Solids, nursing & Co Sleeping

Max - posted on 06/09/2010

This is exacty what is happening for me and my 5 1/2 month old daughter for the last two weeks, though we have not yet introduced solids, but plan to at 6 months. I'm also an attatchement parent into gentle solutions.She has had a bad cold since she started teething (perhaps as a result of teething), and also has heaps going on developmentally, learning to crawl/sit and a load of other new things so we have put it down to a combo of these things happening and are going to give it time to sort its self out but try and keep ourselves sane in the meantime! We have decided to give up for the time being putting her to sleep in her cot for the first part of the night now, since it takes 2+ hours to settle her and is REALLY fustrating, instead I go co-sleep with her as soon as she goes down, at least this way she is getting adequate sleep and staying in some kind of sleep pattern. Though its been tricky getting dinner organised for so early, I must admit I feel so much better getting the extra sleep even though I miss out on mum and dad and ALONE time for the time being. She is also very clingy during the day and again we have figured out there is nothing we can do about it at the moment so have taken the path of least resistance and carry her with us when she want which is most of the time apart frommaybe 2 x 20 min floor play sessions. I am concentrating on getting as much breastmilk into her as possible during the day and am going to start eating porridge again regularly which seemed to help her when she was sleeping badly earlier on. I guess the key thing for you is to get a co-sleeping set up going which enables you to fall asleep as soon as she has latched to feed. I am currently in a sleeping bag (its winter here) with a hood so i'm warm enough to fall straight back to sleep and she is also in a winter sleeping bag. We also cluster feed from 5.45 until her bedtime at 7pm and can sometimes get her to nap for longer than 20 mins twice a day by bouncing and shushing her back to sleep in the hammock when she very first awakes.
I think time and maturation will solve this for us (gosh I hope I'm right!).

April - posted on 05/07/2010

every half hour seems a little unusual, so i am thinking that it is just a brief phase. but i don't have a good sleeper and wouldn't know what one looked like. my son nurses 5 times a night and we don't bedshare. his crib is in my bedroom but it is about 10 feet too far! exhausted but not wanting to sacrifice his health either.....

Emily - posted on 05/06/2010

She could be going through a growth spurt. Or could just be normal baby changes... both of my kids have changed their sleep patterns often, for no apparent reason. There are often underlying developmental changes going on that affect sleep and nursing patterns.

Or maybe she's not nursing enough during the day? Solids generally have less calories than nursing, so it shouldn't be used to replace nursing during the day, at least not until closer to a year old.

Dana - posted on 05/06/2010

How old is she? All 3 of my babies have gone through a really bad sleeping phase starting anywhere from 8-10 months and lasting for a month or two. It is incredibly frustrating, and if it's 'just that age' I don't know what there is to do except just get through it! :) I would say it could be the solids, though. Maybe her little tummy just isn't quite ready. The first (and only!) night I pumped a bottle of milk and put rice in it when my son was 4 months old or so he slept terrible! Everyone told me it's what I 'needed' to do, but he just wasn't ready for it.