Mine feeds at 1am like clockwork this week and drains 8oz so I think she still needs it so no sleeping through!

Great morning nap here rubbish afternoon nap - think I left it to long to put her down doh! So back on me just to get her some sleep! That and constipation made her a grot. But a mega poo at bedtime and she went like a light!

Early waking still troubling us

I'd be interested to know a bit more about this too. Kyle just won't nap in his crib for more than 30 mins! Even worse was he wouldn't even nap in his bouncer either today so I've been for 2 long walks with the pram!!

He is now asleep in his cot! He looks so ickle in it! Fingers crossed he sleeps!! He was bashing the sides of his crib and it was rattling every time he kicked his feet.

Baby cinema tomorrow - Alice in Wonderland, wonder how that will go down!

Right 9pm, time for One Born Every Minute!

Sweet Dreams Everybody xxx

Tennisgal - dd would normally nap for 30 mins so i would go in at 20 mins and if she is fast asleep, i.e not moving then i would stroke her face gently until she stirs a bit - but don't wake her up.

the first time i tried it she slept for three hours

i heard somewhere that you need to do it for about a week and then there naps will increase in length without having to 'wake to sleep' anymore

good luck

Yes he is still just on milk, trying to hold off on weaning till 6 months as I had bad eczema as a child and am paranoid about Thomas getting it. Hard to say whether he's had less or more during the day, he's breast fed so it can be hard to tell how much he is taking. I think he might be starting a bit of a growth spurt to be honest as he seems to be wanting feeding at least every two hours now during the day whereas he was going two and a half or three - so I'm feeding him when he wakes up and then often feeding him again before he goes for a nap! Hope you don't have too bad a night, she's probably still getting most of her nutrition from milk at this stage anyway so hopefully it won't be as bad as you're expecting.

TennisGal - I am no expert on wake to sleep and it only works some of the time for me or as Flowers says it could be just coincidence, it's very hard to tell. What I do is go into him after he's been asleep 30 minutes and just gently touch his face until he moves slightly or his eyelids flutter - you don't want to actually wake them up, just rouse them a little bit out of the deep sleep phase which is then supposed to shift them into the next sleep cycle. The important thing as far as I understand it is timing, you want to do it when LO is still in a deep sleep (motionless and hard to rouse) - if they are already gone into a light sleep then it is too late and you should try a bit earlier the next time. This morning when I tried to do it, it woke him up - I wasn't impressed by that at all - we had to have an emergency walk to extend the nap a bit cos he would be like a demon after just 30 minutes nap!

Well I'm biting the bullet ladies and going to give sleepsense a go! I have read through the book and it seems as though we are already in quite good shape with nightimes as she settles herslef without crying already and for the past two nights has only woken once for a feed, goes straight back down. Naps though, not so good. We are stuck in the short nap cycle, 45 mins is about all we get an an hour is good! I have tired wake to sleep a couple of times but have not got it to work yet. Might try doing it a bit earlier as I think I am leaving it too late. She tends to wake up from her lunchtime nap crying, but with her eyes still closed so she is not fully awake. I know she needs to sleep more, but she just works herslf up more and more as I try to soothe her. Sometimes I can re-settle her by rocking her moses basket (probably a prop!) but this only lasts for about 10 mins. Anyone got any ideas?

Morning everyone

Flowers - glad the naps are getting better!

Polaris - I read that in the Baby Whisperer too so you're probably on to a good thing with the different waking times.

PM - baby cinema's great, we've got one here and I went to see Sherlock Holmes, hope you have fun.

Jacs - have the sleep signs returned yet?

Lyre/TG/HG - how are you doing?

Hope everyone else is ok and hello all new peeps!

Well I filled in that online SS thing and got an email but it was all higgeldy piggeldy and some of the answers said "so your baby is less than months" and others "your baby is over 3 months" which didn't fill me with much confidence. OH is up for giving it a go though. Can I just ask you all a question.... I notice that almost everyone here already has bed time sussed and your LO's can self-settle. My LO definitely can't self-settle and PU/PD and shhh/pat do nothing but escalate her crying so I just wonder if I should wait until she can self-settle at night before I try SS or will SS help me to get her to do this?

Ta

Hi everyone - how did your nights go?

We had a terrible night! Well - not as bad as our nights used to be but definitely a disimprovement on how they have been recently.

Firstly we had crying again at bedtime - only for about 5 minutes - but he has not been crying at bedtime for ages.
Then he woke for a feed at 11.30 - I was really reluctant to feed him at that time because I was thinking that it would probably not keep him going till morning - maybe I should have tried harder to settle him without feeding him because when I did feed him he was really sleepy and it was difficult to keep him awake to take a proper feed. But OH is entering a music competition today so he really needed a good night's sleep so I was conscious of that.
So then he woke up again at 4 a.m. - he wasn't really crying, just whinging, so I left him to it and he did go back to sleep but it took him about 15-20 minutes I think (I was dozing a bit myself on and off).
Then OH got up at 5 a.m. to prepare for the competition and Thomas obviously woke up and was wide awake and really sounded like he thought it was a great time to get up for the day! So I fed him in the hopes that he might go back to sleep, which he did thankfully go back to sleep until 7 - but I was wide awake by that stage and couldn't get back to sleep at all.
He woke up for the day at 7 - not really interested in his morning feed which is how he used to be when I was feeding him a lot during the night.
I'm hoping that it was just a one-off but I keep thinking that maybe we are hitting the dreaded four month growth spurt/sleep regression thingy.

Sympathies, Polaris, I've been awake since 5.30am too

Does anyone know what this 4 month sleep regression thing's about? How long it lasts/what it's down to?

Cattia - we were the same with naps, 40mins on the dot, since he was a couple of weeks old. Since using SS that changed on the first day for us. Now he has one or two 40min naps, and one or two 1.5-2hr naps per day!

Elski - Still no sleepy signs!
Evan could not settle himself at all when we started SS. We put him down asleep every time, as we hated the tears! We had crying on and off for half an hour the first time we used SS, and since then, only occasional crying that is very short. Usually, he is silent and just fidgets!
There is a growth spurt at 4 months, which can lead to increased feeds, and therefore more wakenings in the night - the way LO's are when they're younger.

Polaris - hopefully it's just a blib - he may have had a pain or something? I never really noticed a growth spurt with Evan (bad mummy?!), but then we were all over the place with sleep and feeds, so not surprising really! I guess you can only ride it out, and keep things as normal as possible. Maybe try for shorter awake times this morning to catch up?

Thanks jacs, I must say I'm DREADING the crying but it's encouraging to know that Evan's crying was only really bad for one night. We have horrid neighbours one side so keeping them awake will be the silver lining