Ds has been an ok sleeper from birth. He usually needs to be rocked to sleep or in the pram, which i dont mind at all. He is a napper during the day with 4 x 40 mins sleeps and if i am lucky, one of those naps will be 1 1/2 hours (usually nap number 2 or 3). Oh, and he will sleep anywhere.
He is always alert and happy after his day sleeps
My problem is that at night he just wont go down, if he does, he wakes within 30mins screaming and wont settle. I have to get him up and shush and unwrap and walk around until the tears stop, then it can take another 90mins to get him to go back to sleep.
We have a bed routine of boob, play, bath, play, massage, story, boob, sleep (seems long but this all takes about 2 hours). uring the day he goes down fine but its like at night he just knows that its bedtime and doesnt want to.
I have tried dropping a day sleep but it just makes him cranky and unbearable. I dont usually watch the clock, i just watch him and his tired signs. He wakes from his last sleep around 7pm and i try to get him down by 9:30pm. Beacause he is getting back up all the time he isnt going to bed most nights until 11pm - i am tired, i cant stay up that late every night.
He is still getting up at the same time of 7am in the moring (and wakes twice during the night for feeds). He used to go down from 9 till 7 (with 2 x night feeds) so why wont he do it now??
ANother issue i am having is that after his 5:30am feed, he wont go back into his bed (he is still sleeping in our room), he will only sleep in bed with us, which is fine but i dont really sleep that well when he is in bed with me. I do enjoy these morning cuddles but combined with going to be late, getting up twice in the night and then not really sleeping from 5:30am i am starting to get really over it and would like something to change.
What happens at sleep school?? No offence to anyone but i am not into cc, definately gentle parenting only. Do you think its worth trying or does anyone have any advice for me??
IT depends where you go, some are very full on and confronting, others are a lot more gentle. Hopefully someone a bit more local to you can give you some advice, or maybe ring JHH or somewhere and ask if they have any suggestions?
Im not much help with the sleep school although i must admit i have condsidered it in my low moments when ds wont sleep during the day but one thing that ds does pretty well is his night sleeps so between our two boys we would have the perfect baby!
We used to have a bad time at night, we used to try and keep ds up till 930 or 10 like you until we realised that ds was actually wanting to go to bed earlier at around 7ish. Once we started doing this he slept alot better at night and he is now sleeping from around 7 till 5ish and then back to sleep till around 9. Some nights he sleeps right through to 7 but that is still rare. We also do a dream feed at 1030 or whenever i go to bed which is what i think helps him sleep longer as if he wakes up he doesn't have a hungry belly and he goes back to sleep. So maybe try fiddling around with his sleeps and send him down for the night a bit earlier and see how that goes.
rayray - i have the contact of a gentle parenting sleep lady near me, it just costs lots of $$ but i would be willing to spend that if it was going to help.
Isabel - sounds liek we would have a good combo if we combined them lol. We have tried to put him to bed earlier but he just does his usual 30-40mins and then is wide awake, i have spent hours trying to settle him back down only to have him giggle and smile and coo like its play time, if its not all happy baby then its scream baby until i give up. I have also found that no matter what time his last feed is he still wakes at 3am, even if his last feed was 11pm- just another thing going on
I am willing to try it again though
I have downloaded some info from the sleep ladies site just now and hopefully that wil help.
Any other suggestions welcome or feedback from sleep school
I ended up at a sleep school after months of struggles with sleep for my DD. She went from a champion sleeper to a nightmare between the 6-8 month mark and I tried everything. Things just kept getting worse and worse. By 10 months I was beside myself and really loosing it. Sleep school saved my sanity.
I managed to find a sleep school (day stay program - solved the night settling issues too) which worked well with my approach to parenting and I was really happy with how everything went. There was no CIO only gentle settling practices. But I am in a different state to you so can't offer you a referral for them.
What I would suggest is to call a few different places and chat to the staff. Most places have huge waiting lists and will want to do a consultation over the phone as a sort of triage. You could use this as a chance to suss out their approach and work out if it could work for you. With some places, I was put on a waiting list to receive a call back in two weeks time!! At least if you do give a few places a call you have a few options opening up for you.
id be trying to get him down at that last sleep for the night i.e 5/6pm, id be starting the routine early and maybe simplifing it a little, i.e bath book boob bed i think two hours of wind down is a little long and maybe over stimulating him, id be trying for say a 30-45 min routine.
what time does he go down for his last sleep if he's up at 7pm??????
tell me about sleep school - dyt it would help?
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