🚨 Advance warning 🚨 This forum will be closing on 1st May – please see our pinned thread for more information.
Options
sleeping is a nightmare
Jason has never been a good sleeper. He has gone through periods when it is better than others but he's nearly 9 months old and he slept till 5 once. Other than that he is restless, he needs his dummy back in, he needs fed, he needs a cuddle, on and on all night I am up to him around 10 times and it is miserable.
Im back to work now and I feel like I am going to get physically or mentaly ill if I dont get some sleep. The last 2 weeks have been the worst yet since he started going to nursery. He goes to bed beautifully at 7. He goes down in his cot awake and babbles and sings himself to sleep. Then he wakes at 12 and screams till I pick him up. He falls asleep the minute I lift him and screams the second I put him down.
I offer him a bottle and check his nappy. Then I try and pat his back, stroke his head etc any way of soothing him without lifting him but he throws a full on thrashing about tantrum. I've tried cc but he rolls onto his front and crawls into a corner of the cot and gets stuck so there is no way he can sooth himself back to sleep. I go in and put him back on his back but as soon as I leave the room he is back on all fours again. We tried this for 3 hours on monday and it just didn't work. The only way he will go back to sleep is in bed with me.
I havent minded this much in the past but I feel he is getting too old for it now and its not safe. One night I fell asleep and he woke and crawled off the side of the bed and cut his nose. So now when he is in bed with me I am wide awake and tertified of falling asleep. I am at a total loss to know what to do and desperately want him to have a good sleep for his sake and mine.
Any ideas? My instinct is that at the minute he is unsettled and insecure because of me going back to work but I am worried that I am spoiling him and setting myself up for a nightmare getting him to sleep in his own bed when he is older.
Im back to work now and I feel like I am going to get physically or mentaly ill if I dont get some sleep. The last 2 weeks have been the worst yet since he started going to nursery. He goes to bed beautifully at 7. He goes down in his cot awake and babbles and sings himself to sleep. Then he wakes at 12 and screams till I pick him up. He falls asleep the minute I lift him and screams the second I put him down.
I offer him a bottle and check his nappy. Then I try and pat his back, stroke his head etc any way of soothing him without lifting him but he throws a full on thrashing about tantrum. I've tried cc but he rolls onto his front and crawls into a corner of the cot and gets stuck so there is no way he can sooth himself back to sleep. I go in and put him back on his back but as soon as I leave the room he is back on all fours again. We tried this for 3 hours on monday and it just didn't work. The only way he will go back to sleep is in bed with me.
I havent minded this much in the past but I feel he is getting too old for it now and its not safe. One night I fell asleep and he woke and crawled off the side of the bed and cut his nose. So now when he is in bed with me I am wide awake and tertified of falling asleep. I am at a total loss to know what to do and desperately want him to have a good sleep for his sake and mine.
Any ideas? My instinct is that at the minute he is unsettled and insecure because of me going back to work but I am worried that I am spoiling him and setting myself up for a nightmare getting him to sleep in his own bed when he is older.
0
Replies
Have you spoken to your HV about it? That's why I started it with Sophia and while I don't listen to everything they say she told me it was the only way to go and would even set up camp in my house at night to support me- we didn't need it though!
I'm sure separation anxiety has something to do with it, it kicks in around 7 months and will be compounded with you going back to work but they do need to learn to fall asleep and go back to sleep on their own.
cc can take several weeks too, it isn't a quick fix for the most but I think it's success rate is high and lots of mums won't admit that they have done it but I admitted at baby group I had and sheepishly most of the mums admitted they had to do it to!
Not to say this is the only option hun but it's the one that worked for us!! Good luck xxxx
Doesnt Jason have a comfort blanket? Does this not settle him?For some reason Isobelle has stopped needing hers in the day but i always put it in her cot at night just incase because she has never had a dummy.
After the control crying Isobelle slept from 7pm-5am and has done ever since. In the last month she has slept from 6.30-6am!!Its only when she has been teething that i have a wake up call of 3am.
