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fao mummies struggling with sleep issues

when daisy was born she frequently seemed uncomfortable and struggled to sleep day and night. this became more apparent at about 6 / 7 weeks when she seemed uninterested in a night feed but would wimper and toss and turn in her sleep. i nearly went off myhead by the time she was 4 months old after trying every wind and collic remody and resorting to sleeping upright in the spare bed cradling her in my arms all night. it was then she was daignosed and treated for silent reflux. it wa s a long recovery up until she was 12 months old and we tried every alternative medicine or therapy known to man in conjuction with meds to try and get her to sleep at night. up until she was 7 months old i always insisted she had her morning nap after breakfast in her cot. it could take 45 mins to get her to sleep but i persisted with this unti so i could shower change etc. any other sleep was battle after battle and i felt though i would spend up to an hour getting her to sleep for her only to sleep for 20 or 30 mins. i felt like i was so stressed all the time just cus i wanted to be able to put my baby to bed like every one told me to. it wasat this stage we would say daisy is a napper she wont sleep for more than 20 or 30 mins.i was moaning to my mum one day about how i wish she would sleep for an hour or longer like other babies do. and she said do you know keely one day you will loook at her and she will be 3 and going off to school just enjoy her. sit on the sofa enjoy your cuddle and have a REST!!!!! it was like a light had gone on!! and i just thought oh my god you are so right!! on the odd occassion i had my mum or an auntie round they would entertain daisy for me whilst i cleaned upstairs or something daisy would sleep on their lap for an hour or longer and they would say to me i thought you said she wont sleep!!!

It was at this point i set a new routine. after brekkie and playtime i would sit on sofa armed with my book or laptop tv on babe in arms within mins she wuld sleep and have a good sleep. same in afternoon after lunch. now i have to add she is my one and only child and i can do this i realise if i had other children i wouldnt have been able to do this, but it worked for us. if she slept better in the day she would sleep better at night i have ALWAYS said this. finally i began to really enjoy my life my baby everything and managed to close my eyes too in afternoon.

nighttime sleeptime canged several times over the months. she was always cuddled to sleep until 5 months then got restless so we put her in cot awake but lay on bed next to her until she went to sleep. at 7 months when she learnt to stand up this changed and she would cry and cry and cry until she was sick AWFUL AWFUL AWFUL so we revertted to cudding to sleep. at 11 months she would point to her cot to go in!!! at last a breakthrough

And now finally at 18 months i can say to daisy at nap time do you want to go bye byes in your cot and she nods her head!!!!!!! i sit in chair next to cot as i do at night and within minutes she will sleep. she is asleep in cot now and has been for 2 hours!

So just wanted to say there are some babies that will only do things when they are ready!!! enjoy your abbies and dont feel pressurised into doing what every one else does if it doesnt suit you and your family.

controlled crying was never an option for us as lo was always to poorly and we were to weak. i could never let my baby cry herself to sleep until the point she was sick i just couldnt do it. i know im in the minority but it all comes good in the end xxx

[Modified by: westbrom1 on 27 August 2009 13:57:08 ]

Replies

  • think this was more of therapy for me tahn advice lol so thank you for reading but i remeber thinking in the earlier days god will it ever get any easier and yes it does is what i wanted to say xxxx
  • Great post and so true. I was blessed with a reasonably good sleeper but the philosophy applies to loads of things. Crawling, walking etc. Babies will do it when they are ready. S x
  • great post. sometimes you feel it will never end but things do get better. i tried to put jessica in a routine and it didnt work, but eventually one emerged. now im worried cause at 7 montsh and 2 weeks she is not a great eater of my homemade purees. but i have to remind myself, she will eat more lumpier food when shes ready.
  • west brom when i was reading how you settled your lo to sleep i was thinking yep thats what i did!

    when she turned a year she still ahted being oput in her cot. So i put the cot side down and played peekaboo through the rails. she was really happy and from than night onwards she will always fall asleep in her cot at night.

    I turn light off, draw curtains, pop her in cot with teddy. and walk out the room. it can take up to 15mins for her to fall asleep but shes not unhappy up there.

    1/3 of babies can take a while befroe they settle themselves to sleep...we easily forget that and presume our lo must be the only one!

    discodiva- i remember when what seemed like all the los on BE round my daughters age were having finger foods and my daughter wasnt keen. Now I look back and wonder why i was so worried!
  • you have no idea how much that post has meant to me.

    Ive tried for nearly 5months to get my lo to nap in his cot because that's what the books tell you. Like you, i would spend an hour getting him off to sleep and he would only nap for 20mins. I thought he hated sleeping, i thought i was doing something wrong. I dreaded seeing him getting tired as i knew what lay ahead. He'd end up hysterical and i'd end up crying and feeling like a horrible failure.

    I asked my mum if i should keep trying to get him in his cot, i knew he'd fall asleep without tears if i let him sleep on me but i thought this was a really bad habit and somthing i had to break. She told me to give up, enjoy quiet time with him and stop reading those bloody books!!

    For the last 2 weeks, ive got us comfy on my bed, ive even got my travel pillow at the ready. Lo falls asleep, then i nod off too-this weeks he's slept for 1 and a half hours every morning. He's SO happy, he's not cried at all this week and neither have i-im now having the naps ive longed for, all my energy is going into playing with him and enjoying him not battling to get him to nap.

    The 'payoff' is that he has to be patient while i get ready in the morning-he lays next to me while i do my hair/makeup and plays with his toys.

    Up until reading your post, i still had big concerns that i was getting into very bad habits, that i was being lazy and should try harder to help him sleep on his own. I was especially worried about him going to nursery but he'll be 12months then, will only be there for 3mornings a weeks and maybe they'll have more luck with him! They've also got those swinging chairs for them to sleep in and he does sleep in his car seat/pram so hopefully that will work.

