To Sleep Perchance
But not so soft, what sound through yonder nursery breaks?
It is ridiculous o’clock and Mummy is knackered!
Arise fair child and disturb Mummy’s sleep for the umpteenth time.
Mummy, who is already pale and cranky with sleep deprivation.
That thou, my gorgeous baby, art far more clever than thou should be!
A lot of lack of sleep ago...
Rock-a-Bye Little Miss
In your room so late.
If you’d drop off to sleep
it would be really great.
When Mummy slips you into your cot
Please give us a break and sleep a lot!
Cafe Bebe is now open for sleeping-through advice. Please leave your comments below! (PS-We do not subscribe to the Gina Ford School of Militant Babies)
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I wrote about what works for us a few months ago, you will find my tips here;
http://childhood101.blogspot.com/2009/07/and-so-to-sleep.html
Hope there is something there that helps.
I like your little one’s ‘bum in the air’ sleeping pose – very cute! I’m also a sleep deprived mum and have no advice, only sympathy and a shared dislike for Gina effing Ford.
I’m sure Gina blinking Ford has every baby sleeping through by the age of 6 weeks (minimum) but I can’t do that. Which explains my difficulty now! Thanks for the sympathy though. I do agree…Little Miss’ bum in the air pose is rather delightful!
Running to look now…thanks for taking the time to read my post!
MiniMad sleeps with the bum in the air – so adoreable. What is it with children and sleep at the moment. We couldnt do Hitler oh I mean Gina Ford and as for controlled crying me and MadDad where the ones in tears outside their bedroom doors!!
We even bought a superkingsized bed as our solution, so not the answer for everyone
That picture is so sweet…
I don’t have any advice to give, other than to tell our story, but stress that every baby is different, some sleep, some don’t, and try every tip you can!
We have not yet had a problem with waking in the night with our 11 month old LG (so the story below may be no use at all to you), but getting to sleep and napping has been tough. And we tried Gina (kinda) and all that – it only seems to work if your baby is pre-disposed!
Our breakthrough was when we realised that the whole bedtime routine thing got LG wound up – she would refuse the night time feed, fight against quiet time in a quiet room. So we gave up! She has a bath and into PJs at the same time every night (ish), a feed, and then a play until she starts to look tired – either gets cranky, or the very first time she rubs her eyes! As soon as we see the first sign, she’s whisked up to bed, zipped into her sleeping bag and given a dummy (yes, we can’t live without those!). Most of the time now she’ll go straight to sleep. Sometimes she’ll lie quietly and awake for a while. And sometimes she’ll cry… Unless she’s lost her dummy (in which case I go straight in), I let her cry for 5 minutes, unless it ramps up to screaming, and then go in, check she has her dummy and stroke her face and leave.
I couldn’t do controlled crying, but 5 minutes is doable, and it’s mainly because LG is overtired and needs to let it out. If she sounds really awake or is screaming we are bad parents and bring her back downstairs. From our experience, she still goes to sleep at the same time whether we rock and sing and all that for hours whilst she fights us every step of the way, or just plop her down whilst we eat our dinner. And the latter option is a lot less work and more pleasant for all of us.
We’ve only had real problems with night waking when she was jetlagged from a trip to the USA, and my only solution then was to dreamfeed, even though at 11 months she shouldn’t have needed it. It worked though, although we ended up doing it for 3/4 weeks…
Thanks so much for sharing! I appreciate the effort of all the typing!
Little Miss goes down well, albeit being rocked to sleep which may be my problem. I think our other problem is that I jump and ask how high when she lets out a yell. If she’s grizzling and I know she’s lost her dummy (we’re bad as well!), I go in to pop it back in so she doesn’t wake herself fully. If it really gets challenging in the night, I bring her in bed with us and she usually settles right down. We have a rubbish night of sleep of course, but she doesn’t so that’s all that matters. 
I’ll be checking out your blog now as well…thanks for stopping by! 
My kingdom for a Supersized King! We couldn’t have anything else in the room but oh, that would be so nice. I break all the rules so I’ve created my own nightmare really. Sigh. Thanks for sharing the mutual hatred of Gina Ford!
Heh – blog not quite up and running yet – get distracted by writing unreasonably long comments on other blogs
Must focus!
If dummy runs (as we call them) are a problem, have you tried pro-actively moving any dropped dummies once she’s asleep to somewhere she might spot them if/when(?) she wakes up? Normally works for us, although sometimes we can’t find it so add a new dummy to the mix and end up with a selection by morning
Although my hubbie is obsessed with checking on her every half an hour or so before bedtime so plenty of opportunity for that!