we need sleep help

[marie3246]

A is the worst sleeper. She usually wakes up at 1, 3, 5, 7. Sometimes less, sometimes more. The only way that has worked to get her back to sleep is to feed her and even then that doesn't always work. We have tried having h go in and calm her but no amount of rocking or giving her paci or anything works. So I am up all night every night and its killing me. I have tried feeding her less at each one and then she just won't go back to sleep after and just cries and cries. If we go in and dont feed she goes nuts if we leave.

I don't know what to do, I feel awful saying this but I just want to run away for 1 night.

[cricketwife]

I'm so sorry. That must be really hard. I don't know anything about sleep training but would it be possible for your H to give her bottles for one night so that you can get some sleep?

[teatimefor2]

I'm on the app. How old is she?

[bananapancakes]

No advice, just hugs! She sounds a lot like L so I know his tough it is. I just ordered the Sleep Lady's book and I'm hoping it may have some solutions for us. I'll let you know if it works for us.

[karinothing]

Sorry That is how DS was too, for us it just took time. If you want you can try CIO, we loosely did the ferber method at 8 months. However, it never got him to sleep longer, just got him to fall alseep when we put him down.

[Deleted]

Sorry, I know how hard that is. J was absolutely awful and never slept more than 2 hours until he was 13 months. The girls do a 4 or 5 hr stretch at first but then are up every 1.5 to 2 hours. It's so hard. I haven't tried CIO because the girls have weight gain issues and need to eat but that may be an option for you. But mostly, I just want to say it sucks but it is temporary. One day we will all sleep again.

[jeaniebueller]

Has that been her regular sleeping pattern forever, or is this somewhat new?

[soozy87]

My son was doing this at 6 months, but add in an 11:00 wake up also. It was terrible. We did sleep training on the advice of our doctor and since then our lives are so much better. We are all rested and he is so much happier. It sucks when you are going through it, but so much better on the other side.

[Deleted]

IF you are comfortable with CIO 6-7 months is a great time because she can't stand up in her crib yet.

[miniroller]

Non-mom who saw your thread in 'recents' & just wanted to offer you lots of hugs!! No matter what it feels like, I promise this time won't last forever!!

[Deleted]

I am so sorry. And I feel you.
And I hate to even say it but my 7 month old has been doing this birth. It sucks. I can relate.

Honestly, after the second wake up for the longest time I was just putting him in his swing and calling it a night. It helped.

Then he outgrew it/got uncomfortable there too.

Things I try now that help but it's a toss up as to what works:

*Leaving the white noise on all night
*Propping his head up on a Boppy
*giving him a blanket (He likes to suck the satin ends)
*Motrin along with gripe water/gas drops or in some combo (works great some nights, not at all the next)

He is actually hungry at about every other wakeup so I keep feeding him. I do think he needs to eat more during the day but I can't make him. The only thing that will make that better is time.

I am opposed to CIO for him. I left him for 15 minutes to take a shower and get DDs pjs on and he screamed and screamed and took an hour to settle him down after that. He also goes down just fine/puts himself to sleep no problem, he's just up a lot.

Right now I'm just lucky he's happy and easy all day.

I guess all I have for you is love and feelings. Hang in there.

[marie3246]

Sept 26, 2014 4:31:47 GMT -5 teatimefor2 said:

I'm on the app. How old is she?

She will be 7 months on the 10th.

[marie3246]

Sept 26, 2014 6:50:50 GMT -5 karinothing said:

Sorry That is how DS was too, for us it just took time. If you want you can try CIO, we loosely did the ferber method at 8 months. However, it never got him to sleep longer, just got him to fall alseep when we put him down.

She falls asleep fine when we put her down. She is always awake and falls asleep on her own. She just cannot stay asleep at all. We have had a few nights where she slept all the way til 5( probably 7 nights total) and we try to replicate it again but it never works.

[marie3246]

Sept 26, 2014 7:12:02 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

Has that been her regular sleeping pattern forever, or is this somewhat new?

At 12 weeks she was sleeping til 5 am that lasted about 3 weeks, then we moved, traveled, etc and she's been up like this since then.

