Sleep help!

Ok, so I don't believe in controlled crying or CIO at all and never leave my baby to cry. But I've reached the end of my tether and so am attempting some form of crying as I just don't know what else to do and my girl is now 7 months and we still spend all evening and half the night trying to get her to stay asleep.

I don't mind getting up to feed her, but the problem is the evenings, no matter what bedtime we try (and we have tried various ones for weeks at a time), she wakes after 25 minutes (used to be 40) and then is SO hard to resettle.

So I've started (last night) the NZ baby whisperer settling technique. The leave for fives minutes, go in for a minute and leave again if not working, leave for 4 mintues etc etc... so we go all through this, cry for 5 minutes, try settle doesn't work so leave for 4, try settle for 2, doesn't work. leave for 3, or thereabouts.

Anyway, my problem is, she will settle, and then I keep patting for a while and shushing to make sure she's asleep then I gradully stop then no matter what, she will wake 5 minutes later, last night we then went through that all again, only to have her then again wake 5 minutes later.... why can I get her to settle but not stay asleep?

Help!

Sorry I don't know, I have had similar problems with Ben recently but his problems related to teething. Anyway didn't want to read and run.

I know how hard it can be, I hope you find a solution

Things I can think of - that you already may or may not be doing:

Is she warm enough at night?
For Jude we make sure his room is at 18degrees and he always has a hot water bottle in his bed before hand to warm it up for him. He wears PJs, a sleep sack and a wool blanket or two to bed. He likes to be quite warm though - could be different with your baby.

Does she have a consistent bedtime routine?
We had no bedtime routine for Jude until he was about 6 months old. Since then bedtime has been at 7. He usually has tea, bath, change into bedclothes, milk, story, bed. Sometimes he wants to go to bed earlier and we try to accommodate this but try not to let him go to bed too late although this invariably happens when we are out visiting. It was weird putting him into a bedtime routine as I am not a routine person at all, I was surprised at how much it helped. We didn't really have a daytime routine for him until he was around 9 months.

Do you feed to sleep?
I know a lot of people say don't feed to sleep but it actually worked for us. At 7 months if he would wake after an hour or so, even half an hour and wasn't going to resettle by himself then I'd just go in and feed him. Sometimes he would fall asleep on the boob and sometimes he would go back into his cot awake but drowsy and would drift off from there. Even now his last feed is just before story and bed so he is drowsy when he goes to bed but usually not asleep.

During times when we could not get Jude to resettle at that age we would put him in a baby carrier on our backs - he liked the security and would normally fall asleep after a while.

Another thing that worked for a little while with us was having white noise in his room. He doesn't need that anymore.

Controlled crying did not work for us at all. He just seemed to get more worked up. That technique did not even last a night. Lately we would leave him to grizzle - if he became really upset then we would go in and try to resettle him by patting and shhhing until he went back to sleep

Sorry - this may not be much help at all as the main technique we used was just feeding him and then putting him back down. And we have only just got him sleeping through at almost 11months.

Edited by Delli

Argh I hate that - Jude did it often. Its as if they have a tilt sensor, you go to lay them flat in the cot and they wake up. Pick them up again and they fall asleep - go to put them down again and they wake up. Super frustrating.

Could you feed her in your bed early evening and when she falls asleep - wiggle out and go for that cuppa? That way there is no transferring in the initial stages of light sleep.

Another thing we tried and worked sometimes was having the cot rail down so that we could keep hugging him close to our bodies all the way down to the mattress - we didn't have to hold him out and away from us to get him down over the rail.

maybe shes waking cause she is windy or still hungry?

I think we wet through this at about that age - just wouldn't settle and I would often end up going to be with her at 10pm and jsut feeding her to sleep. No advice really as some nights we still get problems (like last night she would wake up every 30 mins crying but once I gave her some teething powder she settled down for a few hours of sleep!)

I do understand how frustrating it is though because as much as you love them, a few hours by yourself in the evenings and then a few hours asleep by yourself is all you want!

I can highly recommend finding yourself a copy of Elizabeth Pantley's 'No Cry Sleep Solution' - even if you don't agree or follow everything she recommends in the book, there are some great tips in there and you can choose what works for you, no CIO or CC involved at all.

I had just about this exact same problem (only would wake after an hour). All issues with feeding her to sleep, but waking etc.

We did the following:

White noise
A cuddly which I slept with for two nights before she got it
Really consistent routine, bath, feed, stories/cuddles, singing, into bed with a kiss
We did the sleep easy solution DVD (recommended) by sleep store. It is 5 mins then 30 seconds, verbal reassurance ( I would give a gentle back rub if grizzly), then 10 mins, then 15 mins. Took about 50 mins the first night, then 25 mins, then 5 mins.
Still wakes occasionally but does go back to sleep quite quickly.

I actually tried that for that reason Febgirl ;-) She did then sleep for 4 hours straight but then was up for 2 hours in the middle of the night and wouldn't go back to sleep - that's happened twice now after pamol - maybe the colouring in it or something! lol.

But I have to say - white noise seems to have done it, I never would have thought that at 7 months that would work! She still needs some resettling, but at least the resettling works and works pretty quickly most of the time (well, in the last 3 days!)