I know that your similar to me in terms of dealing with jason by yourself at night and it is hard so i really think you need to do some cc with him. Its not for everyone like mrs-stb said but everyones circumstances are different. Ive never looked back after we did control crying with izzy. As i said above,izzy has never had a dummy and because i breastfed her she was comforting from me all the time and as soon as i put her down in the cot she would cry because her comfort had gone. If she was ill etc i wouldnt do it because she needed the cuddles but you can judge when you know they are having you on.
I trust my instinct 100% so if you think its nursey then your probably right. He spent 9 months inside you then 9 months full time with you so he probably doesnt know whether he is coming or going. In a few weeks it will all calm down. Izzy has never been in our bed because i just couldnt do it incase hubby rolled over and squashed her so ive always put her back in the cot. Perhaps showing jason that he cant use your bed anymore would be best for you both.
Izzy is a right monkey at the minute,she knows exactly how swindle what she wants. She is too cute sometimes to give in.
I hope you get some sleep soon but start with a positive head that this will work really well for you in a couple of weeks. My mum said to me when izzy wouldnt go down at night,dont think that its negative because its part of izzy's development.You need to show your baby how to sleep and it was true.
HTH and i must apologies for poor grammer. Ive typed this with one hand whilst izzy is feeding.
H xx
I really understand what you are going through. I've had a terrible time with my DS and sleep. He is now 8 months old and still not sleeping through - never has.
I BF so he uses me for comfort a lot, and has 6 teeth already with more on the way, that combined with colds and sickness bugs it feels like we are always doing sleep training to try and get things back on track.
DS was feeding every 2 hours at night, and everyone told me to let him cry it out as there was no way he could be hungry at his age. Now he is on solids I'm shocked somedays at how much he eats, so looking back I do think it was genuine hunger that was waking him in the night.
At the moment, as he is teething he's off his food a little in the day and when he's not had much he wakes twice a night for a feed. So I know sometimes it can be genuine hunger. Saying that we have had times, when like you, he'll cry and just stop when he's picked up. He would do this all through the night sometimes. It's got a little better since we've gone through the self settling...AGAIN
How does he sleep in the day? My DS is terrible and will only nap for about 30min twice a day, and I've tried everything to get him to sleep longer. He's just always been a bad sleeper.
I've gone on and on there, and don't think I've helped much but just want to say you are not on you own. Sleep deprivation is like torture. I also do almost all of the nightwaking myself too as hubby uses the excuse he has to get up and work :evil:
I'm not sure how true this is but so many people have told me the little boys are much harder work and are far more demanding than little girls. It feels true for me!
I've also tried CC on and off for months, but it just doesn't seem to work for us and he gets so worked up he sleeps evem worse after and we both end up extremely stressed. It's so tough isn't it, especially when everyone else you know has babies that sleep great :roll:
xx
Jason is on and off with food and sometimes goes all day with a few oz of milk and a few mouthfuls of food so sometimes he is genuinly hungry when he wakes up. That doesn't bother me its the going back to sleep part. I long for when he was a few weeks old and would guzzle a bottle and fall back to sleep!
One of the big problems with cc is that oh gets up at 4am for work so when we have tried cc before J wakes at 12 and I have given up at 3.30 so oh has literally had no sleep and its really not fair when he has to go and work a 14 hour shift.
He was fussing this afternoon and wouldn't settle for his nap and it only took 5 mins if cc and he was asleep! Why is it so much harder at night! He's a stubborn little monkey thats for sure!
Oh well we'll get there eventually I'm sure. He's snoring away in his cot now angelically. I wonder how long it will last!
My Lo is awful at sleeping too and at 10months old he slept through for the first time last week
Is your lo in your room or could you out his cot in your room to try? I could never understand why my Lo keep waking up, until i found out that he was slightly constipated and kept having tummy ache, hence waking up because of that. Once the med's kicked in he was so much better. Do you think anything else is casuing him to wake?
I hope you get sorted soon chick, i know how tired you must be. You can never sleep well when they are in bed with you xxxx