Baby Sleeping Problems

bluenose1

Becles wrote:

Is baby confused by night and day? Sometimes they get mixed up!

On a day time, put her to sleep with the curtains open and make a litte background noise - do some housework or have the radio/TV on. When she wakes up, talk to her and play with her.

On a night wake, make no eye contact and do not speak. Keep the room dark by just putting the landing light on, or use a low watt bulb. Settle her back in the cot and leave her. If she just cries a bit, just leave her to it and she'll learn how to settle herself. If she starts crying loudly or sounds distressed, then go back to her and try and find out what's wrong which is easier said than done!

Totally agree with above comments.
If you go into baby all the time they come to expect it and cry all the more.


If the baby was still crying after 10 minutes or so I would wet his dummy with water from a glass and for some strange reason that would help him sleep.

It is worth watching "Baby Whisperer" programmes and reading her books as it is amazing the way she cures sleeping problems. Not sure if these are available on Video or not.

Good luck
Anne

angel4_2

have you tried putting the babies bed covers in your night dress during the day so it smells of you and then wrapping baby up in "mums smell" at night?

may work, did for mine

ang x

HappySad

I have little more advice to add except you could try hungery baby milk just before your son goes to bed. This could fill him up to sleep longer.

As with the dummy... My son is 21months old and loves his dummy. He sleeps with it at night and has it for some time in the day. We use a dummy clip (mothercare- £2.50 for pack of two) and once he was 6months old he was able to find the dummy from the clip that was attached to his sleep suit.

My son started to sleep through the night from about 6month... but even now we gwt nights where he wakes up crying for no reason.

You could always try the crying technic and leave him to cry for 5mins then 10mins then 15mins and so on if you are strong enough to do this. We tried this and it really worked for us.

This book ISBN:0600606643 "Sleep (Practical Parenting- Problem Solvers S.) " Is really good. It give you lots of useful techniques that you can use to help your baby to sleep through the night. If you don't want to buy the book you can get it from the library like I did.

auntywalker2

Do you give a "dream feed" that is a bottle, just before you go to bed picking baby up in her sleep, feeding, quick burp then back into the cot. Then if she goes 6 hours between bottles, you get almost 6 hours sleep. I did that with my two. Once she is eating more solids, she may sleep longer, though of course some foods can cause tummy ache possibly. The best time to start with solids is at lunchtime, not tea-time, as then at least the tummy ache would be during waking hours for you!

Give her last bottle at her bed-time as usual, then the extra bottle as you go to bed to help her sleep longer.
HTH

jellyhead

another thought - is the waking because baby is old enough to wriggle about lots and is kicking off the covers? what about a sleeping bag? you can get thinner summer weight ones.

frizz_head

crewe wrote:

We've got a 5 and a half month old baby who until 1 month ago was sleeping through the night.

Usually babies who start waking - after having slept through the night previously, could be a sign of needing more nourishment during the day, and as you are at the right age for weening, I guess it could be that! Or, as many posters have said, it could be the dreaded teeth.

You are very lucky though crewe, my youngest didn't sleep through until she was 18 months - not a single night! She only slept through once we transferred her to a 'big girls bed'! Something I remind her about constantly!!! :rotfl:

Good luck with it though Crewe!

Pennywise

frizz_head wrote:

You are very lucky though crewe, my youngest didn't sleep through until she was 18 months - not a single night! She only slept through once we transferred her to a 'big girls bed'! Something I remind her about constantly!!!

That's exactly what worked with our boy, but unfortunately, we didn't do it until he was 3! 3 years of disturbed sleep EVERY night - up to him every 2 or 3 hours. It's a wonder we are still sane with the sleep depravation we suffered.

jellyhead

my boy was 3 years old before he slept for more than 4 hours out of each 24 hour period :eek: i don't think i escaped sane :-) i'm hoping that this new baby i'm having will inherit my ability to sleep for 12 hours undisturbed lol!

i don't think sleeping 4 hours out of 24 is actually normal but my health visitor didn't help, she said he was autistic. the GP gave me sedatives but i didn't like to use them often, they worked for 7 hours when i did use them though. i was told i was reading too many magazines when i asked if he had a milk allergy (i had no breastmilk so he was on formula) but at 3 years old we cut out dairy and all of a sudden he slept 11 hours a night and started to talk and listen, the eczema and diarrhoea went away, etc. - poor sausage was just suffering lack of sleep from milk allergy, it runs in the family, half the boys are allergic to dairy.

i'm assuming that's not the case with your 5 month old though.

fsdss

if you think that it may be caused by teething, you could try rubbing Calgel (which takes a while to settle in ) onto the gums or something for more instant relief such as Ambesol and wait and see.

dont lift the baby in the night unless uncontrollably sobbing, and then only to comfort as she will learn that by crying in the night receives attention.

if she has just moved onto solids then she needs to progess quickly onto 3 meals a day as she is nearly six months old. this is a fairly easy task at this age. (be warned that she will naturally drop at least one of her bottles in the day, and this is nothing to worry about)

at 6 months old a baby only needs between 15 - 20 oz of baby milk per day (and this is only for the nutritional content of vitamins/ iron etc) their main diet is from food

you are doing the right thing by only offering water as milk is a comforter.


good luck and hope you get her back into her routine

crewe

Latest update.
Sunday night she woke up at 1.30am I gave her water and she went back to sleep, then she woke at 5.00am I let her cry for about 5 mins then she went to sleep. Monday nights 2.00am she cried back to sleep after about 8mins and woke at 5.30am I gave her water and she went back to sleep.
Thanks for all the great advice everone.

crewe