tell me about sleep school - dyt it would help?

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??

Thanks :)

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.

Hope that helps somewhat.

Thanks Ladies

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 :dunno:
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

Hi,

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.

HTH

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??????

AJP He usually goes down around 9-9:30pm - that's after he wakes around 7pm. I have tried time and again to get him to go down at the earlier time but he just constantly wakes up after 1 sleep cycle, i have spent hours trying to resettle but it never works. I am just going to have to keep persisting but its even harder when you yourself are so tired. Dh is such a wonderful help but i am concious that he has to go to work so i take most of it on.

9:30pm to bed i can deal with but this 11pm thing is what's got to stop. Its been going on for a month now.

I'll try a shorter night time routine though, that might help - thanks :)

We went to a 4 nights 'sleep school' at South Eastern Private Hospital in VIC & it was the best money I ever spent. DD is a great sleeper now. I will admit that if she is unwell, her sleep is terrible, but as soon as she is better she goes back to sleeping through. We didn't go to sleep school until she was 10 mths old.
I'll can give you a run down what they did if you like, but it is quite long. Let me know & I'll post or send you an e-mail.

wow i cant believe Byron is 4mths already - could maybe he be going thru his 4mth sleep regression now?

I did Tweddle at home when my DD was around 5 months. I learnt that I needed to focus on getting her to have at least two sleep cycles during her day naps, so that if she woke after 40 mins I spent time resettling her. It was hard work and took a couple of weeks, but then she started having longer naps and better night sleeps too. They introduced me to patting, shhing, using a dummy, etc - but basically not picking her up. I also learnt that I was leaving my DD up too long. At 4-5 months they can only be up for 1 1/2 hours at the most. I was very glad I got the help but I imagine not everyone would like it. HTH

Sleep school worked for my first, like a dream. Not for my second though. THey will defintiely get you to put bub to bed at 7pm. Maybe if you work on that for a few nights. If you cut DS last sleep and maybe have him up by 5.30pm , then you can do bath feed etc and get him down at 7pm. Try putting him to bed awake. What sleep school will do (a gentle version) is to let him go to bed awake and then you can go in and pat. I have DS self settling and I stayed in with him patting him until he went to sleep. He now goes off by himself with minimal fuss (my trouble is getting him to stay asleep)... but it did take a few days of patting, and now it's less and less time to sleep. Because Im in there with him, there's very little crying. At first he cried for a few minutes, but I was with him the whole time. Now if I put him in and he's upset I go straight back in and he calms down and goes to sleep with me patting or rocking him (while he's in the cot).
Good luck xo

Thanks for all your replies, i really appreciate it.

I have since spoken to a few of dh's work colleagues whom have gone to ss and they have pretty much said very similar things to you guys - eg re-settling after 40mins if he wakes and getting into a more sleep, feed, play routine.

I am starting to implement these but still finding it hard to shush him without picking him up as he gets worked up quite quickly when he cries but i have noticed a difference already just by not letting him stay awake over 2 hours.

I know its going to be hard but its just got to change. Its going to be easier this weekend with dh home to help me out and it will help me get a bit more confidence in whats changing :)