Read em and sleep (Your Baby and Sleep in general)

Member Name: dibuzz

Product:	Your Baby and Sleep in general
Date:	07/09/01 (56 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: if your baby sleeps well you will enjoy the waking times more as well, we all need sleep

Disadvantages: you get tired and resentful if he doesn't sleep

All babies are different and sleep (mainly lack of) is often a big problem. When pregnant with my first I foolishly believed that he would sleep 20 hours a day for the first few days and would have a routine. What a shock when I realised he wasn't going to be like a clockwork toy!

To be honest he wasn't that bad but liked to start the day at 5am. This isn't a problem if it is your first child and you don't go back to work.

My second son was the sort of baby who inspired the phrase "if he'd been the first he'd have been an only child". He only slept for a few minutes at a time and I didn't know what to do with him. When you are pacing the floor for most of the night and everyone else is asleep you start to feel very lonely.

When he got a little older we tried a few techniques. First was controlled crying where you leave the baby for a few minutes and only return to reassure, not pick up. This was difficult as he shared a room with his 3 year old brother and also it is very hard to do. How many of us have been stood outside the bedroom door, listening, with tears streaming down our faces and rocking backward and forward in time to the crying?
Although difficult it is worth trying as it often works (you just feel so guilty) but it wasn't the answer for us.

We then tried giving him a bottle of water instead of milk, leaving several dummies in the cot so he could always find one, bathing him early, bathing him late, driving him around the block, walking him in the pram, feeding him earlier, feeding him leater, in fact I don't think there was anything we didn't try.

The worst part for me was feeling so alone with the problem. My husband isn't the helpful sort and claims to need his sleep more than me. I can understand when he is working but when he has 2 weeks off I feel he should do more. I also felt let down by the health visitor who always told me he would grow out of it and wouldn't support me when I wanted to tr
y an additive free diet.

It wasn't until my son was 3 that he started to sleep for more than a couple of hours a night which was a relief but I still resent the fact that I never felt I had any support.

I later had a daughter who was a little angel. When we got home from the hospital I fed her, put her in the pram and thought "what now?" She slept between feeds and most of the night as well but of course you soon forget the bad times and this fooled me into having another baby!

As soon as he was born I knew he was a clone of my second son. Actually I was wrong - he was worse. He could go more than 24 hours on 1 hour's sleep and I will sadly admit to going through a stage when I wished I had never had him. This was always immediately followed by guilt because I love all my children dearly but I can understand the people who do snap under the pressure.

My youngest is now 5 and still wakes in the night but things are a lot better.

If your child is a bad sleeper the controlled crying is worth a try and an older child may settle with a story. We have often gone through 5 or 6 books before he has gone to sleep but it is less stressful for me this way.

The best tip I have is to keep calm. If you start to feel annoyed walk out of the room and try to calm down before you go back and try to get some help and advice. This is probably a better place to find it than any professional.

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