Hi all,
Hope you don't mind me posting but I browsed this morning and found these forums and I'm sooo relieved!! Everyone seems to look down on many of the practices I do- including co-sleeping- and at times theres simply no-one I can talk to!!
I've been reading through some threads and theres lots of great ideas but thought I'd put my situation to you all anyway incase anyone can advice/reassure!!
DS is 3months old and we co-sleep. 3 weeks ago he contracted a horrible virus
We had 3 days of sicking up all his feeds, some rather questionable 
nappies, and generally a very needy and grizzly boy. He went from sleeping 7hrs-feed-3hrs to feeding every 1hr30 during the night, which of course was fine as clearly he needed the fluids and to keep hydrated. The sickness and nappies resolved and he became happier- but the sleeping pattern stayed erratic and he's now feeding every 1-2hrs in the night. I'm just exhausted!!
He takes a long feed when we go to bed as if he *knows* it's bedtime and he's going roughly every 3hrs during the day so I wouldn't have thought it was a growth spurt. My instinct is that he got used to being fed back to sleep during the night and after staying awake a few hours last night, I realised he gets disturbed a lot by my husband, who tends to toss and turn a ridiculous amount (and in doing so, shakes the entire bed!!) and then my son needs me to get back to sleep. I wish this wasn't a problem for me- but it takes me a good 20-30mins to get back to sleep once woken so I'm suffering badly from the sleep deprivation and it's really getting me down!!
So... last night we started to put DS down in his cot at 7 just for the beginning of the evening. My reasoning was that I could hopefully get him back into the habit of settling himself back to sleep once woken, reclaim our evenings and in the long-term it will be easier when the time comes to wean him out of our bed. It took some patience and hard work but DS gradually settled and tonight I've only had to settle him back down once so far (as opposed to 11 times yesterday!!) I'm aiming to have him in the cot from 7-10, then bring him back into bed with me.
I guess I'm looking for reassurance more than anything. I know sleep training goes against the principles behind attachment parenting and I feel quite gutted to be doing it Will DS get confused about this split sleeping situation? Am I undoing all the good that co-sleeping with him so far has done? Last night after bringing him into bed he managed to only feed at 10pm (dreamfeed) 2am, 4am and then slept till 7.30am. Thats a massive improvement on the norm. So I'm guessing the putting him in the cot did the trick?
Has anyone else had this problem with constant feeding? Is there anything else I can do to reduce the number of feeds during the night?? I'm not looking for a 7-till-7 baby... but I just need at least a 3hr straight of sleep in order to function the next day! I desperately want to continue co-sleeping as I really love it, but after observing how much he gets disturbed, I'm wondering if I'm actually doing him more harm than good.
Very sorry for the long post and any advice, input or criticisms would be most gratefully received
I didn't even know what attachment parenting *was* until DS was over a month old and a little bit of reading enlightened me that everything I had been doing- following my instincts!!- actually had a name! So I'm thrilled to have found these forums!!
Thanks in advance,
Becki Xxx
Hope you don't mind me posting but I browsed this morning and found these forums and I'm sooo relieved!! Everyone seems to look down on many of the practices I do- including co-sleeping- and at times theres simply no-one I can talk to!!
I've been reading through some threads and theres lots of great ideas but thought I'd put my situation to you all anyway incase anyone can advice/reassure!!
DS is 3months old and we co-sleep. 3 weeks ago he contracted a horrible virus
We had 3 days of sicking up all his feeds, some rather questionable nappies, and generally a very needy and grizzly boy. He went from sleeping 7hrs-feed-3hrs to feeding every 1hr30 during the night, which of course was fine as clearly he needed the fluids and to keep hydrated. The sickness and nappies resolved and he became happier- but the sleeping pattern stayed erratic and he's now feeding every 1-2hrs in the night. I'm just exhausted!!He takes a long feed when we go to bed as if he *knows* it's bedtime and he's going roughly every 3hrs during the day so I wouldn't have thought it was a growth spurt. My instinct is that he got used to being fed back to sleep during the night and after staying awake a few hours last night, I realised he gets disturbed a lot by my husband, who tends to toss and turn a ridiculous amount (and in doing so, shakes the entire bed!!) and then my son needs me to get back to sleep. I wish this wasn't a problem for me- but it takes me a good 20-30mins to get back to sleep once woken so I'm suffering badly from the sleep deprivation and it's really getting me down!!
So... last night we started to put DS down in his cot at 7 just for the beginning of the evening. My reasoning was that I could hopefully get him back into the habit of settling himself back to sleep once woken, reclaim our evenings and in the long-term it will be easier when the time comes to wean him out of our bed. It took some patience and hard work but DS gradually settled and tonight I've only had to settle him back down once so far (as opposed to 11 times yesterday!!) I'm aiming to have him in the cot from 7-10, then bring him back into bed with me.
I guess I'm looking for reassurance more than anything. I know sleep training goes against the principles behind attachment parenting and I feel quite gutted to be doing it
Will DS get confused about this split sleeping situation? Am I undoing all the good that co-sleeping with him so far has done? Last night after bringing him into bed he managed to only feed at 10pm (dreamfeed) 2am, 4am and then slept till 7.30am. Thats a massive improvement on the norm. So I'm guessing the putting him in the cot did the trick? Has anyone else had this problem with constant feeding? Is there anything else I can do to reduce the number of feeds during the night?? I'm not looking for a 7-till-7 baby... but I just need at least a 3hr straight of sleep in order to function the next day! I desperately want to continue co-sleeping as I really love it, but after observing how much he gets disturbed, I'm wondering if I'm actually doing him more harm than good.
Very sorry for the long post and any advice, input or criticisms would be most gratefully received
I didn't even know what attachment parenting *was* until DS was over a month old and a little bit of reading enlightened me that everything I had been doing- following my instincts!!- actually had a name! So I'm thrilled to have found these forums!!Thanks in advance,
Becki Xxx
but its the 1st time he'd ever been in his nursery so I'm assuming everything was just strange to him. The number of times he's woken up has gradually decreased and so far tonight it's just been the once! Funnily enough, it has had a slight influence on his night feeding, and for the past 3 nights he's consistently fed every 3hrs, as opposed to every 1-2. It's not much but for me it's a huge improvement!!
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