[marie3246]

Sept 26, 2014 7:24:36 GMT -5 @lcap said:

She's old enough to try CIO if you're comfortable with that. Do you put her down on her back? Maybe try putting her down in her belly to see if that helps? My kids were all belly sleepers and at six months she's old enough to roll both ways.

Or, if she seems to prefer back sleeping, maybe try the Merlin Sleepsuit? I never used it but I've heard good things about it.

We put her on her back in the merlin sleep suit. We have tried the sleep sacks (just ones from target) and she won't fall asleep in them. She seems to like the merlin sleep suit, but still won't stay asleep.

We think we are comfortable with CIO, but how exactly does it work? We have tried letting her cry and then go in after awhile to try and settle her but as soon as we go in she cries harder and harder and no patting or trying to soothe her unless I feed her.

[marie3246]

Sept 26, 2014 7:51:14 GMT -5 soozy87 said:

My son was doing this at 6 months, but add in an 11:00 wake up also. It was terrible. We did sleep training on the advice of our doctor and since then our lives are so much better. We are all rested and he is so much happier. It sucks when you are going through it, but so much better on the other side.

What exactly do we need to do to sleep train? I have read a bit about it and we have let her cry but she never seems to settle. I know we weren't fully committed and doing it right.

[marie3246]

Sept 26, 2014 8:16:50 GMT -5 deej said:

This was J. Even now, he's up twice a night. If you're comfortable with it, I would try co-sleeping. That's what helped us.

We tried but then I can't sleep, she grunts and makes all kind of noises and I just end up even more tired if possible.

[marie3246]

Sept 26, 2014 10:02:21 GMT -5 @lcap said:

Sept 26, 2014 9:58:58 GMT -5 marie3246 said:

We put her on her back in the merlin sleep suit. We have tried the sleep sacks (just ones from target) and she won't fall asleep in them. She seems to like the merlin sleep suit, but still won't stay asleep.

We think we are comfortable with CIO, but how exactly does it work? We have tried letting her cry and then go in after awhile to try and settle her but as soon as we go in she cries harder and harder and no patting or trying to soothe her unless I feed her.

The Ferber method doesn't work for all kids. My older son was like your dd. The check ins just upset him more. You might need to try CIO to extinction. Which means you let her CIO for some predeterminrd period of time (like an hour) and don't go in at all. Over time, as she learns to self soothe, the crying jags should decrease in length. 

OK we have let her cry for what felt like an hour and she was it was in waves, she would cry really hard, seem like she was calming and then ramp it up again. Then h would try and soothe her and she just screamed much harder until I fed her and put her down again. When she cries really hard I feel like there is something wrong. Like last night she wouldn't go back to sleep, we changed her and she seemed hot,no fever but we changed her clothes into a cooler outfit and she went down finally.

[soozy87]

Sept 26, 2014 10:01:03 GMT -5 marie3246 said:

Sept 26, 2014 7:51:14 GMT -5 soozy87 said:

My son was doing this at 6 months, but add in an 11:00 wake up also. It was terrible. We did sleep training on the advice of our doctor and since then our lives are so much better. We are all rested and he is so much happier. It sucks when you are going through it, but so much better on the other side.

What exactly do we need to do to sleep train? I have read a bit about it and we have let her cry but she never seems to settle. I know we weren't fully committed and doing it right.

We did a type of cry it out I guess. We did our nightly routine (bath, bottle) and then put him into his bed. He takes a pacifier so we gave that to him and then told him goodnight and left. The first night he cried for a while, I don't remember how long, maybe 30-45 minutes. The next night he cried for 15-20 minutes, the third night for 5ish and then it was done. The middle of the night wake ups decreased on their own from there too. We knew that he wasn't hungry so we let him cry. When he would wake up it wasn't hard to get him back to sleep, we just had to find the pacifier for him and leave. A friend also suggested the Wubanub, he could find that on his own at this age and it wouldn't roll away from him. Once we gave him this (night 2) the middle of the night wake ups pretty much ended. 

We started by doing the 3, 5, 10 minute checks but we went away from that quickly because they weren't helping him. I can remember sitting at home with him the first morning after he woke up and he was so sad and tired and I called my husband at work crying because I didn't know if I could do it again. But we talked about it again that night and said that the first night that we just went through would be for nothing basically if we didn't stick with it. It got better that night and better the next night.

