Breast fed DGS causing havoc!

Oh, how many of us will recognise this scenario, both as parents and grandparents!

There is no easy answer as every baby is different I have to confess that when my second arrived there were times when I was so tired that I let her cry - I just fell back to sleep. It did not seem to do her any harm - she is a chirpy well-balanced adult now.

DDs have done something called "controlled crying" with theirs, which frankly sounds much the same as leaving them to cry. Try googling it. If he's had plenty to eat and is not ill or in pain, it will probably do him no harm at all.

Good luck to all.

When babies are clearly well fed and don't need such frequent feeding, offering water and/or a dummy and not chatting to them can sometimes help them settle back down. Maybe for them to work out a bit of a rota so one of them can get a good sleep, too?

My sympathy Katy my youngest DGS (who we live with) is 16 months and has been the same from day 1, he fed every 1hr day and night but we discovered he was tongue tied which made it difficult for him to feed (was missed at birth) and had to wait to have it corrected. We all assumed that he would settle after it was snipped, he did improve slightly but not much even after introducing solids. He now only has a bedtime breast feed.

But he slept from 7 till 12 awake till 1 then slept till 6 last night and that is the first time ever, DD was wandering around in a daze this morning after having so much sleep. So I hope your DIL doesnt have to wait 16 months.
No suggestions other than its amazing what you deal with when you have to

My youngest was a lot like the baby you describe Katek. When she woke me at 2 am, having had a good feed at midnight I suggested we move her across the corridor into her 3 year old sister's room and that when she woke my husband went in to sooth her. No lights, no talking, just a minimal stroke/reassurance - I kept out because the smell of me would have been enough. She was sleeping through within 5 nights of this new regime. She was a big baby, didn't need feeding at night and it had become a comfort type habit.

I'm with when, a dummy or a drink of water. Sometimes they just want a comfort suck!

KatyK I wish my daughter understood that you can leave them to fuss a bit and that they don't need to be held all the time, even in one of her vast selections of baby slings.

My two managed to grow up as happy well attached children. But who am I to comment? I am just their mother who brought them up.
There is no alternative but to keep schtum.

Iam64 - I think that is the principle of controlled crying, only it now has this posh name to validate it.

I recognise this
DD was the same, some days she seemed permanently latched on!

If DGS is growing so quickly perhaps he's hungry, mum being tired does affect the milk IMO- that's why I gave up breastfeeding my DS at 2 months, from which point he was fine.

I agree with Nelliem, but it isn't easy to let them cry.

Definitely try a dummy, it worked for DGS.

My DD, due in a couple of weeks, has bought one of these after someone recommended it to her. It is shown as being held against the baby's ear while being cuddled, to settle them to sleep. My DD was told it can also be placed in or next to the crib.
I used to leave my DS to cry when I knew there was nothing wrong, he wasn't hungry and so on. I would turn on the vacuum cleaner outside his room and that sent him off in minutes!

It was the spin dryer for my first born!

loopylou I never left mine to cry for long, I could not have stood that, but they would often fuss and grizzle a bit when you put them down.

I left DGS to do this a few times for his nap when I was baby sitting and he would usually grizzle himself to sleep in about 10 mins. You just know when its that "tired cry" with the winding down tone to it.

I have to admit though that I was very lucky that both mine were very easy babies from the begining.

Oh dear I'm sorry - we went through this my GS was permanently starving and seemed to grow day by day (DD2 had lots of milk) I thought GS might explode and could never persuade DD2 to leave him for a while or give him a bottle of water - she thought that was a terrible suggestion and not recommended in the BOOK.

Ash Tree, one of my daughter's had her first baby 5 weeks ago, not an easy pregnancy resulting in a csection and small baby. She's doing brilliantly, despite having been a reluctant breast feeder. She quoted me to her younger sister earlier this week, in fairly scandalised tones "mum says hoover the sitting room and the baby will be asleep by the time you stop" - both girls looked at me in their "worst mother in the world" mode

I didn't leave my babies crying but certainly didn't pick them up the minute the grizzled. A 2 minute hoover would usually do the trick

The BOOK

DS had 'the BOOK' and apparently DGS was going to be in a routine in days (if not hours )........

After a number of weeks I tactfully pointed out DGS hadn't read the book, at which point it was given to a pregnant friend!

