Routines / sleeping through the night etc

Hi there,

My baby is 7.5 months old and hasn't been sleeping through the night for a few months now and I am soooo exhausted. He wakes at 2:30am for a feed and guzzles down 160ml. I know I need to get him out of the routine of waking up for a feed. He used to wake at the same time when he was younger and I used to be able to put the dummy in his mouth and he would fall back to sleep. Oh and as for teething, he has been teething on and off for 4 months (no teeth yet either).

I have been researching the net and trying to look at ways to get my baby to sleep through the night -

have any of you used any of the routines etc in the books that are out there?
Do they work?
Do you do dreamfeeding to encourage more sleep?
Do you do something else that helps your baby sleep through the night?

Would love some feedback.

Michelle

Hey darl, I went through a phase like this with dd as well. (I didnt see you say whether you bf) but i'll just let you know our story and how we changed it around. Of course we still have off nights because of teething, they do tend to teethe for a while before actually cutting teeth. Panadol and teething gels have been our saviour, but anyway. here goes..

I make sure dd has 4 bottles a day regardless of whether she drinks it all, cause I noticed that was contributing to not sleeping much during the night cause she hadn't eaten enough druing the day. So I decided to do a nightly routine which now consists of:

5.30pm Nice warm bath bit of a splash around, then dressed and given a massage with either moisturiser or baby oil

6.00pm Solid feed. (vegies and meat) with some water

6.30pm Bottle feed, nappy change and then into her bedroom with dim lights to read her a book before bed.

Then once I put her to bed, just put her dummy in and her mobile on and she will sleep till 6.30/7am

I mean of course my routine isn't going to work for everyone, cause all babies are different. But just thought i'd give you an idea. HOpe it all works out :hug:

Thanks for sharing with me.

My son was sick a few weeks ago and went off solids so can't get him to each much of it at all and he won't drink water either...... I have tried to disguise the water with a little bit of juice (no sugar added) but he is a clever boy - not silly at all. My husband's mum gave him water with sugar but I don't want to be giving my son sugar, don't think that is a good way at all.

I need to get him to bed earlier, so will have to play around with his routine. I am am getting him to bed at 9pm only because he wakes up when I put him down at 6.... anyway will see how I go. Hopefully I can get something started so he sleeps through the night again :)

Thanks again.

Michelle

Michelle- for us it was just a matter of waiting. We tried all sorts of things to get DD to sleep through- food, milk, dreamfeeds, changing daily routine, changing daily sleeps etc and nothing made a difference. She went through a period of waking each night about an hour ot two after putting her to bed and again nothing we did stopped this. It's hard to believe but one night, after 9 months of waking 3 times at night she slept 12 hours and has done so since. So, nothing WE did got her to this point- she did it when she was ready. I didn't want to let her cry it out so tended to her each time she woke. If you make sure your DS is well fed during the day, is having a couple of naps and has a settling down period in the evening then you are doing your bit. GL

I have to say I had a similar experience as KatieRabbit with my DD. Up till the age of 11 months she was still waking 2-3 times per night. We had tried everything conventional that the books had said. In the end I was so exhusted when she woke up for the first time for the night I just brought into our bed until the morning (at least I was getting some sleep). I have been warned by everybody not to get into this habit. 2 weeks ago she just stopped waking up, she sleeps from 7:30pm - 6:30am in her own bed. In the end it was nothing I did, I just think she just had to get to the right age.

Although, I have a few friends who have done the controlled comforting with their bubs and it only took a couple of nights and their babies were sleeping through.

Another thing on dreamfeeding, and again this was just our situation, but when we introduced a dreamfeed she came to expect it and it ended up just adding another waking time to her routine.

Sigh...I Gina Ford-ed my DS from the word go because I was seduced by the claim that they would sleep through the night early on her routine.

I found quite a lot of her advice very helpful, particularly the feeding advice (which contrary to popular belief is not strictly scheduled...she emphasises that if you think the baby is hungry but it is not "time" for a feed you should forget that and feed the baby immediately).

But as for sleep...hahahahaha! DS did not EVER nap or sleep according to the pattern she said would emerge. Feeding...yes, he was textbook. I even contacted Gina Ford and got a personal reply with a couple of suggestions...but to no avail. And I hate to tell you this but he did not sleep through the night once until he was over 18 months old...when we moved him into a big bed (contrary to GF advice LOL). He dropped his day naps way earlier than he was "supposed" to, as well.

I was in fits over this, convinced I was doing something wrong (cried more than once over it too). Long term interrupted sleep will do this to you...especially when you think that this "shouldn't" be happening. Honestly, the best thing I ever did was accept that DS was going to wake up during the night and that was that. Mentally I was much calmer about it. But that's not what you want to hear, and not all babies are as awful as my DS is with sleeping!

