Hi! I am new to the board and have really appreciated what I have found here on the NCSS. I really feel as though I need to reach out to those that have tried it and seen success, because I am feeling like an absolute failure. I have a 6 month old daughter that I was co-sleeping with, but she kept waking up with our movement, so I put her in a co-sleeper, but she still felt all the movement because it was attached to the bed, so last night I moved the co-sleeper a couple of inches away so that she couldn't feel our movement and we couldn't feel hers. I hate it because I wanted so badly to co-sleep, but like Elizabeth said in her book, sometimes you have to move them away to get them to sleep at night. I hope that she's right in that I can bring T back into bed with us after we get her sleeping more. Do you know if that's true? I hope so because she will soon outgrow the co-sleeper and we don't want her in a crib in her room, or in a crib in our room for that matter. I guess time will tell.

That was an aside though, because I really need help with naps. I feel like T can't sleep long throughout the night because she hardly gets sleep throughout the day. She is tricky to get to sleep but even if I do get her to go down, she wakes up at half an hour on the dot. It's so frustrating. I tried to get her to go back to sleep like Elizabeth said, by watching her before she wakes up, but she just wakes up fully to nurse and will often just nurse for awhile and not go back to sleep. Then, the nights are bad with her waking up anywhere from 6 to 8 times. Do you know any other tricks with naps? Should I just go with what I can get and focus mostly on the night time sleeping? I don't know what to do...

I feel as though trying out these plans just makes me crazy and it's so hard to stick to it when you're at it 24-7. I'm so obliterated, I can't even formulate what I want to say. I empathize so much with the love and light posts because I feel as though I'm right in there with her on some of her posts. Any help you could send my way about naps, about hanging in there because it's worth it, anything would be great. All I have done today is cry and I don't know what to do, so anything you offer I'm sure could help. Where I live, there is just no one and nothing to help, so thank you. Hopefully next time I post I can be more coherent...just not at the moment.
Thanks,
Mountain Dancing

!!

Sounds like you are where I was when my DS was 7 months old. It took 5 months of doing all the tips in the book religiously, day after day, week after week for the tips to start making their way in my DS's subconscious mind so they could start doing their work... it can take such a long time, but it's so worth it. In the book somewhere, EP talks about how in sleep expert, Dr. Dement's book, he points out that it isn't until a baby's 40th week until they start to have sleep patterns that we would like to see, which means they are 10 months old before they have what we recognize as regular sleep patterns.

As the host of Attachment Parenting as well, I was completely ready to listen to my baby's cues as to whether or not he wanted to sleep in our bed. I was also surprised and somewhat saddened that he seemed to sleep waaay better in his own little bassinet, and if he was in our bed he was wakeful and clearly annoyed. It was also too bad because it's way easier to nurse lying down instead of making it into a big production of going and getting the baby, sitting in a chair or something, then going back to your own bed (or own room even) every 2 hours... and especially seeing as my DS would nurse sometimes for a hour and a half, I would really only get a half hour of sleep before he wanted to nurse again. But, suddenly at 7 months old when he started teething (he didn't actually cut those teeth for a few months, but the pain from it can start 2 months earlier, and I could tell because he needed a lot more comfort, and had strange sleep patterns suddenly) he wanted to be in our bed all the time and that was the only way he was comforted.... and basically he's been in our bed ever since. He's now 3.5 years old and even though he starts off the night in his own room, he will come join us at some point of hte night, or the early morning.

How long after your baby gets up in the morning do you try to get her to sleep again? I found that waiting for my DS to look tired actually meant he was overtired and he would have horrible naps, too.

The best thing to do with any situation is to follow all of EP's sleep tips each and every night, because all of these tips work together like a patchwork quilt, so trying only one or two tips out of context for this or that problem doesn't always work.

Let us know how the tips are working for you, or if you have any questions about them or anything else for that matter! Love to help!

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Host of:
The No Cry Sleep Solution
Attachment Parenting

I'm sorry that I don't have any advice for you but my 9 mo DD also wakes up exactly a half hour after going to sleep.

Wow-thanks for the encouragement and the reply. I am so nervous that it took you 5 months to get the tips to work. That is frightening, but I guess it's better than the alternative for me, which is CIO. That's just not the style that I can do, even though I know it works for some parents. Also, there are some days when I really consider it but I don't. I hope I don't "crack" any time now...

So, it does sound pretty normal that naps are irregular and not really on any sort of routine yet, that's good. I try to get her to go down at the same times each day, but that's a challenge. After she gets up I only wait two hours because by two and a half hours she's cranked and won't go down as easy. EP says to get them down at the same time each day, so is that what I should focus on? Even if the nap is only a half an hour? I tried the creeping in and trying to get her to go back to sleep thing, but that didn't work, she's awake. Her bedtime associations work so well, but I can't get the nap ones to stick or even work. The only one that sort of works is reggae music (I know, weird, but it's repetitive and she zones out to it.) Do you know of other nap routines that are successful?

I have been trying to do almost all of the sleep associations at night. I do my second 10 day log on Monday to see if they are working. It's so hard to stay at it though, and NOT look at the clock. That was a big part of my problem. I do think there has been success, it just comes and goes. It's hard to remind yourself that it's a dance of two steps forward, 10 steps back.

One other question I had was what do you do if even nursing her to sleep in the day time doesn't work? I've never heard of that, but T does it! She rips off my nipple by turning her head and looking around, and then coming back to it 50 times while flapping her limbs wildly. Is this a teething thing or just a weird T. thing? She used to go down while nursing and thank goodness it still works at night, but it scares me that it won't work during the day. She seems as though she is rolling me around her teeth but I don't know because she hasn't cut any yet. I can't get her to go down walking either because she sucks on my shoulder or face and cries, sucking her fist. It's like she wants me to nurse her but when I do, it doesn't work. Yikes! I just don't know what to focus on in terms of the EP stuff. I guess I'll keep doing what I can at night, but what about day time sleep? I don't think night time sleep will really improve without day time sleep...is that true?

Sorry for the 10 million questions...any help is appreciated. Thanks so much!

I just did a mini version of the bedtime routine, using naptime books such as "Time for Naps" by Jane Yolen (for which I bought little animals to represent the 5-6 little animals in the story, and we put each one of them down for their nap in a little toy bed), and "Fluffy Bunny" (yep, I bought a little bunny too! This seems to work quite well with him.

Now that your baby is more aware of her surroundings, and how many fun and exciting things there are to look at and play with, sometimes nursing slips away from being a quite cuddling time, and towards your baby knowing she can't see what's going on while nursing and she keeps peeking around to see what she's missing! That's a good step that she is so excited about what she can discover... but ouch! if she's still holding on! My DS did that too! Basically, it's possible she's hearing daytime noises and wondering what's up, or it's light in the room you are trying to get her to nap in. We would put on a fan to drown out daytime noises, and try and be away from daytime action elsewhere in the house. Also, we had a thick blind on the window so we could make it truly dark in the room. Those ideas, combined with the mini nap routine did the trick for us.

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Host of:
The No Cry Sleep Solution
Attachment Parenting