Will she ever learn to sleep?

DD is 8 months old, is fully breastfed and is, at last, starting to eat solids a bit more substantially that before.

She has only slept for longer than 3 hours a handful of times in her life, which I can totally cope with. The problem is that her sleeping is getting worse because she is obviously becoming more alert and mobile. At the moment, she hardly even gets through a single sleep cycle during the day (40 minutes) and rarely goes longer than 2 hours at a stretch at night.

She has absolutely no idea how to sleep on her own. She either feeds to sleep, I walk her to sleep (she is getting heavy and it is hard to do with a toddler running around shouting!) or she sleeps in the car. On occasion when I have tried to leave her for 10 or 15 minutes in her cot to see if she will go to sleep, she just sits in her cot and cries. It breaks my heart and makes me realise that I have done this to her. I am why she cannot sleep and now, 8 months on :(

She sleeps with me for at least half of the night because I just can't stay awake long enough to feed her, resettle her and then take myself back to bed!

I am so concerned that her not getting much deep / proper sleep can be doing harm - I sure know it isn't doing me any favours!

I suppose what I really want to know is how many of you have had such attached relationships with your baby and have they EVER learned how to go to sleep on their own or did you have to do this for several years? I have back problems and honestly don't know how I can keep walking her the heavier she gets. I read in The No-cry Sleep Solution that babies don't just suddenly learn to sleep and this worried me :(

I am totally OK with waking up every 3 hours to tend to her, but am absolutely falling apart, having to tend to her every hour or hour-and-a-half.

So does anyone have an tips for me? I am getting desperate :(

:hug: totally know how you feel Dd is the same but you didn't do it to her some baby's are just bad sleepers. Hang in there it does get better even though that may take awhile. Dd is 12mths now and has only just started having longer than one hour sleep cycles at night.

I am having the exact same problems. Except DS2 will go to sleep in my arms and as soon as I put him down he'll be screaming the place down. He is just not getting enough sleep for a little baby. It worries me no end and it's driving me batty. Sometimes he'll sleep ok over night but it's getting to the stage where he is wingey and tired all day and that means I am spending all my time trying to calm him and settle him and DS1 is being ignored. I feel like the worst mother in the world.

:hug: She is a perfectly normal baby and you haven't done anything wrong. Both my DDs have been the same. At 11 months now DD2 still has never slept longer than 3 hrs. That's at night, during the day it's only 30 mins unless I hold her, which I do. But after she turned 1 DD1 began to improve a lot and was sleeping through at 18months. She was able to put herself to sleep at 2yrs. Maybe seems like a long time for others, but fine with me and she is a fantastic sleeper now. No troubles getting her to sleep or anything, she asks to go to bed when she's tired. Hang in there :)

DD stopped day sleeps before she turned one, and has always been a poor sleeper. We ended up co-sleeping just so we could all get some sleep.

We always had to sit with her to sleep, she'd never drift off on her own. We went from her only falling asleep in my arms, to only falling asleep in DH's arms, to falling asleep in the cot provided one of us was sitting beside her and touching her arm or rubbing her back.

It went on for months. I remember sitting beside her until 10-11 at night, trying to get her to sleep and feeling like DH and I had no life together because one of us was always trying to get her to sleep (she'd go to bed around 7.30). And then as soon as we went to bed, she'd wake up. I wrote posts about it at the time.

We moved on to me ignoring her as she was falling asleep, still sitting in the room with her, but she'd fall asleep quicker than if we were giving her attention. Not long after that, I started to leave the room when she was awake and she would fall asleep within a few minutes. She got a lot better about actually going to bed once we took the sides off the cot.

Full nights sleep though, I can count on one hand. A couple of days before NYE, she slept through so from that point on, when she got up at night, I took her back to bed. A couple of times, I lay down with her, but mostly now I just pop her back to bed and leave the room again. We've had three nights this week where she has slept through. Last night she woke up crying and I left her and for the first time she self settled and went back to sleep. Now that she's older, I've been explaining that she can get back out of bed when the sun is shining again and giving her masses of praise when she stays in her bed until morning. She's two months shy of turning three though.