If you are giving formula in the middle of the night, I have heard the theory that you gradually water down the formula until they are only getting plain water which is not really what they want so they think "oh how boring, I might as well go back to sleep." Or you could gradually cut down the amount...so that eventually you just offer the dummy again, rather than the formula?

I agree that I would not introduce a dreamfeed at this point, you want the night feeds to stop, rather than introduce a new one.

Slightly OT, but in terms of getting him to drink water, maybe try him on a very special new cup...my DS loooved getting a new cup to drink out of. The Mag-Mag by Pigeon seemed to be quite popular with DS and his little friends. (However DS is now 2yo and we have a special cup for juice, a special cup for milk, and water will only be drunk from his water bottle or a proper glass like Mum and Dad and heaven forbid you serve him the wrong beverage in the wrong cup :rolleyes:).

I give my DD dinner around 4.30pm, bath at 5.30pm (followed by baby massage with bedtime lotion) and bottle at 6.30pm, she'll go to bed around 7.00pm, wake at 10.00pm and I will give her a dreamfeed and she'll normally sleep through. Sometimes she'll wake whinging a bit but it's normally because she's uncomfortable against the side of her toddler bed.

Good luck with everything :)

Michelle, I'm sorry you're so tired :hug:
I can relate. The thing is, once a night isn't too bad comparatively.
At 22 months my DD will occasionally wake once a night too. I sit next to her cot and I pat her bottom til she goes back to sleep. It takes around 15mins to half an hour.
There are loads of things you can try (and I'd thoroughly recommend a bedtime routine too - books are lovely, perhaps a song, a snuggle, say the same words each night etc etc - all very comforting for your little one), but at 7.5 months I'd suggest preparing yourself for the possible reality that he's pretty darn normal, KWIM? Many people (including my GP) have told me that their babies didn't consistently sleep through the night til they were close to or over 12 months.
Don't mean to depress you, but honestly, while I know you are soooooo tired (I am still there some days!) he will grow very quickly and it will all be behind you before too long.
:hug: again. Hang in there, mate!

big hugs sweetie! :hug: i think interrupted sleep is the hardest thing to deal with when a parent! (because man o man do i lurve my sleep!)

how does he sleep during the day? i found that if DD sleeps well during the day (in her case it has to be 2 sleeps of at least 40 minutes each). i found that her day sleep had a direct correlation with her night sleep.

Also, we had a tricky period with DD around the 7.5-8 month mark as developmentally she was going through some pretty major changes and this threw her sleep out big time for quite awhile (basically until she worked out how to crawl...LOL!).

i occasionally sought the advice on sleep from 'baby love', just to help clear my head when i felt as though i was drowning under the 'what if we try this?' mountain.

best thing i was told was that whatever you do: be consistent and persistent. it works for us and keeps our heads relatively cool when bad nights happen. our thing is when she wakes we resettle her in her cot and walk out, then if she starts to cry we go back in (usually on a tag team basis). if after 3 goes she is still determined then we rip out the big guns (ie boobie :)). i know that this can be frowned upon but the instances where it is needed are really rare these days and it works a treat.

we tried the dream feed....never again. found DD started waking up around that time for a feed. sent us backwards. even now 9 + months after we stopped doing it she wakes briefly at 10.30..only for a few seconds and back to sleep on her own, but never again will i do it! (that said, one mum in my group swears by it! so i guess there is merit for some...).

DD on the whole sleeps roughly 12 hours at night (minus nights of teething and colds etc). she averages out on 2 day sleeps with anything from 40 minutes each to (like yesterday) 2.5 hours.

good luck with it all and hang in there, this too shall pass and soon enough we'll be banging saucepan lids over their heads to get them ready for school! LOL!

Wow thanks girls for all of your feedback!!!

My son is only now waking once during the night at 2:30am, so that isn't too bad. I can deal with that.

His sleeps during the day are great, perfect! He can average from 40 mins to 1.5 hours. All depends on how tired he is..... So he has great day sleeps.

I have a great bedtime routine. Always try to read to him at night and lots of snuggles. I bath him every night but sometimes every second night. But on the bath nights I always massage with bedtime oil, and put him in his pj's then sleeping bag so he gets the hint that it is coming up to bed time. The bedtime routine is consistent though.

He is back on his solids now, this morning he ate all of his rice cereal and then his milk, so that is a good sign. He was on antibiotics a few weeks ago and I was told it can take a few weeks for them to get their taste back.

Curly - good idea on watering down the formula, I was wondering if I could do that, but woud I end up with a constipated baby???!!!! Sorry to hear the Gina Ford routine didn't work out for you, luckily I didn't waste my time in buying the book and trying out her routine....

Cassius2 - My son is trying to crawl at the moment so maybe that is another cause of his sleep routine...... He has backwards and sideways down pat, just gets frustrated when trying to move forward haha I soooo need to baby proof the house!!!! Hopefully when he really starts crawling he will sleep alot better.

Thanks for the rest of the advice, it really helps in learning about everyone else's experiences.

Shell xxx