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Austin Babies
Non-Ferber Moms- sleep help/ pep talk needed
Kate sleeps worse now that she did as a newborn. I would say that for the past 3 months she has been waking up at least every two hours all night long. Many nights she is up every hour. I nurse her for 5 minutes and then she is back to sleep 90% of the time. We co-sleep for most of the night.
Now I think that I might actually be able to handle the night waking, but she refuses to go to sleep initially. We have a consistent bedtime time and routine and have had it since December. We have tried moving the bed time earlier, but we have no better luck with it. Right now, we end the routine with me nursing her and then DH rocking her to sleep. Sometimes she falls asleep nursing, but we try not to let that happen after reading NCSS. About 50% of the time, she will fall asleep while DH is rocking her. About 50% of the time she screams bloody murder until we are ready to go to bed at 10:00. Even when she falls asleep, she almost never survives being transfered to the crib so we end up rocking her again. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. If she does survive the transfer, she is usually up within 20 minutes, and she never sleeps longer than 40 minutes in her crib without waking up.
DH is at the end of his rope. He thinks that if she is screaming anyway she might as well do it in her crib. I think she would just end up screaming for hours and hours if we tried CIO and I'm not ready for that. We just want some free time in the evenings.
We are trying hard to have a daytime nap routine, but I might as well try to train my dog to fly. We do have a consistent wake up time, and I have spent the last 2 months trying to get her to nap at consistent times. We even stopped going to baby yoga, which was one of my favorite things in the world, because it was during her supposed nap time. I have tried nursing her and holding her while she sleeps, and driving her around in the car and have had some success with these, but I feel like I spend my whole day trying to get her to fall asleep and it is making me crazy. Yesterday, I spent 2 hours trying to nurse her to sleep. I finally gave up after she bit me for the 100th time and then she fell asleep in the car on the way to our play group. So I turned around and headed home, where I had to sit in the car for 2 hours so she would sleep. Her morning nap was too late, so she wouldn't take an afternoon nap. Then DH took her for a drive at 6:00, she took a 30 minute nap, and refused to go to sleep at bedtime. Even if I didn't mind this, it's getting too hot to sit in the car all afternoon while she sleeps.
Everything I have read says to get them on a consistent schedule, but it's not like I can hit her over the head to make her go to sleep. I need her to be on some kind of schedule though. I feel like we sit at home all day every day because either naptime is approaching or I am spending hours trying to get her to fall asleep. I am going insane. The lack of sleep never bothered her before, but now I am seeing that it is having an effect on her when she misses a nap. She is just such a happier baby when she sleeps.
I have taken her to the pedi twice to have them check her for an ear infection. I think they must think I'm a crazy person because there is never anything wrong with her. They always just say that she is teething. She still has no teeth...
If you made it this far, kuddos to you. We are open to *any* suggestions.
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Re: Non-Ferber Moms- sleep help/ pep talk needed
I don't have the time to type up the kind of response I want to right now, but email me....we seriously must have the same child. Will started STTN at 11.5 months, though he still has nights where he wakes several times and has to be soothed back to sleep by DH. He's in his crib 100% now, which has helped tremendously.
libbyann at gmail
I'll admit I only skimmed your last couple of paragraphs, but I want to tell you that I TOTALLY know how you feel! I have been there. Big time. And I've done my fair share of sitting in the car nesting on my phone while she sleeps.
I don't recall if you said you'd tried co-sleeping. I dunno if that'll help you. I really really wish I had an answer for you. co-sleeping was the ONLY reason we made it through a few of those tough months.
I'm not going to try to convince you to do Ferber, because I know what it's like to be totally against it and I understand that completely. however, I will say that I think Kate is very similar to A in her sleep issues, and I also really thought A was going to scream for hours and hours when we did it, but she didn't. Just putting that out there, in case you do end up deciding to try it, if you've not be able to get anywhere with other solutions. If you DO decide to try it, just know that you don't have to even do more than 3 or 4 min of crying if you start it and it just doesn't feel right! It isn't an all or nothing type of thing. I told DH I reserved the right to completely abandon Ferber forever at a moment's notice if for some reason I felt it wasn't right.
Gosh, I really didn't mean to sound like I was trying to convince you to Ferberize...I guess I did sound that way.
Just tell me to STFU if you want. 
I just wanted to say that IF you end up there, it most likely will not be as bad as you think. But I REALLY hope you find a solution that you're happy with and that works very soon!! HUGE hugs! I totally know how you feel right now, and it sucks.
libbyann- YGM
colliejade- we do cosleep, but I don't want to go to sleep at 7:30. Right now we bring her to bed with us at 10:00 and she still wakes up every hour or two for the rest of the night. She's sleeps much less in the crib. She won't sleep in our bed by herself.
