Sleep Sense Program

Thanks for the advice ladies. I think I'll stick with the one night feed at this point purely for the fact that he doesn't have a whole lot to drink right before bed and he truly sucks me dry when he wakes up. But really nice to have the opinions!

Loving the programme thus far - have even turned someone else onto it who has a really bad sleeper.

Anyone know what this is about?

We are on night 6 of the programme and Ryan is now just waking once at night for a feed - 1am. But then he's been waking around 5 or 5:30. I've just been leaving him and he'll cry for a bit, then fall asleep (I presume cause he goes quiet) for 10-20 minutes, then wake up and cry for a bit, then go to sleep for 10-20 minutes and he'll do this until I get him up around 6.20am. Is this just a phase and he'll learn to go back to sleep? Anyone?

Gingerbaby - he's definitely not ready to get up. HE goes to bed at around 7.30. He used to sleep 7 - 4.30 quite regularly then sleep until 6.30 after that. Then I went back to work and he got sick and it all went to poo. So trying to get him back to schedule is NOT working well at the moment.

mollycat wrote: Anyone know what this is about? We are on night 6 of the programme and Ryan is now just waking once at night for a feed - 1am. But then he's been waking around 5 or 5:30. I've just been leaving him and he'll cry for a bit, then fall asleep (I presume cause he goes quiet) for 10-20 minutes, then wake up and cry for a bit, then go to sleep for 10-20 minutes and he'll do this until I get him up around 6.20am. Is this just a phase and he'll learn to go back to sleep? Anyone?

Has it been colder the last few nights to co-incide with the early waking? Apparently if your baby starts waking at 5am when it used to be later then it's most often cold waking them...

Ok I tried the stay in the room method, mainly because DD is in our room because we're living with my parents. She cried crazily for over an hour, my brothers ex came into the room and told me to leave and I did and 20mins later asleep! I tried her nap first and half an hour and abit of encouragement and asleep for 1.5hrs she hasn't done that for AGES!

Last night grizzle asleep, today for a nap shout at me then sleep, tonight shout at me when I walk out of the room lol then grizzle 10mins later and asleep! I can't believe it. Only thing I've got to kill is the 5-6am wake up she settled herself about 3times this morning then she woke up crying and I gave in and fed her. I like that cuddle in the morning and she is really hungry and feeds for about 10mins which is a normal feed for her so am thinking she might not be ready to cut it out yet. Hmmm.

Thanks for the programme

So, also wanting to know how long it took some people to see true results? Did you see good results only to have it go backwards and then have it go forwards again?

I'm thinking I need to start over tonight with no night feeds and give it a good 2 weeks to see results.

Also - did anyone else experience their bubs crashing their heads into the side of their cot. Any suggestions there? Should I get cot bumpers?

Hi mommies. Sleep! Its such a big part of our lives now that we have babies, isn't it? A couple of you have mentioned the new 5am waking time and wondering how to fix it. I'm not a sleep sense user, but did a lot of my son's sleep training based on the DreamBabyGuide by Sheyne Rowley and she had two good points that I think will be topical for the recent posts.

1) 5am wake ups. There are two ways that we can affect the time our babies wake. Both are from the prior day. The first is what time you put your baby down for a morning nap. For a 7am start, a morning nap shouldn't be before 9am. Anything before 9am encourages an early waking the next day. The other, is the last nap of the day prior. This last sleep should never be past 5pm (this assumes baby goes to bed around the 7pm hour). I was dubious about both of these statements until I noticed the mornings my bub was up with the birds, I had put him down at 8:15 or 8:45 in the morning. I started extending that out, no matter what time he got up which was usually 5:45am, until we got the nap for the morning to be after 9am. I also make sure that if he is still sleeping at 5pm that I wake him up instead of letting him sleep on. TBH, it has taken a good two months to shift him from such an early waking to a now 7 - 7:30 waking.

2) Mollycat asked about the one night feed for her bub and this book made an interesting point about that. I too was at the point of trying to stop night feeds, just introduced solids, etc...the thing to realize for under 1's is that they only understand their waking state. They don't wake up realizing they have been asleep for xx time. Which is you why you may find if your baby falls sleep in the middle of a big WAIL, he/she is likely to wake up with a big WAIL as all they remember last was that crying they were doing, even if they've just finished a two hour nap. So to try and distinguish for your baby one waking is a feed but others are not doesn't usually work. (according to Rowley's book). But that if you teach your baby that night feeds are on your clock, when you wake the baby up, they can learn much quicker that their own wakings are for self settling back to sleep. We liked that philosophy and even though Wyatt could wake sometimes at 10pm, 1am, 3am, or god only knows, we decided to dream feed at 11pm. Then any subsequent wakings we knew he was 'full' and should resettle himself back to sleep. We did three nights at 11, then moved it back by 15 minutes to 10:45 for 3 nights and kept that up until we were at 9:30. At 9:30, after 3 nights we stopped, and he was fine not bf'ing overnight.

Maybe you'll find some use out of those bits. Her book is huge but she's got some really good cause-effect insights for managing our bubs that I found turned things around for us and certainly gave me a lot more confidence about managing my son's sleep and not just being a victim to his whims of the day or night.

Those are some really interesting points! Hmmm...might have to give that 9am nap a try. Will be hard to stretch him that far but I'm sure we can do it. Might have to put daycare on the case if they can.

I've just decided to stop BF at night because he's proven he can go 10/11 hours without a feed and it was just confusing him. The last two nights have been better than we've had so hopefully a couple more weeks can see even more improvements.

hi all
is someone able to send me a copy of this?
I have read through the posts and it looks like it is working for a lot of you.
Our bub is still small but sleeps through some nights and not others, sleeps well some days and not others and i have no idea what to do to fix it.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

I'd love to hear any advice too! My wee man is just over 4 months and although he has never slept longer than about 4 hours at one time at night I've been managing somehow. I recently resorted to CC (he broke down my resolve to do attachment parenting, and so here I am) but it only worked for 4 days, now he's stopped doing good daytime naps and , started waking after every sleep cycle and I'm at my wits end and he's going hoarse which makes me feel even more stink. I've stopped going out anywhere cos as soon as I meet anyone I know (or don't) I end up breaking down. I found that sleep programme online but it's pricey. I just found something I imagine is similar in a book called 'the sleep easy solution' that I got out of the library (think I have most of the books out about sleep in the Hutt Valley!). I don't know what I'm asking, I'm just joinng you all in solidarity I guess

Edited by pugltpixie