It's so hard. I haven't had anyone to help me as DH sleeps so deeply that I can wake him up, tell him to go to her and he immediately flakes again and has no recollection of me ever waking him up. He was helpful in the evenings, but those middle of the night wake ups.....oh boy. I don't know how I would have managed if I wasn't SAHM. Good luck with it, hang in there :hug:

Yes she will!

My DD is the same. I feel bad because I feel like it's my fault too. She was pretty good at around 2 months then at 4 months it went downhill & I didn't try hard enough. Just did what was easiest. But then does "trying harder" then lead "controlled crying"? I don't want to do that so I keep going. DD spends half the night in my bed.

Having said that, my DS was the same as well and he now sleeps through from 8pm to 6am (ish) every night. He wakes maybe once a week if that & usually resettles after a quick cuddle or drink of water.

I keep reminding myself how much DS has improved to get through the these months with DD.

:hug: Don't be too hard on yourself.

This is a post I wrote just before DS was 1. I can totally and utterly sympathise with you.
Yes we got through it. He still wakes a few times at night, but it's just for a quick (25seconds worth) of water. It take him usually no more than 3 minutes to go to sleep of an evening. I sit at the end of the bed. I did the same with him and DD, just the same as Pak. He is an independent, confident child. He'll be three next month but he's been pretty good for the last year or so.

Have you tried laying down with her?

:hug: struggling on little or interrupted sleep is horrible. but i think your DD is completely normal - well, going by what i've read on BB & my own experiences with my DS!

my DS woke overnight every 45m-2 hours until he was about 18 months. his day sleeps were completely hit & miss until he dropped to one day sleep (and i can't remember when this was - maybe between 12-18 months?). but the good news is that now he sleeps beautifully - he is 2.5 now & sleeps for about 10 hours overnight with a max of one wake up (which is just for a quick cuddle or he jumps into our bed for the rest of the night - he even brings his own pillow with him :lol:) and has anything from 1.5-3 hours for a nap during the day.

to cope i used to sleep with DS on a mattress on the floor in his room. that way i could feed overnight without having to get up. this was from about 9 months - 20 months. after i weaned him he slept in our bed for a while & then he just decided that he'd rather sleep in his own bed. after 20 months of a feed before sleep/to sleep he just needed a cuddle, now we have some cuddles, sing a couple of songs & i give him & teddy a kiss and leave the room while he's still awake. i never thought this day would come!!

if you're looking for something to read that makes you feel like you baby is 'normal' then i'd recommend pinky mckay's book 'sleeping like a baby'. while this book doesn't offer heaps of ways to try & change the situation, it helped me to make peace with the ways things were & that i was happy to carry on in a gentle manner.

i don't think you need to worry about the lack of sleep/interrupted sleep doing your DD any harm - i worried the same but DS never seemed to suffer in meeting milestones/his development.

i know it seems like it will never end at the moment but i promise they do change - i'm still kind of surprised at how DS' sleep has changed without any real input from us. but i feel very happy that he's got to this point without us forcing anything on him. :hug:

and :hug: to you too melbournemumma, you're not a bad mum at all

I only have my DD1's experience to go off of but she definitely learnt to sleep without me changing things although it did take 2 and a half years before she started sleeping through (6pm to 6-7am). I'm glad she started sleeping independantly in time for DD2... not sure how I will go this time with a toddler too, one day at a time is the plan. The constant interuption in sleep hasn't seemed to hinder her... as you know she has delayed speech (genetic condition) but her comprehension and communicative skills are at a much higher than expected level for her age :hug:

So often it felt like she would never 'get it' but she is such a good sleeper now, even when DD2 has been fussing at night in our tiny place I will watch DD1 stir but go back to sleep without me needing to even enter the room. She might come get me once a week nowdays and it never takes more than some water and a quick cuddle before she is settling again. I did stop rocking/walking around your DDs age though due to the heat mostly and we then just fed to sleep, she still has a bedtime feed but falls asleep off the breast more often than not lately.

It is really hard, in the end I just stopped counting and got rid of any clocks lol sometimes it is easier not to know.

I'm in the middle of this too, so it's really lovely to read that they will eventually sleep! I could do 2-3 wake ups a night for a while yet, it's just the 6+ nights that really wear me down. Even waking once a night would be great!

