Sleep. Where art thou?

Howdy.

This is going to be a bit mismatched so bear with me please.

DD2 is 10 months old. From birth to seven weeks, we had a lovely routine of four hour blocks of sleep.

Seven weeks to four months - she discovered her thumb and used it to self settle. Slept through the night and had two-three decent naps.

From four months, her teeth started trembling and she ditched her thumb. So long self settling.

From there, it's been awful. And it's getting worse. Last week I was getting 90 minutes of sleep each night. Not in a hit either. broken up over the night. In total. She's been waking 4-6 times a night for feeding for months. tried to not feed, it's worse. She feeds for a few minutes then comfort sucks. She naps twice a day, for 35 minutes each. That's it. I believe the day naps are probably my fault. We're busy with activities with DD1 and everything is about a 30-40 minute drive away. She always sleeps in the car, always wakes when we stop.

I'm tired to say the least.

For day sleeps, when we're home, I've tried setting my alarm so that I'm beside her when she stirs from that first sleep cycle. It's worked twice. All other times she simply opens her eyes and grins at me. I've waited until she shows signs of being tired, and when there is no sign of it. Tried rocking, singing and feeding to sleep, often with no success. Tried putting her in her cot and leaving her (omg the screaming!), sitting beside her, patting her back, you get the idea. It's tough when it can take 2+ hours to get her to sleep and then she only sleeps for half an hour.

If we're out, she'll sleep in the car and pram. I try to walk twice a week, two and a bit hours and she can stay asleep for two hours of that. The second the movement stops or we try to get her out of the pram or carseat, she's instantly awake and stays awake regardless of it being night or day. I hate going out at night because it means once we get home, I'm usually up for hours while she's mucking around.

Night time. Well frankly, I dread them. We have a routine. Dinner, pjs, stories with both DDs, feed. She either falls asleep during the feed or she cries until I stop trying to put her to sleep and then plays for another few hours. We don't bath at night because they hype her up.

She can then sleep for 5 minutes, 30 minutes or five hours. There is no pattern. She was in her cot in her own room. Co-sleeping for some of the night. Right now, the cot is in our room, sidecar to our bed. It has made no difference. Now she cries if she's there or if she's in my arms.

I just don't know what to do. I've tried so many different things. Sleeping bag, no sleeping bag, blanket, no blanket, my pillow (for my scent), no pillow, toys, lights, music, white noise, fan. She has never taken a dummy. Nothing seems to make any difference. And then out of the blue, she slept for two nights in a row. And we did everything the same on night three and got 90 minutes.

I don't know where to go from here. I'm not prepared to go to a sleep school because I won't leave DD1 again (she struggled terribly when DD2 was born). DD2 won't go to DH. We're coming through what seems to be the end of separation anxiety. She's not yet crawling so we're not able to physically tire her out. She eats okay and is bf.

Someone give me something else to try! I'm dealing with this on my own at nights and I have a coffee allergy so can't rely on it to keep me going the next day!

PacrakMG I don't have any advice, I was reading and didn't want to turn away without saying something. It sounds tough! I know you'll get some good advice here though.

No advice here :) Unfortunately I have lived the same thing with all of my children. They were such amazing newborns, so happy and slept wonderfully. Then around the 3-4 month mark it fell apart pretty much as you describe. I think it has taken years of my life.

What I have realised in hindsight is that I should have followed a CIO kind of solution. A week of crying won't be the end of the world for a baby and to be completely honest, the ideal of gentle parenting wasn't worth the cost to us as a family - marriage on the rocks and myself always exhausted and grumpy and therefore parenting badly. If I could go back in time I would harden up and just do it.

Oh hun, huge huge hugs to you. That is awful. I don't really have anything to add . We didn't do sleep school with G but we did see a paediatrician who referred us to someone who deals with infant sleep issues. This is a really dumb question but have you taken her to a paed so that she can have a really good physical check? Maybe rule out any allergies/food intolerances?

Didn't want to read and not post.
Big :hug: honey- remember, 'this too shall pass'

Sounds normal to what all mine did - and only two sleep through now (the 6 year old and the nearly 5 year old - and this has only been in the last 3 weeks!)

Anyway I can't really help cos I never found a solution however I stopped very early trying for hours to put my kid to sleep as a baby. If it takes longer than 15 minutes then I get them up again. I found that rocking, patting etc for ages just made me more frustrated and then baby feels your frustration etc - so I got all mine up again. Try for 15 minutes, get them up for 15 minutes for a play. Usually by the second cycle they would fall asleep within the 15 minutes but if they didn't I think it helped my mental state to see an end - because I hated rocking and patting for ages with no end in sight.

Sounds very familiar! My DD was the same and right at the same time too. I struggled through it for a couple of months and then caved and went to sleep school. They were fantastic and said "let's work on day sleeps first". It took a couple of nights and consistency but basically her day sleeps got better and, to my surprise, her night sleeps followed.

The other thing you could try is babywearing. You say she wakes again when the movement stops? Try wearing her in a decent, supportive, ergonomic carrier (some are very much NOT supportive or ergonomic) or a wrap while you do things around the house or go shopping or for a walk etc. Babywearing has magic sleepy dust :)

I know that sleep begets sleep is the general mantra, but in my house good day sleep just means less night sleep.

