We were having problems with ours till just after Christmas – well past 8 weeks. But patience (mainly from MrsM) and willingness to believe there would be a solution if we were prepared to experiment with things meant we seem to have now solved the majority of problems we had. Granted no two children are alike (which we know having two to deal with) but I maintain there usually are solutions if you are prepared to work them out and there is no reason to think you have to live with it.

I maintain there usually are solutions if you are prepared to work them out and there is no reason to think you have to live with it.

Based on your sample size of two.

Stop bickering and sit on the naughty step the pair of you. 😈

Based on your sample size of two.

Just how many simultaneously-born offspring were you expecting him to have?

smee is having a break for a day..
But really!
Someone asks for advice about a baby not sleeping and two of you kick off into a pissing contest complete with abuse about who knows more about babies sleeping!

Grow up kids!

And through the anecdotal knowledge of the approx 15 various friends and family offspring all aged from 6 weeks to 5 years. Only one had serious long-term issues which were eventually solved when they listened to advice and put a good routine in place.

A days ban is a bit harsh for such a throw a way comment.

Have i logged on to my wife's computer?
Is this mumsnet?

Damn it there's a banning comment and i miss it. Bit harsh though there's plenty more offensive things written with out so much as a word.

we've got a pretty good routine – about to have bath time – I think we might need more drink during the day at nursery and check she's getting enough food.

As others have said, esp M-F, he speaks common sense.
I've had 3 children, my daughter slept through from day 7 and still does, now 10, my boys on the other hand always woke up hungry so making sure they had supper and milk, bring the wind up they went off bed. When they woke during the night it was pick up, check nappy, into my bed, attach child to breast then everyone fell asleep. They grew out of it, eventually, but I wouldn't have done it any other way. Now they sleep all night and I wake them each morning, I have never had early risers which I couldn't have coped with.

I have never had early risers which I couldn't have coped with

Fnarr fnarr.

Oh, stoppit!

Our 2 1/2 year old has only slept through the night when she has been ill – about 10 nights in total. She wakes every night at 11ish and 2:30 ish I don't think its noise related as she does it even if we are not at home. I think it's bad dreams/sleepwalking because when our 8 mmonth old was born I spent a few weeks sleeping on the floor of her room so I'd be able to settle her quickly and noticed that if she had got up and I laid her back down before she started crying she stayed asleep, once she started screaming she would only settle by sleeping with me or her mum.
I've been told by my mum that I was nearly 5 before I slept through.

BTW second the advise to drop the night feeds if you're sure she's had enough through the day.

Been thinking about this a bit more and it does seem it might be food related – it has been going since she was 6 months. Was she sleeping better before? Was it around the same time you started to wean her? We were given advice to do a 12 midday/4pm/7pm feed routine giving milk with solids apart from the last feed. This didn't work and one or both girls woke every night. So we tried the routine we have now – it means more feeds during the day but with the trade-off that they are now sleeping better so consequently more active during the day – I don't know if it is connected but their development seems to have improved at a quicker rate since they started sleeping better.

It is also important to make sure she gets good naps during the day – daft as it sounds, the less sleep they get during the day the worse they often sleep at night.

I've just found something you could borrow, pop it outside her bedroom door and I doubt you'll hear a peep from her?

Hey Rob, will give you a call tomorrow but hang in there, as others on here have said sprogs are all different and what's worked for us may not be solutions for you. It may be you need to mix things up a bit if she's settling into a (bad) routine, and see what works.

And don't let any of the twunts at your lovely place of employment give you a hard time either 😉

@lankygit – the man's biking time is suffering, I never get him out any more and we're pairing at Set2Rise – this is very bike-related! 🙂

A couple of sort of medical points. The baby powders mentioned early on appear to be purified camomile and thus from the little I know a good option for a sleepless child. But it is a drug. Gripe water contains alcohol – use with caution.

As for the Smee / MF spat. I really see why Smee got annoyed but really a bit OTT there Smee old chap. MF your posts on children do exude a smugness and a certainty at times that seems unwarranted – although I do understand why having followed the saga of conception on here. There are more right answers than the ones you have.

