 2.5 months, and I'm glad I didn't, because at 4 months it ended, and the NW's continuef on for the next few months. I had practically forgotten what it was like. However, at 7.5 months, he has been STTN from 8:30pm-8am for over a month now.

There were several things that I believe influenced this. First, he had become a bit binky dependent because of teething, and after just a couple of days of using the gentle removal plan, he was down to one or two wakings. For the longest time, I was trying to avoid feeding him for ANY of his wakings, but then I realized that this had dragged on since his last GS, so I began feeding him if he woke up after 4am. We started solids when he turned 6 months, and I think that helped as he is now getting what he needs during the day without that 5am feed. I guess my milk just wasn't quite enough for him any more.

The final thing that changed (and I think this made the biggest difference) was that I stopped hanging around so long. For awhile, he had been falling asleep on his own without any trouble, at both nap and bed times. With teething though, he got a litle clingy and we were stuck in a pattern where I had to go in after 15 minutes to help him settle to sleep. Finally, I realized that he had become dependent on me to help him get to sleep, so when he would roll around and get himself stuck, I would just go in, turn him back around, give him his paci, say our key phrase and leave. Within two naps, he settled himself in 10 minutes (up in the top corner of his crib), and within a few days, he STTN for the first time in months, and it has continued! I just needed to step back and let him do things on his own.
-Dani
Mommy to William Arthur - 10/23/09
and Benjamin Atticus - 05/05/11




Offline ima1015

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Re: Success stories?
« Reply #40 on: November 16, 2010, 07:42:37 am »
I need a success story with 3-3.5 months old. anyone have?

Offline lilredhen89

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Re: Success stories?
« Reply #41 on: November 16, 2010, 13:20:11 pm »
Ima1015 - You may be hard-pressed to find a lasting success story for a baby that young. My DS started sleeping through at 2.5 months, but by 4 months was waking 2-3 times a night, which lasted for over two months.  Granted, I'm sure you can cut down on night wakings, but many LOs at that age still need one feed in the early AM.  This is what I found anyway, after months of struggling to never feed him unless he clearly seemed hungry.  We did the DF, we did a 4 or 5am feed, then he would sleep unti WU time.  This was much less stressful, and he eventually stopped waking for the morning feed (after we started solids). So my biggest advice is to not be too hard on yourself or expect too much from yourself and your LO. Full STTN will come with age and continued sleep training, but for now just figure out what will work to get both of you the most sleep.
-Dani
Mommy to William Arthur - 10/23/09
and Benjamin Atticus - 05/05/11




Offline ceilidhf

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Re: Success stories?
« Reply #42 on: January 07, 2012, 07:16:10 am »
Hello! This is my first time posting here, and wasn't sure whether to post here or in the PU/PD success stories...A little background about my situation:
I have a 4 and a half year old daughter and a 6 month old son. My daughter was "spirited" (aka high maintenance) from day one and we allowed her to rule our lives - she never napped well and slept in our bed for 3 and a half years! When my son was born, I was determined not to make the same mistakes with him and, at first, it seemed that there would be no issue as he was/is such an easy, laid back baby. For the first 3 months he napped and slept really well - though always after rocking or breast feeding. There were very few wakings - every 3-4 hours to feed at night, which I could cope with. At 3 months, he started sleeping for 5-6 hour stretches and I thought we had cracked it. However, then he went through a growth spurt and I began feeding at night every 2 hours or so. Right after that he began waking with teething pains so every two hours or so I would get up, rock him, and comfort him back to sleep. I only realised this had become a real problem when, after 2 months, he was still waking every 2 hours, every night - you could set your clock by him! I had been reading these boards and also started reading Tracy's books and decided that I needed to act NOW! A week ago, I tweaked my daytime routine to EASY and started PU/PD for sleeping and naps. The first time I used it, he got really mad and cried for about 20 minutes but napped for an hour and a half - in two months he had not napped longer than 30 minutes unless in the stroller! Next naptime he only cried for 10 minutes and napped another hour and a half. Bedtime was a little tougher - cried for about 20 minutes and LOTS of PU/PD BUT he slept for 6 hours - and this was only the first day!!!!!!!!!! Next day was the same, but less PU/PD needed and another 6 hours at night - on waking he went back to sleep by himself after about 10 minutes of baby talk. The third night we got 12 hours, and the fourth, too. The fifth day was a disaster as hubby was in charge while I was out with my daughter. He didn't stick to the routine and fed him to sleep. That night he was up every 2 hours again and took half an hour to settle each time. Makes me really appreciate how important routine and consistency is. I am just so happy to be getting some sleep again! Thank You all for your help and advice... ;D

Offline susankula

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Re: Success stories?
« Reply #43 on: May 11, 2012, 18:52:39 pm »
This may be a glimmer of hope to all mom's out there having a tough time....My (almost) 8 month old daughter started waking up 5-7 times a night after sleeping through the night since 13 weeks.  It only happened for a few nights, but I knew I had to change something quick!  She had been sleeping with a woombie and pacifer but I suspected these were the problem.  I threw the pacifiers away and took away the woombie (I used a sleeping bag called a zipadeezip for a week, then used nothing).  I was expecting to have quite a few sleepless nights but I was totally wrong!   She fussed for about 30 mins the next 3 nap/bedtimes and that's it!  I think that we (moms) are attached to some of these props more than the babies! :) Stay strong and remember that it gets better!

Offline ~Sara~

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Re: Success stories?
« Reply #44 on: May 25, 2012, 21:52:39 pm »
Thanks for sharing, ladies!  It gives us all lots of encouragement :)
*formerly tersaseda*