Iyla turned 6 months on the 1st of May and I suppose I was expecting to have some kind of settled night time routine by this age, but clearly she has other ideas! She has never been a good sleeper, in the beginning she barely even slept at all, I managed to get a couple of hours here and there if she was on my chest but I usually just gave up and ended up downstairs by 4am.
This is Iyla when she was 3 days old, sleeping on my chest. I apologise for the terrible photo quality, it was taken on my old mobile!
I then realised that a big problem was her startle reflex as she would fling her arms up and scratch her face until she was awake again. After spending many hours in middle of the night asking Google why my baby wouldn’t sleep I found the solution of swaddling. Unfortunately this wasn’t until she was 11 weeks old. I didn’t think there was much chance of her taking to it at this age as you are usually supposed to start when they are newborns, but surprisingly she did.
I had to wrap one arm up before I fed her, then when she was more relaxed I could wrap her other arm up and by the time I put her down, she stayed asleep. She would then only wake up once or twice in the night which was amazing.
This carried on for a couple of months but then when the weather changed we hit a problem. It was far too hot to wrap her tightly in a blanket, plus the fact that she was getting too old and too strong for it anyway meant that I knew it was time to wean her off it.
So a month ago I decided to put her in her own room and try to get her used to sleeping without having her arms restricted. After a few nights she was sleeping better than ever, as was I because I wasn’t aware of every little movement she made but then just as I thought I had nailed it she started waking up every hour! Having to traipse across the landing this often was too much to handle so she is now back in our room.
Things over the last few weeks have got progressively worse, to the stage where now not only is she back in our room but she will only sleep in our bed. She wakes up every half an hour all evening and then from about ten just cries until I take her out of her cot. I am now at the point where I am so stressed out by the whole thing, not at her as its not her fault but more at myself because I feel like it must be something that I have done wrong. No-one else I know seems to still be having these problems, I am now starting to doubt my whole parenting method. When she is crying in her cot I know that it is just because she doesn’t want to be in it and I partly feel like she is old enough to learn that she has to be in it but at the same time I am not strong enough to listen to her cry.
I phoned my health visitor the other day for advice and she said I need to put her in her own room and stop night feeds altogether and if I didn’t start leaving her to cry then I would actually end up doing her damage! So now I just feel so confused, I don’t have a problem with one or two night feeds or even her spending the occasional night in my bed but it just feels like things are worse than ever at a time when they should be improving.
If you had a problem with a car then there is one way to fix it but if you have a problem with your baby then all you can do is listen to a million different opinions before trying to make the right decision based on what you feel is the right. It’s the threat of damaging your child that suddenly makes the responsibility of making all the decisions overwhelming.
This is Iyla aged three months, sleeping on my chest, her favourite place.
So I am going to carry on doing what I am doing in the hope that it is just a phase / growth spurt / development stage or that I just have a baby who doesn’t like sleeping, and stop feeling like it is me who has made her like this because I am never going to know the real answer as to why she doesnt sleep well and it is hurting my brain trying to work it out!
You are so right. It is so confusing and unfortunately even advice from Health visitors can vary. It sounds like you’re actually trying everything, you’re not doing anything wrong. I think in time she’ll settle and you’ll just have to do. Hope she does sleep through soon for you x
It’s so hard, so, so, so, so hard! I have every sympathy with you as I lived through this too (well not exactly, I had nearly 7 months of no sleep). I Googled, Netmum-med, Mumsnet-ted, text-book-ed at every opportunity I got, and the constant feature that kept cropping up was sleep-training, in various forms. I was totally against it and went to see the GP. Who told me to do the cry it out technique. I couldn’t bear it, so struggled on and on until I was literally at the end of my tether. I ended up doing a form of sleep training which was a hash of lots of techniques, and it worked. I hate saying that I sleep trained my baby. It makes me feel so guilty and so cold. But we are all sleeping much better. My baby used to have 20 minutes sleep twice a day and only in my arms, and had to sleep-share with either me or my partner (we had separate beds for this reason) and would wake every hour, and take up to an hour to get back to sleep. It was awful, but now she sleeps 3-4 hours in the day over 3 naps, and has 12-13 hours at night.
Whatever you decide to do is entirely your decision, and don’t let anyone, not HV’s, not doctors, not family, tell you any different because you have to be happy with your choices. Just find something that suits you and something you can live with.
Loads of luck, and just know you are definitely not alone with this xx
PS This is not a plug, I promise! But my very first blog post was on this very subject, you might find it helpful x
Oh, also are you breastfeeding? I was exclusively bf-ing but my baby was big and constantly hungry. I started mixed feeding, giving her a bottle in the day and a bottle last thing before bed, and she slept longer between feeds.
xx
I remeber having to self-sooth Kiera. It is the hardest thing ever. Kiera is 10 months old now and I only done this with her at 8 months,I had tried a few times but I always gave into her crying! My partner was a big help through that as he would make sure I was busy doing something else or he would stand outside her bedroom door and not let me in. It is realy hard but after a couple of days she was only crying for about 5 mins and then she would be sound asleep. At first it would be for about 20 mins, I had a little mirror that I used to pop round her door to check she was okay so she couldnt see me.
Maybe try putting something that smells of you in her cot? Or once you have rocked her to sleep put her very very slowly down and once she is used to that bed then self-sooth. It is very hard and I totally understand were you are coming from with all this, the health vistiors give you that advice as if its so simple and easy. Best way to do it is to listen to other mums and try you own ideas. xx
We are going through the same thing with my little one Kayleigh, I swore I would never do it but I am at the end of my tether. We have tried everything else and even feeding or rocking her to sleep can take as long as an hour and a half, I am totally drained. She used to go to sleep on her own quite happily from about 5 months old but the day she learned to crawl she just stopped going to sleep. Good luck I hope you find something that works for you.