When the going gets tough . . . Count to 10! (Your Baby and Sleep in general)

Member Name: sweetdaisy

Product:	Your Baby and Sleep in general
Date:	19/09/09 (278 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: none

Disadvantages: tiredness, feel drained, exhausted

My Son is 15 months old and although he sleeps a lot better than he used to, he is still not sleeping through the night on a regular basis, therefore I feel that I have enough experience to contribute to the 'Babies and Sleep' category. My review is not going to help you to get your baby to sleep at night, but hopefully it will provide a 'virtual' hug to anyone who is going through sleepless nights with their little one(s).

Sleep deprivation is hard to explain, once you have experienced it, only then can you begin to understand how it feels to be constantly tired. So when your little bundle of joy arrives after a long 9 month wait, sleep is the one thing that you take for granted. Well I did, as I assumed my Son would sleep well at night. Obviously, I didn't expect him to sleep through all night within the first few months, but it would have been nice if he only woke up a couple of times at night.

I can remember going to Baby Clinic and hearing the other mums saying that their babies ONLY have 2 naps in the day and ONLY sleep for 8 hours at night! I remember feeling myself boiling up inside as my Son would only have two 30 minutes naps in the day and would wake up to 7 times at night. I feel guilty about this, but I used to feel a lot of resentment towards the other mums and think how dare they moan that they are not getting enough sleep. But now I have had well over a year to get used to it and have got to the point that there's no good moaning about it as sometimes you just have to accept it.

I have tried everything to get my little one to sleep at night. I had always put my Son to sleep in his moses basket as a newborn, and then at 3 months when he outgrew it I put him in his cot bed. Firstly, I tried co-sleeping which was recommended by my Health Visitor (as I breastfed him until he was 7.5 months old). I didn't exclusively co-sleep as this was only done on a few occasions when he would not settle in his cot bed. I would lay him in our bed with us until he fell asleep them would transfer him to his cot bed. Yes, he did go to sleep but he still kept on waking up frequently, so co-sleeping didn't really work for us. Also, I know that co-sleeping works for many and is very easy to do when you are breastfeeding, but I didn't want to carry on with co-sleeping as a few people told me that it would be hard to get him to sleep back in his own bed once I started this.

So we got to 6 months and he was still waking up every 2 hours at night and I started to hope that he would sleep better once he started weaning. Everyone told me that he would sleep better once he was on solids, but weaning came and went and made no difference to his sleep even though he was on 3 meals a day by the time he was 8 months old.

Routine, routine, routine! If I had a pound for every time someone told me this, I would be rich. I stuck to the same routine of bath, change into bed clothes, feed, story and bed, but again it made no difference. I even put him to sleep in a baby sleeping bag so that he wouldn't wriggle about so much, but it still didn't stop him from moving about and waking up!

For 2 weeks I tried the Baby Whisperer's 'Pick Up/Put Down method. So every time he started crying I would pick him up and hold him until he stopped. The second he stopped crying I put him back down in his cot and repeated this process every time he cried. According to the Baby Whisperer it can work within 4 days. I gave up after a fortnight as my Husband and I were taking it is turns to get up with him and one night I counted and we had done Pick Up/Put Down 40 times! This was bordering on the ridiculous, so we stopped doing it.

I also tried Controlled Crying when he was around 8 months old. There seems to be a lot of debate about Controlled Crying and I tried it as it was the last thing that I could try to make him sleep better at night. Although this method wasn't for me, many parents swear by it. My Son was crying so much he was hysterical and was nearly sick so this method quickly stopped.

At this point I was starting to get obsessed with it all as I knew I would be returning to work soon. I would spend endless amounts of time looking up on the internet ways to get my Son to sleep and used to ask any Mum I saw, how they got their baby to sleep at night! My Son's sleep issues had taken over my life, but unless your baby isn't sleeping you may not realise how much it can affect you.

I returned to work when my Son was 9 months old and one night he got up 7 times. I remember sitting in bed crying as I was so tired and just wishing that 'Supernanny' could come to my house and help me sort out his sleeping. Seriously, at one point my Husband and I both considered paying for a sleep expert to give us advice as I thought that he would never sleep at night.

Then two significant events happened when my Son turned 1 years old. He started walking two days before his first birthday and I changed his milk to Cow's Milk and so far his sleeping has improved, with him only waking once or twice at night. Obviously I can't prove if it's the cows' milk which is making a difference or that he is burning more energy by toddling around, or if it's the combination of both.

The one and only piece of advice I can give is that when people say that babies will sleep when they are ready, try to believe what is being said. I know it is very hard to focus on things when you don't get enough sleep and you are totally drained, but one day your child will sleep, the only problem is that no one can tell you when that will be!

Thanks for reading xx
© sweetdaisy 2009

Summary: a little advice about babies and sleep