Yet another thread on naps / routine / nightime sleeping

[supergolden88]

My son had a god awful cold for the past 10 days or so. It started mild enough then progressed to fever, cough, throwing up (because of cough), completely blocked nose etc. He had a couple of nights where he slept maybe 20 minutes here and there. Needless to say we are all exhausted and desperate to get back to some kind of routine now that he finally seems better.

While he was sick he was either breastfeeding all the time (when the nose was clear) or co-sleeping. All naps where either on my chest or in pushchair (constantly moving). Unfortunately this coincided with me having lots of work on so when I had nanny help they took him out for long walks (=naps).

I want to be able to go back to him having naps *even short ones!* in his cot. I am putting him down awake with his mobile on but he does scream the place down even when tired. If I breastfeed him to sleep then the 10 minutes or so he drops off while feeding counts as a full nap (he will not sleep after). He clearly wants to sleep but has not found a way to soothe himself. If I go and offer him a finger to suck on that quiets him down.

His nightime sleeping is HORRIBLE. Last night he was up for ages feeding/fussing. I think he makes up for lost meals in the day by feeding a lot at night. But when I offered him a bottle he refused repeatedly - only breast will do - which leads me to believe he is comfort feeding himself to sleep. Wont take a dummy BTW and has not found his hand/thumb. I am desperate for him to suck his thumb but no...

I am *this close* to calling in an expert but thought I would ask for some advice here first. I am not adverse to controlled crying (only thing that worked for my daughter after a year of sleepless hell).

[KateW]

Have you tried MAM teats/bottles and dummies? (Google MAM bottles) They have a different shape to a lot of others (flatter, more like nipple). I've lent some of mine to friends who've had great success getting their babies to take bottles when previously they wouldn't.

My daughter now naps in her cot for all daytime naps (but I still try and get out for a walk for one of them so she sleeps in the pram) but this was only after doing the Baby Whisperer shush/pat (for up to 4 months) then pick up/put down for 4 months+. This has worked a treat and it now takes less than 2-3 minutes for her to settle in her cot.

Like you, I wasn't opposed to controlled crying but my daughter has never had a problem getting to sleep at night and controlled crying isn't really an option for daytime naps so I went with pick up/put down. Before 4 months, she always either slept on me or in her pram for her naps and I always made sure she had 30 mins at 9am ish, 2 hours at 12pm and 30 mins late afternoon. This meant her bodyclock got used to these regular naps so when I started to put her in her cot, she knew she needed these naps and it didn't take much to get her off to sleep. At her lunchtime naps now, she will sometimes go for a full 2 hours without waking but often still wakes after 35 mins, but then I settle her really quickly and she sleeps for the rest of the nap time with no fuss.

Good luck. Hope others can advise on the night time stuff.

[prm]

Like KateW I have also used the babywhisperer techniques and they helped / worked for us too so if you have a bit of energy left you could give that a try (if you want to do this order "The Baby Whisperer solves all your problems" you'll probably need a few days reading to get your head around the whole EASY / babywhisperer philosophy but I really don't think you need to implement the whole thing necessarily, you can go straight to the sleep section and read about the sush pat / pick up & put down methods & get a few useful tips in general)

But having said that if you are too exhausted to try on your own I really would not hesitate to call a Night Nanny / Sleep Clinic expert..sorry I don't know the exact term but if you do a search here I have seen several threads on the subject and it sounds like they are not that expensive and well worth the money.