Poor Sleep Support Thread

Hi all. I went to a talk last night at The Parent Centre in Greenlane by Louise from The Sleepstore. She talked mainly about CC which is what we are doing. I found it really useful. When l get a chance l will write a longer post. If anyones interested in that method?????

The talk was very much about CC so if that's not your thing then skip this post.

Well here goes..... firstly she said that babies have 2hrly sleep cycles overnight and 45 min during the day. once babies reach 5 months they will wake fully between cycles i.e wide awake looking around the room. This is where the problem lies if your baby needs you to fall asleep via feeding, rocking, patting etc because they won't be able to go back to sleep (self settle) themselves. This method is really only for babies over 4 months.

So the key is to make an optimum sleep environment. Correct temp, sleeping bag, cuddly if you want and possibly white noise on rpt played all night. Then ensure you have a good bedtime routine e.g 5.30 - dinner, 6.00 - bath, 6.30 - feed, 7.00 - bed. It's important baby doesn't fall asleep at the breast, so at least 5 mins awake time before bed after feed.

Then say goodnight etc and leave the room. Go back in to reassure at 5,10 and then 15 min intervals until asleep. Rpt goodnight etc when you go in but do not touch or pick up. Continue til baby falls asleep. Average of 1 hr. We started this ourselves a few weeks ago and Oliver took 34 mins the first night and 6 the next.

She felt that from 4-5 months babies shouldn't need a feed thru the night ( except DF at 10). However each mum has to assess this. Continue CC thru the night when baby wakes at 5, 10 and 15 min intervals. We did this last night and it worked.

It was recommended you do CC for day sleeps too, however maybe concentrate on one thing at a time.

The key thing she emphasised was consistency, so you must do CC for each sleep. I was leaving Oliver to self settle betwen 3 hrly feeds overnight therefore confusing him by sometimes feeding him and sometimes not.

I'm sure there is more but feel l have waffled on enough. Hope that is some help to some of you.

And so it goes. A couple of days reprieve and back to crappy sleeps. I think she plays catch up on the lost sleep and then it's back to 30 and 45min sleeps during the day. I'm so over this today

mollycat, we did the CC in stages too when we felt we were ready. Easch stage is easier because they already know what to do IYKWIM. We did bedtime then day sleeps and now nighttime. Good luck.