hello wise women (&men) of the notice board.
i desperately need your advice/ thoughts/ ideas.
my DS is 6 & a half months old and chronically tired. the situation has gotten much worse in the last month-2 months.
*he is teething
*he has terrible colic
*he will only go to sleep on the breast now
*and won't be transferred to his cot anymore (or even our bed [we're co- sleeping] i must lie down in our bed to feed him)
*he learns very quickly & can sense when i'm trying to 'put' him to sleep
he resists all my attempts at rocking, shooshing, patting, singing, nipple removal etc. his hands & arms & legs stay awake & thwart my efforts after you'd swear he's asleep. he even sleeps with half an eye open sometimes.
*his naps are at an all time low of 10-15min x3 p/day
*he startles himself awake at 5min intervals as he's falling asleep & needs to be settled by breast (sometimes i can get a finger in if he's sleepy enough)
*night times are a nightmare - most nights he goes down at 7:30pm (after an hour or so of trying) we have a solid, quiet-moderate pre-bed routine. walk/ bath/ quiet stroll around the garden, soft music & feed to sleep.
he generally wakes an hour after, but then sleeps 'til 10:30ish. he may then sleep 'til midnight, but usually requires an hour of settling. from this time on he can wake every hour/ hour & a half until i give up and get up at 5/ 6ish.
*we're trying to establish a good nap routine, but he starts showing tired signs hours before, so we put him down straight away, only to sleep 10min.
so attentively we watch & put him down again when he shows us he's tired, but this doesn't seem to work.
*today i just tried to keep him to a schedule (couldn't get any worse i thought!) and he did slightly better with 15-20min naps.
*i was able to extend his naps in the beginning, but he hasn't responded well for a week.

there's so much information here, i might stop and just listen to what anyone has to say.

*we've just completed 10 days of NCSS & though we got off to a roaring start with record night sleeps & 2hr naps (ok, just the once) i'm feeling exhausted and lost. CIO is NOT an option, so this has to work for us.
please help us find our key to the success i've read about on these pages.

kindest regards,
love&light

Hi,
to you! I was totally where you are when I started using NCSS! Same sort of age; your DS is 6 months, mine was 7 months... and he was so terribly teething like yours, and plus this is the time that separation anxiety starts. It was so frustrating because we were following every single tip in the book, religiously, every single night and yet the first 10 days past, then the second set of 10 days, then the third... I was really wondering what I was doing wrong, but wasn't thinking about how he was having a horrible bout of teething, with separation anxiety - both of which she says slow down the whole process tremendously. In the end, we just kept up following our plan every single night, knowing that even though we couldn't see the results through the teething and separation anxiety, we felt that it was helping and that once those issues started to clear up, we'd see that underneath all his wakefulness because of teething, he was really getting a great connection to this routine. And we were right... once the teething cleared up, he started sleeping through the night. Unfortunately the teething had lasted 5 months, and everything you describe happened during it: we couldn't put him down in his crib; I had to lie next to him for him to fall asleep, and your description of sleeping with half an eye open completely hits home with me! I couldn't believe when my DS could wake up at the slightest creak if I tried to walk out of the room! It was totally the teething for us, and it just made him desperatly want my comfort as much as possible, so I had no choice but to give it to him. In the end, though, he learned to trust that he has my support whenever he wants it, and he developed a confidence in that which made him cry out less and less, until finally he just stayed asleep. Sometimes he needs some settling, but mostly he's asleep and just half consciously can't find his lovey... but once we put it within reach he's good again...

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Host of:
The No Cry Sleep Solution
Attachment Parenting

Zennifer... long pause. Thank God for you. I soooooo needed to hear you today. I can't seem to stop crying. even when my mum said she'd put some money in my account, so i could go do something nice for myself, i cried. i'm crying now. jeez i must be tired. dreadful night. feeding all night (almost constantly), but every day i get up with optimism... then after the first attempt at a nap (5min today), i end up in tears. so, i thought i'd log on & there you were. thank you thank you thank you!
ok, so just keep it up yeah. repeat repeat repeat!!! i'm starting to get it. my husband & i talked about it today & thought we might try a tighter nap routine. we try to stick to 9am, midday and 3pm, but he will usually start rubbing his eyes at
7:00am, so we try to put him down, but it rarely works. sometimes DS just doesn't show tired signs (because he's always tired?) or he constantly shows tired signs (because he's always tired!). another major obstacle is feeding to sleep, so we thought we might try sitting up to feed and attempt to remove the nipple while he's still awake. of course i've tried this many, many times before, but not for a few weeks. we just feel like we're travelling down the wrong road at high speed. did you try to feed your baby in another location? although, you talked about transfer issues, so i guess you did. so, did you just keep feeding to sleep lying down until... until? how did you ever get to use the cot again? or did you manage to co-sleep through the whole process?
and how did you manage to have success with the gentle removal technique? DS is getting worse with this. he grabs my hand and holds on tight or puts both hands up to his mouth, so i can't my finger in.
sorry... and one more thing- did you have trouble with 'startling'? DS is getting worse. his whole body looks like it's being shocked.
i can't thank you enough for helping guide us!

love&light

love&light,
I can totally relate to your situation...My ds is only 3 mo, but he either needs the pasi, breast or bring rocked to sleep. I usually have to wait until he is in deep sleep before before I put him down and he stays asleep, but only for about an hour at night. For naps, he only sleeps 30-45 minutes at a time. He wakes up tired and cranky . Has it gotten better for you?

hi timmy'smom,
i haven't much time right now, but thought i would just reply and say, i wish i could say somethign really positive here about how we're going, but things aren't hugely better, but at least they're changing. there have certainly been glimmers of hope & slight improvements here and there, but he's not sleeping that much better at night & still not in his cot. naps are improving a little, but i must be clear that i've only been following parts of ep's plan for the last month because we've been away from home and his teething experience has been so bad.
i've just been bombarded by cio enthusiasts lately, but i'm going to start the plan in ernest again today. i'll be logging in here daily to stay focussed and positive. i have to go now, but hang in there... i'm told this will surely pass and the next thing we know, we won't be able to get them up and out of bed.

love&light