I feel your pain – our 3 year old is usually awake at 5am and quite often stirs during the night. We've tried everything, just seems he doesn't sleep as much asother kids. It affects you in so many ways and really pushes your relationship!

By way of a disclaimer, the first thing to remember is that all kids are different and they all behave in different ways.
Ergo, what I am about to say may prove to be utterly useless. Then again, it may not.
There is a perfectly logical assumption that kids wake because they are hungry.
What we found, twice, was that there comes a point when they stop waking because they are hungry and start waking because they are just in the habit of doing so.
Assuming you're not operating on short rations, I would say you've reached the point.
Rather than the 'controlled crying' approach, I'd offer a bottle, but with water rather than milk.
If they're thirsty, they'll drink it, but if they're just after the warm, full tummy feeling they get after a bottle of milk, they'll get bored after a few days and give it up.
All I can is that it worked for us, but it needs patience
I'd call it quits with the milk though. That's a road of pain and suffering.

I understand the OP's mental condition as our son woke every 90mins until he was 15months old and it was demoralising in the extreme – especially for my wife as she was exclusively breastfeeding him for the first year and had to bear the brunt of it. My attention span was like a goldfish and I found a long day at work very difficult and never felt like I had much energy. As first-time parents, we tried so many different "solutions" that I'm sure it added to the problem in the end. Nothing worked and the truth seems to be that a switch in his head clicked at about 16 months and he just started sleeping 7pm-7am which he has done ever since. We've got a 2nd kid at 3 months old at the mo and she sleeps ok (3 hours at a time) – but we are a bit more relaxed about it this time as we've been through it before…..

Just stick at it 🙂

cheers, the more I think about it the more I think its food related during the day. The weekends when she's had lots of water she's been better at night.

On the plus side I should easily stay awake for set2rise in May!

adrian – work mess will be over soon hopefully if they knuckle down and get on with it!

Cool, you can do my night laps for me then. What's that, they all are? Excellent! 😉

"If they knuckle down"… hmmm, I see a fatal flaw in there somewhere…

Relax it's normal…and it doesn't last forever…
You can get round the first waking up by waking her up at your bed time and giving a bottle. Otherwise, if the only thing that works in the night is milk, you have your answer…

We did the water-only thing that Jamesr suggests to break our twos' habit of drinking milk in the night. Also with me going in, rather than my wife, as she'd breastfed them.

have you tried reading her this thread before bed time? villains, heros, wise old sages…what's not to like? 🙂

My ha'penny – my oldest didn't sleep through until 3 years old and still wakes sometimes. We tried everything and it didn't make a blind bit of difference. She was also a right pain to get to sleep.

Our second is 20 months and stil doesn't sleep through but goes to sleep much more easily. I think if we pushed it we could get number 2 to sleep through but we're now so used to being up in the night (3 times) that we don't bother. We take turns doing nights and go to bed early!

If you do think it is food related do try different things to break the habit – as I said earlier, we tried two different approaches as the first one didn't work. Not that either of our approaches will necessarily work (as has been rightly stated, everyone is different) but the point being is that you don't have to accept it as being normal until you have exhausted all the options. And don't just try something once or twice then leave it if it hasn't worked – you do need a few days at it so she will start to know it is part of her routine.

And the milk in the night is probably a habit now, but assuming she has fed well, it might be a habit borne out of needing the contact with you, not out of hunger. There are several ways of approaching this (such as the Pick Up, Put Down technique). We tried a simple touch technique – if one of our girls wakes, we put one hand on her chest (firm pressure so she feels it) and stroke her head until she starts to settle. This way she knows we are there and usually starts to settle again.

But as it has been said, these may not work for you and yes I am just giving an opinion based on my experience rather than someone else's opinion based on their experience 😉

Give baby a "Dream Feed".

Similar to what I_did_dab says, but you don't wake them up. Pick the baby up (still asleep) at about 10pm and bung a bottle in her/his mouth. They drink it, still asleep, then you put them down. The disturbance is just enought to reset the sleep pattern and the full belly should get you through til 5 or 6, and it should get better from there with time.