I have a feeling that Ferber might be in our future so it is good to hear that it worked out so well for you guys. I don't want to do it, but DH might divorce me if I keep refusing. I am (mostly) kidding. He has talked about getting a vasectomy. Before Kate was born he wanted 3-4 kids. Time is on my side though. I told him that we both needed to read the book first and she might graduate high school before he gets around to that.
You and I are soul sisters.
I also went to bed every night at 7:30 for a loooong time. It actually wasn't that bad; I came to accept the situation and figured out lots of things I could do while lying in bed with A. Maybe you just need some diversions from 7-10pm? 
We luckily were able to watch our shows on ABC.com or movies on the laptop in bed while she slept. I could have probably gone on for a long while like that, but DH was pretty adamant that we do Ferber and try to get her into her own room, and I finally came to realize that, while the night wakings were probably not going to last forever even if she continued in our bed, SHE wasn't getting quality sleep. It was pretty much a lose-lose for all of us at that point, no matter how much I patched up the situation and tried to make the best of it.
Anyway, if you do end up going the Ferber route, PLEASE feel free to ask me anything. I will be more than happy to hold your hand through the whole thing. Seriously, I'll even take you out for a beer and sobfest if that's what it takes to get you through it. If you don't mind posting your email addy, I'll email you my phone # should you ever need to call me in desperation!
I don't think she would sleep with enough light for me to read, but she might tolerate the laptop. I will keep that in mind.
kiarox2002 at gmail dot com
I will absolutely need many strong drinks and lots of handholding if we end up doing Ferber. DH threatened to send me to my mom's house to sleep so I wouldn't interfere.
It might not be so bad. We were in an awful, terrible place with Layna not sleeping. Layna and I were both so sleep deprived that we didn't like each other at all. It was bad.
First night of Ferber and she was asleep in minutes. I didn't even go in to check after the first 5 minutes because she was already passed out. And then she slept for 5 hours or something insane.
I hate to pressure if you don't want to do it, but think about at least trying it. Like CJ said, its not an all or nothing thing. If it doesn't feel right, then you just go get her. No big deal. But you never know...it might work...
I don't have any real solutions as we didn't have the problems you and Kate are having. I was thinking...does she need an early bedtime? Some babies do fine with a later bedtime. L takes 2 naps--one around 10 ish and one in the afternoon. He then doesn't go to bed until 8:30 (bath at 8). Do you bath her first...that might calm her down and then she can have her night feeding and then bed. L usually falls asleep in my arms with his bedtime feeding after his bath.
I hope it gets easier for you. <<hugs>>
She eats at 6:30- then she gets a bath, book and a boob. She ends up "asleep" sometime between 7:30- 8:00. By asleep I mean that DH has been rocking her long enough that any sane child would have fallen asleep by then. :P
Thanks for all of the replies. The support helps. Incidentally she slept for 45 minutes IN A ROW tonight. I'm counting that in the win column!
WOW. That sounds positively awful. I'm so sorry, I don't know how you're functioning.
We didn't do Ferber, but we were preparing to. DS was waking up 2-3 times a night and usually nursing was the only thing that would get him back to sleep. Every once in a while I could just rock him, but 20 minutes later he would be up again, wanting to nurse. I was fine with this for a while, I wanted to make sure he was getting all he needed.
In preparation for Ferber I decided to cut out night nursing cold turkey. I was only comfortabIe with this when I started EPing and knew DS was getting enough during the day (11 months). I told DH that he might have to be the one to go rock him back asleep if when I did it he wouldn't go back down. That first night he woke twice and I just rocked him, he went back down and stayed down for a few hours. Next few nights he only woke once, then by the end of the week he was STTN. I don't know how, it just worked. That's the only thing I did differently.
If I were in your position (and I'm not at all telling you what to do, this is just would I would do to start better sleeping habits) I would get her in her crib for 100% of the night. I would start with that (maybe start with naps, or just some quiet time to get used to the room), nurse her (in her room) when she wakes up if that's the only thing that will calm her down at this point. Once you think she might be more used to her bed, then I would start cutting out the nursing at night. Even just nursing for 5 min is giving her milk and a soother other than herself. I had a feeling the night nursing was going to have to be cut out anyway starting Ferber, so I started that before even getting to the right part of the book. I don't know Ferbers pov on cosleeping, but I have a feeling you aren't going to get good results if she's still in bed with you. If you're right there, she's going to want to nurse.
I'm so sorry! I really hope you can get her sleeping soon!
I have a ton of input, but I'm too tired to think straight right now. I sent an email to another nestie several months ago about this issue and I will forward that to you tomorrow.
Bottom line- DS woke up basically every 3 hours until he was 1. He now sleeps 13 straight hours at night and take a 2-3 hour nap every day. We are not a Ferber family. Around 9 or 10 months was one of the hardest times because it had been so long since we'd slept well and it was really frustrating. We tried a lot of things- some worked and some didn't. I'll send you that email...