The Big Little Baby Sleep Thread

[YummyMummy]

Is it only my baby who will only settle on his tummy????

From day 1 he has never settled on his back and now really only ever sleeps

on his tummy, even at night. He is now 3 months old and has been sleeping straight through the night for about 3.5 weeks. I daren`t tell the health visitor as I know I will be in for a telling off. As some people have pointed out though, years ago mothers were advised to put babies to sleep on their fronts. So my question is, how bad is it really? At the moment he is still in our room and sleeps only inches from my face in his crib. He is soon to go in his own room as he is fastly out:confused: growing the crib but I am worried as I won`t be able to check on him as quick as I can now.

[Zebra]

I think it becomes less of an issue once they can move around a little on their own.

My suggestion would be to buy an apnoea alarm. If he stops breathing an alarm will sound and although they can be expensive it provides vast peace of mind. We've got them for our twins who had breahting troubles in the early stages.

eBay does them cheaper than places like Mothercare but you have no guarantees if it isn't perfect.

But then people are right, mothers were well advised to sleep the baby on their front and they survived but the 'Back To Sleep' campaign is well researched too.

I'd say bite the bullet, let your son sleep how he pleases and buy an alarm.

[cosywolf]

Mine has always enjoyed sleeping on his tummy, too. As soon as he could turn himself over, that was it. Don't panic! They say that once they can turn themselves over on their own, the risk decreases drastically anyway. Our health visitor just said to turn him back over whenever we noticed he was on his tummy, but really not to worry about it, and certainly not to bother as far as getting up in the night to turn him.

 

Hope that helps

[YummyMummy]

Thanks mummies! 1st time mum and after 3 months its a lot easier but you still worry naturally, so its good to talk to other parents!!!

[babychickens]

you're right about the years old thing for sleeping them on their bellies. it's still the norm in various other places, too (france for one, judging by how french baby grows have the poppers up the back - most inconvenient for us!).

 

if that's the way your baby sleeps best then i really wouldn't worry about it - you've tried to get him on his back but he's just happier on his front. chances are that he wouldn't do that if it was really that bad for him (hey, it's not like it's addictive or anything), maybe he actually finds it easier to breathe on his front. not everyone is physiologically identical, after all.

[Longshanks]

My little boy is 12 months and has only recently taken to sleeping on his tummy. I have a different problem though - he sleeps on his tummy, then wakes up and cries because he can't yet turn back over. Is this unusual in a child of that age? I can't seem to teach him to turn back over either! Quite often as soon as I turn him onto his back, he turns back onto his tummy, falls asleep, then wakes up shortly afterwards crying again.

[babychickens]

I'm just not really sure what "sleep through the night" actually means. baby babychicken is now nearly 3 months old, and for all but 5 weeks of that has been letting us go to bed around midnight and not feed her until 7.30, and we wake her to offer her the midnightish feed as she's already slept for 2 or 3 hours by then. Does this count as sleeping through the night? Should we not be waking her to feed her at midnight? I'd consult gina ford, but i find her far too obnoxious to inflict that on myself.

 

Thank you all (or at least whoever replies)!

[Zebra]

Hiya,

We let our twins wake to feed at will and over time that stretched longer and longer, now at 10 months they sleep 7.30 (ISH) to 7.00am (ISH), have a bottle then go back to sleep for an hour.

If you were to follow what we did from 3 months it goes like this:

Bed at 8.30pm or after nearest bottle, top up if required.

Feed whenever she wakes and keep putting her back to bed until a normal getting up time for you.

Plus the controlled crying method - one minute each time for the first 3 nights, 2 minutes each time for next 3 nights and so on, never beyond 5 minutes though. We did it from 10 weeks and it worked pretty well - just make sure you go in if she sounds hysterical or similar.

I think in effect you've cracked it and techinically she's going most of the night - ours are definitely going all night and I think this is what you're aiming for. The overnight feeds were frequent at one stage but get later and less frequent as time goes on.

I don't intend for this to be patronising, just sharing what we did.

Now we made bedtime earlier because they've learnt the diurnal pattern and developed a routine, no problems.... cept for the teething bit!

[alirosdan]

It sounds to me as though she is doing really well. Both mine wanted feeding day and night every 2 hours. When they got to 6 months, I said "enough is enough" and stopped feeding them after they went to bed. It surprised me how quickly they adapted to this decision. They soon got fed up of being offered water in the night, it wasn't worth disturbing their sleep for!

 

I agree with you about Gina Ford. I know people who follow her advice to the letter and have become absolutely ruled by her guidelines. The woman doesn't actually have any kids herself.

[stmatt]

Hi

 

At that age 'sleeping through the night' can mean sleeping through for 6 hours at a time. We found our LO slept through when he started getting more physical activity ehen he started crawling so round about 9 months.