Worked for my two, and you can keep going up to about 18 months – by which time yer kid'll be sleeping as it should. Don't worry about people saying it's a step backwards, it's whatever works FOR YOU, and I'm telling you, the best way to be the best parent you can be is to make sure you're getting the rest you need.

Gina Ford's a pretty good reference, but there are a number of other good books giving other perspectives. If you read a number of different methods you can work out the combination of methods that works best for you, rather than just blindly implementing. The Baby Whisperer (Tracy Hogg) books give an interesting perspective too.

Sweet dreams!

The Baby Whisperer technique (routine, shush pat, pick up put down etc) worked a treat for our 1st, dummy for the 2nd 🙂 oh and dream feeds as above

They still wake up every now and then though (ie. perhaps 30% of the time one of them will wake up and need putting back in bed) – that's at nearly 4 and 15mths.

worked a treat for our 1st, dummy for the 2nd

Same with us – we have a dummy for one and not the other. The only time Izzi wants a dummy is to wind Evie up – she pulls it out of her mouth and waves it in her face before throwing it away 🙂

OP – you have my sympathy, I've been there too. My eldest didn't sleep for longer than 3 hours at any time until he was 14 months old, and every single putting-down was a massive fight.

He just seemed to be ideologically opposed to sleep, and it was tough all round – coincided with me getting a promotion at work where all of a sudden it seemed to matter what time I showed up, and that I didn't fall asleep in the middle of meetings.

What was worse was the way it dominated conversation between me and mrs tyred, even when we got out for a meal for non-baby time it was all we could talk about. We had several health visitors round to advise us in a "here's what to do" way – they all left slightly shellshocked with tyred jr screaming his head off no closer to sleeping.

In the end a colleague took pity on me and gave me the Dr Ferber(sp?) book about sleep training, and advice on how to do it. We talked it over for ages – her advice was that both of us had to be 100% committed to the idea or it wouldn't work – then finally went for it, the full-on controlled crying approach. It was horrific for the first week, the first couple of nights saw mad screaming for over two hours, but we carefully wrote down everything that happened, and realised after day 5 we were definitely moving in the right direction. It was somewhere between 2 and 3 weeks when he finally did it, slept from bedtime to just before 6am. We were awake most of the night, expecting the normal carry on, so were as shattered as usual but completely overjoyed. From there, we just kept it up and within a month or two had a proper sleep pattern that, with the odd blip, saw him sleep regularly from 8pm to 6am.

He's nearly 5 now and still an early riser – some kids are just made that way – but a reliable sleeper, he just doesn't seem to need much. Still a sleep rebel at heart.

When his little brother came along we were ready for him! We gave him 2 months to settle into a routine, then went took a sleep-training approach which worked quickly because he was so young. He sleeps much longer than his older brother, I guess they're just made differently.

I really wish you and your mrs the best of luck – its a very trying time, but remember you're in it together and it won't last forever.

Oh! Same as Crispy – I should have said not to wake up properly, i.e. dim lights, low voices, no conversation.

It's a very 'political' subject, totally agree with baby whisperer book, found Gina a bit rigid for our taste and non-conformist kids, and won't say what I think about 'controlled crying'…

i.e. dim lights, low voices, no conversation.

Agreed – and no eye contact. If you have to go in during the night keep it simple and just do what you need to and don't 'engage' her.

our 18 month old will only sleep through the night if you tire the little dynamo out all day! If he's had a 'normal' day of playing etc, he will almost certainly wake at least once during the night, but if we keep him running about all day (usually with other little ones) he sleeps through.

Our 3.5 year old is a totally different story, had no problems with him til he was 3, now he will sneak into our bed at about 3am, then cajole me to get up with him between 5 – 5:30am. To be fair though they're both asleep when I get home from work so I 'try' to look at it as a glass half full. I actually get to spend a couple of hours with the boys before I leave for work in the morning.

Don't beat yourself up about it. Work out how much sleep you actually need and adjust accordingly. I rarely used to be in bed much before midnight, now I'm usually in bed just after 10pm. It's not that tough, and at the end of day a small sacrifice to make for the first few years.