Goes with the 'perfect baby' idea.....

My babies were fed 4-hourly from birth, as was the law in those unenlightened days. My grandchildren have all been fed more or less continuously, day and night, for the first year or two. Babies adapt to whatever regime is imposed upon them.
I wish we hadn't been told to give solids so early, my grandchildren had nothing but breast milk for 6 months, which seems sensible. They can't need food until they have teeth and many allergies are the result of too-early solid food.

Iam64 might your DD have misunderstood you to mean "put the hoover on so you won't hear the baby and can ignore the crying"?
When you actually meant " the sound of the hoover will soothe them and send them off to sleep".

This doesn't sound like havoc to me – just fairly normal stuff. By four months most babies have doubled their birth weight. Indeed, if a baby hasn't, it is a cause for concern at the four-month check-up. They also have growth spurts when they seem to feed pretty much constantly. If the parents are going to try solids, surely the tried-and tested route of baby cereal mixed with breast milk would be better and more nourishing than mashed potato. (Btw banana can cause choking in young babies.) Breastfed babies have a "push out the tongue reflex" so may well shove a spoon out of their mouths at first. If that's what he's doing, then it's probably sensible to delay trying solids for another couple of weeks. That said, I think the general consensus among professionals (and WHO) is that babies require nothing more than breast milk for the first six months of their lives. I think most babies (there are always exceptions) will sleep for most of the night by the time they are four months old with a couple of naps during the day. It can be a problem – for parents, not the baby – if the daytime naps are prolonged (i.e. more than a couple of hours).

It is exhausting caring for a young baby, but it does all change quite quickly.

Iam64, I think the younger generation would be scandalised by a lot of the methods that were de rigueur when we had our babies! I adopted the hoover method when my DS was going through a period of crying every time I lay him in his cot, even though he'd been fed, changed, winded, cuddled, sung to... We were all encouraged in those days not to let our babies become too 'attached' to us, to let them get used to being alone. It makes me sad now - I wish we'd had slings in those days so I could have had him with me while I got on with things. Their little baby lives are so fleeting - so what if they're attached to you? They'll soon enough be wanting their independence

Absent...'creating havoc' wasn't meant to be taken literally-I used hyperbole as a device for emphasis. DGS is quite difficult at the moment and I merely wondered if anyone had any ideas that ds/DIL may not have tried. They're also only just trying him out with tiny bits of food that happen to be on their plate and the banana was reduced to liquid. They managed perfectly well with other DGS so have no qualms re their parenting.

Thanks for the other ideas-I've passed on the link to the White noise generator thingy AshTree, it's worth a try!

There's actually a bit of me wondering if this is karma . DS was a dreadful sleeper himself!!

karma -

FarNorth - to be honest, I meant both, the noise would sooth and also enable the frazzled mother not to hear the baby crying, if only briefly.

Ash Tree, when I was talking to my daughter about the hoover/washing machine trick her mil was with us. Mil is a former nurse/health visitor and a lovely woman. We're a similar age and shocked my daughter with tales of babies of our age being put into prams, which were left at the bottom of the garden between 4 hourly feeds. We were on some kind of solids by 6 weeks, rusks/baby rice in bottles so sleeping through around the 6 week mark. We've somehow all survived and both the grannies shared sympathy for young mother's today who have such long lists of what to do/not to do pre-conception, during pregnancy and thereafter, for ever

The white noise (or radio, or hoover) can be a sanity saver. I used slings a lot but once DD1, at about three months old, simply wouldn't stop crying even in the sling and every other 'box' ticked. When I got to the stage of wanting to shake her I told myself sharply to "put it down!", 'it' being the baby. Yes, that stage of frazzlement. I wrapped her tight in a shawl, put her on the floor in a bedroom, walked away and turned the radio up loud. Went to check ten minutes later and she was sound asleep.

as Katherine Whitehorn once said, it's not a case of what you ought to do, it's a case of what you can stand!

DS2 lived on my hip until he could crawl. I'm not sure which situation was more nerve-wracking. He never slept through the night until he was 4. His own DS2 is every bit as much of a nightmare live-wire as he was. They do grow up to be lovely, kindly adults but you just have to take the rough with the smooth.

The hover and Motown on the stereo always did it for my two, dont know if the noise soothed them or they gladly went to sleep at avoid my very tuneful singing

glass,