My daughter was like this until she was 7months old. She was so clingy that if she was on the floor all I had to do was shift my weight in my chair and it would send her into a screaming fit cos she thought I was leaving. I used to rock her for the longest time Til she went to sleep or lay next to her in my bed and then once she was asleep I'd attempt to put her in her cot. I usually fail a couple times a night. It was really hard. I tried a couple times to put her in her bed and walk away while she cried. But I couldn't do it. Then all of a sudden one day she just went to sleep when I put her down. All I can put it down to is that she was ready to do it.


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Oh Hun I can so hear your desperation and as much as I can empathize (you have described my second son right down to a T) I sadly don't have any magic cure or fantastic tip that worked for us because sadly nothing did. He just got older and finally stopped fighting it so much.

I cant even remember what age he was when this started as that period of my life is very much a sleep deprived blur and I would go so far as to say looking back now I would imagine I was quite depressed too :shakehead:

I dont want to make light of your situation at all but I will say that my 20minute max sleeper dragged his sorry butt out of bed at 12.15pm today :lol:

I know (believe me I know) that the light at the end of your tunnel seems non existent right now but it is there Hun and this WILL NOT last forever. Be kind to yourself in the meantime and do what you can, rely on who you need too to help you manage this :hug:

Yes. They do learn. You are teaching her right now, every time you respond to her and help her, she is learning.

Remember they go through phases, very frequent and big changes from the perspective of a little baby, where they may need your help even more. Teething, illness, developmental leaps, separation anxiety, etc, etc, for many children this leaves them needing more reassurance and help with soothing (and means they don't sleep as well).

When times are harder on you, you might find it helps to .... get help :) Call in reinforcements, let things go, do whatever makes things a bit easier for you right now. The bad times are not the best time to try and make changes, generally speaking.

Here's what I do: Co-sleep, all the time (I refuse to make my life harder by getting out of bed). My DH steps up on very bad nights, he takes over for an hour or 2 in the morning before he has to leave for work, and I get sleep ins on the weekend. My house is a mess. We often have baked beans or scrambled eggs for dinner. :)

Hang in there. In a year or two you'll be able to look back and feel really good about all this good parenting work that you're doing right now. And you'll be able to see things clearly for the benefit of perspective & being rested.

i also forgot to say that it's really, really important to try & get some time just for you. i know it's not easy but taking time to have that nap where you can, go & have a coffee & read a mag on your own, go for a walk, have a long bath - doesn't matter, just take any opportunity you can to recharge your batteries :hug:

ahh both my DD and DS were like this, thankfully DD became a good sleeper at about 18 months as for DS hes just gone 2 and we have some nights of sleeping through! Before that it was every 3-4 hrs and before that you dont wanna know lol. One thing i figured out with DS was that he liked to play or have a small grizzle for a few mins before actually going to sleep, before i realised that i rocked or fed to sleep and it took longer and longer to work and he didnt sleep aslong either. Maybe just try a few different things to keep yourself sane?

Just quickly replying, sorry haven't read the other posts, I don't have long...

YOU HAVE NOT DONE THIS! You're following your baby's needs and giving her what she needs, you're doing great :loveshower:
She will learn to sleep!! The book won't tell you that or you wouldn't read it and they wouldn't sell many would they :lol: The methods in there work great for some bubs, but not all.

My DS1 slept with me until he was 2 then just decided he would sleep on his own. He still came into bed with me sometimes through the night, but he just suddenly started to sleep on his own.

DS2 was a sleeper from the start, day one, put himself to sleep anywhere any time never an issue.

DS3 has only just started to sleep (almost) through the night now at 2. We removed all additives from his and my(still BF) diet and MAGIC! Sleep!! He still feeds to sleep for his day sleep and sometimes needs a BF if he wakes too soon. But through the night if he wakes, which is usually only once, maybe twice, and he'll go back to sleep himself, sometimes after a little cuddle, or he might just reach out to touch me and he's all good. We still co sleep btw, same as you it was just too much when he was waking every 2 hours at night to be getting up feeding settling then going back to bed only to be doing it all again in the blink of an eye, and all night.

I hopw you get some rest soon :crossfingers: I know what it's like :hug:

When DS3 was younger he liked to be walked and rocked, I ended up getting a rocking chair to save my back.