    Anyway, thanks again for sharing that, you've made my day! I wish i'd worked it all out alot sooner but im new to all this!xx
  • Oh poor you - sounds like a rough time. I definately agree on the cuddling and all that. I used to quite often enjoy just sitting with a book/laptop/tv remote while cole slept on me and I'm glad I dd cause he rarely does that any more. Good advice my cousin gave me when she said sod the housework, get the cuddles.

    Cole has always been a bad napper (never for more than 30 mins usually from early on) and a poor sleeper/feeder - don't think jaundice helped him tbh, and I just used to feed him to sleep then lay him down so I could shower etc and eventually he just grew out of that and I started putting him down every 2 hours for a nap which worked.

    We always go to him when he cries at night or if he doesn't settle straight away and usually he goes to sleep just fine - so all my ignoring the normal thing of putting them down to settle themself to sleep and leaving him to cry, controlled crying which I couldn't do hasn't harmed him at all. In fact we actually turned his cotbed into a bed when he started trying to climb into it after his milk and story at night and now he quite happily climbs into bed when he's ready - tonight he was tired so he picked up his story books, took them to the side to put them away and got into bed himself telling daddy (who was reading) 'shhhh' lol. He also now will go upstairs if he's tired and I say shall we go for a nap.

    Trust your instincts about your lo and enjoy the cuddles

  • Well done posting this, seems you've put a lot of people's minds at ease! I have to own up that up til my son was probably 7mths he only way he would nap for longer than 10mins was in my arms, so I just went with it (perfect excuse to ignore all the housework). I did worry about bad habits, but now from then on he's slept in his cot for a daytime nap of 1.5hrs+ and goes to bed like a dream at 7pm til 9.30am (with usually milk at 6am). So bad habits pah! trouble is now I have no excuse not to do my housework!
  • Bet you don't know what to do with yourself now Daisy sleeps!!!
    Carrie didnt sleep during the day unless in the buggy ubtil she was around 10months - although she was pretty much OK at night.
    I think we sometimes expect too much of them at the baby stages from all the TV and book "advice". Thinking back, once I stopped trying to get her to sleep in the day and let her set her own pace it seemed alot easier - although not working probably gave me this luxury.
    Carrie will sleep still for 2 hours in the afternoon and 8 months on sometimes I still don't know what to do with myself!!!
    xxx
  • Fab post!!

    We are the same, Ollie is almost 6mths and he has 3naps a day, sometimes he will be cuddled, sometimes fed to sleep and also sometimes he will just go off on his own.

    Do what feels right and ENJOY your babies!

    Gina who???!!! ;\)
  • lol im not the only one then!!!!! pixiebob your post really touched me cus you have obviously been through what i have! one of the reasons for this post is mainly cus daisy is sleeping in her cot in the day time which is brillliant cus it means i can get my ironing done instead of at night! but the other is that my friend had a daughter a few weeksa after me and she has always been a good sleeper day and night but would only go to sleep in her pushchair they would then carry her up to her cot at nighttime and she would sleep through. and still now at 17 months she will only sleep in her pushchair in the daytime. then 2 other good friends of mine have babies of 9 months old. the one has a terrible sleeper and the one has a real laid back baby who from few weeks old has gone to bed day and night in her cot on her own no problem . friend A has to cuddle her baby to sleep and until she was 5 months old she was in a pram rocking machine in the day!!!!! ( i had never heard of this but its a machine you put your crib or pram on and it rocks the baby whilst sleeping.) this week shes been upset saying what the hell am i gonna do when she gets older??? i just said she will let you know when shes ready she will get more pissed off with you holding her and want to spread out and get comfy. she has stopped going to baby groups becouse felt like mums who had babys sleeping through and independantly sleeping were gloating and making her feel like she wasnt trying enough. i am very aware that there is no manual that comes with these babies i have read all the baby books and tried to put it all into practice, and listened to all the great advice on here , but sometimes you have to listen to your insticts as kia says and go with whats best for you both.

    Oh and if anyone needs some reasurance about co sleeping at night im the one to talk to ha ha as this is another thing i resorted to with all our difficulties. when daisy wakes in the night and cant get back to sleep i scoop her up an dbring her in with us this maybee 12 1 2 3 4 or 5 am . Bad habit yes!!!! more so on my part than hers but out of desperation to sleep in the early days . now it seems to cruel to stop and cruel for me lol cus i just want to get back to bed asap!!!! she has the odd night where she doesnt wake at all and i mean odd night and me and oh look at each other all sad as its just not the same without her!!!!! All wrong i know but do i care NO!!! becouse again it works for all of us. me and lee have both said though we will hold our hands up and say yes we made a mistake if she is still co sleeping when she is a teenager!!!!
    enjoy your babies and thank you again for the therapy lol xx
  • Thanks for this post.
    Riley is so bad at getting to sleep, I regularly sit or walk around his room trying to cuddle him to sleep whilst I'm crying and he's crying and pinching me and pulling my hair. It's really hard, when if we're in the car he'll fall straight to sleep normally. He won't fall asleep on me that easily either though, I have to put his white noise cd on and let him have his 'episode' first. Sometimes I feed him to sleep, it just depends when he had his last bottle and how much as he can only take a few oz at a time or he will just scream even more.

    He tosses and turns and moans in his sleep in the night. I do think he may have silent reflux but the gp just thinks he has a milk intollerance and he gets stomach spasms which he will grow out of.

    I always wonder whether I should just leave him to cry every nap time but he just looks like he's in so much pain and he gets himself so worked up that he makes himself gag. I hate it when people say you should just leave him, they don't know what he's like!

    Thanks for the re-assurance. Its nice to know that I'm not the only one who's had to go through this! x

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