Since we did this about 5.5 months ago there have only been a couple of nights that he has not slept through the night and we can explain those by being out of town or him being sick. Naps in his crib kind of just happened after this too. The first 6 months were terrible though and even now every night I go to bed and think that maybe tonight is the night when the magic of sleep ends.

I hope that you guys can get some sleep soon!

[shelbyann]

My DD is about the same age and this is her sleep pattern too. We bed-share and I just nurse her when she wakes up and we both go back to sleep relatively quickly.

We haven't done formal sleep training/CIO but I have left her crying for up to 30-40 min (on solo parenting nights when I was just DONE) and she showed no sign of slowing down or soothing, just escalated the whole time. We will probably do some form of sleep training eventually because she can't be in our bed forever, but it's working for us right now.

[marie3246]

Thanks everyone. I don't know what I would do without this board. She is easy to put down for the first time, rarely cries and just goes right to sleep. Naps are the same way. Super easy. It's just the middle of the night that she won't go back to sleep without feeding. When she wakes up the first time, we have tried just giving her a a paci (she has the wubanub and can grab it herself) so that doesn't usually help. Should I try changing her in the middle of the night (I know she probably has peed, but I guess that doesn't help us stay sleeping)

Or do I just let her cry? We don't rush to her right away currently and its usually after we both can't take anymore crying and it just keeps getting worse. Should we just keep letting her cry? No checks? How long is too long to let it go on?

I will try the tummy sleeping, maybe that is the secret! When I got her this am, she had rolled in the merlin sleep suit and was all pissed, but that was a first!

[shelbyann]

Do you have a sense of how much she eats during the day? Maybe work on increasing her intake while she's awake?

We have been working on this and I think it has helped with the night wake ups a tiny bit.

[marie3246]

Sept 26, 2014 11:11:04 GMT -5 shelbyann said:

Do you have a sense of how much she eats during the day? Maybe work on increasing her intake while she's awake?

We have been working on this and I think it has helped with the night wake ups a tiny bit.

Not really. We have been traveling a lot, so I have just continuing to bf her every 2 hours or so, but I'm not sure how much she gets. We also have been doing one solid meal a day. I will work on trying to increase the amount she eats during the day. 

Ok, so I just put her down in a sleep sack and she rolled to her side and went right to sleep. Maybe she just wants to roll at night! We might wait to try the CIO until we are home on Sunday night but this would be amazing if the sleep sack works. 

[jeaniebueller]

I know this is my answer for everything sleep related, but could she be cutting teeth?

[teatimefor2]

Sept 26, 2014 9:51:54 GMT -5 marie3246 said:

Sept 26, 2014 4:31:47 GMT -5 teatimefor2 said:

I'm on the app. How old is she?

She will be 7 months on the 10th.

I saw in the thread that you've traveled and moved in this time.  After a lot of debate, after our international move and loads of travel we did CIO.  Before that time, DS was a great sleeper, only one wake-up a night, if that and not for food. After two weeks all over the place, he was waking up nearly every.45.minutes.  It was hell.  Only nursing would calm him down.  I met with our new pedi who suggested CIO.  He was seven months old.

It was horrible and nearly broke my heart.  He cried a lot that first night at every wake up and I was so tired that I drifted in and out of sleep.  The first night was a Friday.  In three days, it was over and worked great.  He's back to being an awesome sleeper (knock on wood).  At two now, he does occasionally wake in the MOTN, but now we know he needs something and can act accordingly.  

Hugs, its hard.

[piaffe]

Hoping someone is still reading this thread. What do you do if cio makes your kid puke? He cried maybe five mins and was so worked up.

[formerlyllizzyb]

Sept 26, 2014 21:27:58 GMT -5 piaffe said:

Hoping someone is still reading this thread. What do you do if cio makes your kid puke? He cried maybe five mins and was so worked up.

There's different schools of thought.

Some would say you clean them up in as dark a room as possible with minimal interaction and then leave as soon as fresh pjs and sheets are on. Rinse and repeat.

I personally would probably call it a fail for that night and try again in 5-7 nights.