Help! What happened to our sleep?!?!

big huge hugs hun! Will give you one in person when you get here.

Have you tried a sleep sack? I think I put A in one around Bethany's age.

If you want to try and get her off the night time bottles (I was always told that they have the ability to sleep through at that age so it's either habit, illness, teething, a fright or purely being stubborn!) you could try giving her warm water in the bottle instead of milk. She'll think its very strange and after a while (well this happened for DS) thought there was no point in waking up as she won't be getting anything 'good' as such.

Also good idea about getting your DH to go in. A lot of the time they do just want comfort etc and the men seem to be able to stop that pattern a lot quicker.

Does she have a comfort toy? If she is too attached to you, you could introduce one and that takes the focus off you at nightime and more onto the toy/blanket.

Do you think she could be ill in any way? Ear infection? Is she teething? Maybe try angling her mattress to see if that relieves any pressure. Also if she's too cold or too hot that could make a difference.

Sorry don't have any more advice but just wanted to give you some helpful hints in case you haven't tried some of them. I've had a teething child since 10 weeks old (no bull!) who only sleeps through half the week cos he's constantly cutting teeth so I know how zombie-like us mums can get after a while

This isn't going to be much help....but Ella was a perfect night sleeper until 3 months and was sleeping through, then suddenly she hit a growth spurt around then and starting waking up for feeds....we started her on solids just after 4 months and it didn't make any difference. Now......at 21 months she is STILL waking up at least once during the night and I can count the number of times she has slept through on my hand.

So...based on my experience, I would definintely try and not feed her during the night if you can help it (or at least try and stretch out the feeds), as it can very quickly get into a bad habit and as they get older it is much harder to fix (and they get much more stubborn).

good luck and I hope she does settle down soon

Thanks for all your tips!

Emz how DO you do it? Yes we use a toy (one of those blankie toys), partly to keep her dummy in and partly to keep her hands occupied so she doesn't keep grabbing ours! I know she was too cold last week so we've stepped up the layers and she seems just right, nice and warm now. Wondered about teething etc. so had pamol as a fallback last night.

Ta for the tip mum2Ella, that's good to know so that I DO do something about it now!

Thanks Saffron, your final sentence is what I've come to believe in my reading and experience so far. Glad to know I'm not alone in having sleep issues!

Rascal I think you might be right about the wind - helped having a friend spend some time with her yesterday cuz she commented on how windy she was - being my first baby it's hard to know what's normal and what's excessive! So put a few things in place last night to help with the wind side of things.

Here's the rundown of our night in case you're interested...

So our night... munchkin was asleep on me by 7:30, took us until 8:30 to figure out the safe t sleep at which point we put her in it. She sighed, snuggled her toy and drifted back off to sleep - ahhh bliss! I got up at 10:30 to give her a dream feed, she had a huge feed without waking at all, yay. She woke at 12:30 so DH was on duty from then. She wasn't too happy at first with dummy & patting so he picked her up and she snuggled into him but refused to be put down in her cot no matter how asleep she was or how many times poor dh tried. I was in and out of the room (below her eye level lol) making suggestions or giving mike ideas for what to do. Gave her pamol at 2:30am then he tried putting her down again but finally at 3am he couldn't take it any more. (He got a bee sting on his head on Wed and it's gone to his muscles above his neck and has been really achy ever since. So my hubby who refuses to take panadol has been taking it regularly, poor guy.) At that point I took her and put her into bed on her side which took strength to hold her there cuz she just wanted to flail wildly. Finally settled her, we both went to bed. I got up to her twice, once to roll her back on her side and once when she'd flicked to her back so I put the dummy back in without her seeing me. She then slept from 3:15 to 7:30am. 9 hours without a feed and she really didn't seem to mind!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tonight's goal is for her to SLEEP that 9 hours. Can you imagine? Pure bliss!! Ok so I sincerely doubt it'll happen that quickly, but we'll keep working on it.

Hmmm good thinking!!! Should I put it inside her safe t sleep or outside do u think?

Yeah inside could work, as long as you're not worried about her turning and not being able to get away from it etc. But sounds like a good idea!

Great about the 9 hours without a feed! It may be wishful thinking that she sleeps that 9 hours TONIGHT, but I reckon if you keep doing that so that she learns she doesn't get a feed, she may just sleep through that period. Keep us posted!