How does she cope during the day if she doesn't sleep (or just has little sleep)?

Can you feed her lying down, so at least you get a bit of rest?

Teething has hit DS harder than it did DD, and it goes on for longer before we actually see teeth. I'm not one who goes straight for drugs, but when I am at my edge and DS just won't sleep, I have tried panadol and sometimes it works and gives me a few hours. I have considered doing something drug wise for a few days to try to break the non-sleep cycle, but each time (so far) he then will sleep again and so I drop the idea til next time.

hang in there

ETA- I find the inconsistency hardest to deal with. When you do all the 'right' things (what worked last time), and baby's reaction is different. It took around 2.5 years for me to get any sort of predictability with DD, I hope DS doesn't take that long.

Hugs that's tough. Can you try to work on your sleep so you an get more zzzs overnight? I find Rescue Remedy night drops are great. Meditation (ie breathing) too. I tend to nap between dS waking and bring him into bed if settling takes too long. He is a very frequent waker.
A friend swears by patting to sleep for up to a week to help little ones learn to sleep. She had a phone consult with Jo Ryan of baby bliss which gave her the confidence to try and her bub is much much more settled now and much happier day and night. I'm going to try it once DS is over 6 months. Her bub was just like yours but had hours of screaming for no reason too. It seems to be the in between method not CIO and not going with the flow.

What kind of solids is she having? Could there be a food intolerance?
What if she was allowed to comfort suck through the night in your bed? Would it at least let you doze or sleep more than 2 hours for a whole night!!

She hasn't reacted to any food since she's been on solids. While bf prior to that, she was sensitive to garlic, onion and prawns, refluxy when I ate them and a few spots with prawns. Since starting solids, she doesn't react to those when I eat them. She was slow to start on solids, not getting into them until seven months so the timing isn't right. She now eats what we eat, nothing spicy or strong flavoured. She goes back to puréed foods when she refuses our food because her teeth are causing issues.

I lay down and feed her at night but I don't sleep. The position we lay in mixed with my ordinary back means that I just don't doze off unfortunately. And she's started to bite at the end of her feed, so I try and get her off when it's obvious she's finishing.

Other than sleep, she's really obvious with her cues in showing us what she wants. I wish I knew what she wants now.

I think I'm going to try Arimeh's suggestion. I do get frustrated with her nightly antics so by letting it go might bring some relief to us both. Thanks for all the posts, I'll give them a shot and see how we go.

ETA - By 12 months we had scrapped day sleeps for DD1 as she wouldn't sleep at night while she had them. The only reason why we haven't scrapped them for DD2 is because she's just so tired. DD1 could manage without sleeps but I don't believe DD2 can.

Hon, I know you don't want to do sleep school - but you can get them to come to you. Google night nanny.

Ahh it's tough. I don't have any wonderful ideas - I think I'm hitting a similar patch and cosleeping has stopped working for us - DS2 just kicks the covers off, grabs my hair and face and blows raspberries when he's supposed to be sleeping :wall:

Back to getting up and feeding for me. Joy.

If it helps, hang on to the memory of those two nights when she slept thru. That shows she can do it. For some reason, and as you've said it doesn't seem to be anything you are doing as you are being consistent in your approach, she doesn't do it every night, but she CAN do it. She may do it again. Tomorrow, tonight, in a week, but at some stage it'll happen again. Obviously something is going on right now that you're not aware of that is stopping her from doing it again. But it will happen again.

We just don't know when.

All respect for you for being able to function AT ALL on that little sleep.

I have an 8 1/2 month old who had a similar regression at the 4 month mark, and is still now really intermittent and unpredictable with his sleeps, though not as bad as your little one. But it did get that bad at one point - for about 5 nights in a row, and after less than 2 hours sleep at night, DH and I were both at breaking point. I rang Ngala, a WA-only sleep-help line (they also do day stays, night stays and home visits, but initially are available for phone consults.) Within a few minutes, the consultant suggested that DS was eating his dinner far too late - I was holding him off until DH came home at 6/6.30, so that he could feed him, and then bed time was 7ish. She strongly suggested feeding him his dinner at 4/4.30, but no later than 5, and keeping the same bedtime, and it worked straight away - that night he went back to the 'usual' of between 2 and 4 wakenings, but going straight back to sleep after a feed. I found it hard to believe that timing of food could make such a big difference, but it really did, and we make sure he eats no later than 5pm now.

If you're in Melbourne, you can't call Ngala, but I do suggest you contact whatever your local equivalent is, and talk through your circumstances with someone knowledgeable. it won't always entail spending nights away. Maybe it isn't solids timing for your DD, but there might be something equally surprising that you haven't tried (cos you've certainly tried a lot of other stuff!)

The only thing that worked for me was co-sleeping with my boob in her mouth for almost 2 years with dd1 and 2 years with dd2. You've already mentioned that doesn't work for you so I have no clue!

Maybe some kind of CIO would work in your situation? I did use the no cry sleep solution with dd1 to limited success.