My daughter is great at going to sleep, currently 5 months old, but its staying asleep that is the problem. During the day she will wake after 30 -40 sleeps and then of a nightime wake for feeds every 2 hours drinking only 80-100mls at a time. Ive tried sticking the dummy in but after about 10mins she cries again until I feed her, she is on formula.
I have considered tweedle sleep school but am concerned as i dont agree with controlled crying and I know they will say after she wakes during the day to let her cry until she goes back to sleep - I want her to sleep beacause she is tired not exhausted from crying.
does anyone have any advice? we are also going to a chiro to see if that helps and have done the too hot, too cold, mattress too hard etc. He is very tall for her age, am i just expecting too much and hope she has a fast metabolism?
My DS only ever slept for 40 minutes (exactly) during the day at a time until he was around 8 - 9 months. I stopped fighting it after a while and figured that was him and just to go with it.
Overnight he was also a crap sleeper. We went through phases of one wake, 2 wakes, waking every 2 hours and waking all the time and somewhere in between.
We did the sleep school thing and it wasn't really for me. I guess I figured that if DS was crying I couldn't sleep anyway so I'd rather be in there comforting him than leaving him to cry. At that age controlled crying didn't really work for him anyway.
That being said, Tweedle have a Day Stay program that you can go to. Generally you have to do the Day Stay before the Residential Program anyway. If you don't like their advice then you've only lost one day and there is no compulsion to do anything that they say. But you might find some useful pieces of information that can help.
I don't think you are expecting too much and I know you are exhausted. I've been there so know exactly what you are going through. I have no magic solution. We just rode it out, I slept with him on the fold out bed for months as I got more sleep that way. That worked for us.
He's still not a great sleeper but he is much better compared to what he was.
I find with DD2 that at about the 30 minute mark for her day naps if I go to where she is sleeping I can see her start to wake up. If her dummy has fallen out I will put it back in and start patting her softly or rocking her a bit and she normally goes back to sleep for another 45 minutes or so. It does not always work but majority of the time it does. Night time I found she liked to sleep on her side so if she wakes then I just roll her on her side and she goes back to sleep. DD2 has never rolled on her belly, she just rolls back to her back.
Do you wrap her? Wrapping changed our lives and DS is now a phenominal sleeper. He was getting out of wraps but someone in my mothers' group showed me how to double wrap him and he can't get his arms out, which was the issue as he was waking himself up with his hands and at times, his hands were keeping him awake because when he was tired he'd hit his own face and rub his eyes preventing him from falling asleep. He protested quite a bit a first (but did not cry - more like grizzling) and now it calms him immediately to be wrapped - he's coming up to 6 months and pediatrician has no problem with us continuing to wrap him. I don't wrap his legs tight at all so he is free to kick and stretch.
I also put him down at the first signs he is tired (and not by the clock). As soon as I see him rubbing his eyes or that he's turned red around the eyes or gets the hiccups, I wrap him and put him down. These are his own signs, every baby is different and I had to learn them by watching him.
It's hard to explain how to double wrap, but I'll try. I do this on a double bed. I place a muslin wrap folded in the standard triangle for wrapping (but it's not folded in half, the triangle part that folds down is only folded down 1/3). I then take a smaller stretchy cotton wrap that is a bit rectangular and lay it out on top of the triangle wrap a bit off center. I place DS in the middle of the stretchy cotton wrap and bring 1 end up and around 1 of his arms and UNDER his back and pull so it's snug and his arm is by his side, I then do the same with his other arm and make sure that the parts under his back are smooth so they don't bother him. I then wrap the muslin wrap in the standard way and don't worry about it being tight - just tight enough so that it doesn't get bunched up.
Soem babies just do this. DD is exactly the same - 30-40 minutes durin ghe day, 1-2 hours at a time at night. Right now she's teethign so it's worse, in the past she did sometimes do 3-5 hour stretches at night sometimes.
Sometimes they just get over it. DD has done a few 1.5 hours sleeps in the day recently.
My DS was also a catnapper. Nothing helped till he dropped to 1 sleep at around 15 months, then suddenly he started sleeping 1.5 hours, then 2, then 3...
If she wants to be iwth you and is done sleeping ten leaving her to cry probably isn't giong to help you much. I'd kjust get her up and try again the next time she's tired.
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staying asleep!!!!
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