Failed to implement the GNS cure

[MaesaarM324]

Hello,

We did so well, we had quite few nights of nice sleep. We finally had one night, where our son slept from 7.30 - 7.30 without any wake up. We were so proud. And then again, he fell ill
He is so ill, ambulance had to take him to hospital. For few days he had high fever of 40 and was vomiting and seemed in pain, as he could not sleep at all. Coughed badly and that kept him also awake. He cried in bed and was hot and restless, we had to move all his clothes to cool him down, he was in pain and hated when we even tried to stroke his back, let alone buff or fan. We only did jingle but because he was so ill, the cure did not work. He is off solid food and has been having only milk since Monday and for that reason does not sleep well either. We had to give him couple of nights his bottle around 6am. That has not spoiled it, he still does not want bottle in bed.
But my worry is that our hard work is all ruined. Do we have to start all from the beginning when he is well again? Or do babies usually remember?

[TorsMamma]

Hi again,

So this is a difficult question. I have met parents with VERY sick children who do it well getting back to routines. If you just use your attitude it will work to get back. Try to get back to your normal routines as fast as possible. Try not giving bottles at night so he really eats during the day. Use the jingle, don't overdo it from your anxiousness. If you wish to check on him, you can do what I do. I enter my son's room every night when I go to bed and look at him or touch his forehead to see he is ok. Since you already notice he really doesn't want the "extra" stuff you offer, DON'T! Just give him a jingle and leave the room. I think he is really telling you more than you want to trust. So trust him. He is doing it well on his own.

[MaesaarM324]

Hey,

Just to let you know that he settled back into his routine very quickly after his sickness. Soon started to have solid food again and now sleeps nicely again from 7.30 to 7.30. Some nights we still need to jingle but mostly he is ok.

My only issue is that he still has an odd cry when we put him to bed. Last night it took me about 5 minutes to fan and jingle him, but he did start to cry at some point and got annoyed. I don't like it, it seems like I am hurting him and cry should not be the last thing what he does before he falls asleep. I just wish I would knew how to stop that and he would go to bed as a happy baby

[TorsMamma]

Hi,
WELL DONE!

So regarding a small cry or sobber when they are put to bed. The general rule is the more cry the more laughter before being put to bed. He needs to laugh ALOT before you fly in, BAM on his belly into bed and OUT. Preferably before he even notices you are out. If you laugh flying into bed, put down out with the jingle it is under 10-20 sec. They usually don't even understand what just happened. And your job is to say the happiest jingle in the world so he truly understands that being put to bed is the most wonderful thing in the world.

Now, if you put him to bed and already assume he will need to be calmed down and more, then that is what you are expecting and expectations come true! Some children actually cry a little when put to bed because the day was soo much fun and they don't want it to stop. The same rule here applies, the happiest jingle in the world on your way out!

This usually passes after a couple of months. Just ensure that the message is that going to bed is the most wonderful thing in the world, and don't feel sorry for him, because that will just confirm your expectations.

I always say this to all people. The brain can't see the words don't or can't.
So I say please don't see children jumping in the sofa. (what do you see??)

Now I say, see children sitting in the sofa (what do you see??)

So you need to tell your brain AND his brain what you want! (not what you don't want) Get it?

[MaesaarM324]

Hey,

needing your advice please.
We were doing well. Our son (nearly 10 months now) slept really well. From 7.30 to 7.30. Last couple of weeks problems started. He does not want to be put into his usual on his front position when putting him to sleep. He wiggles and cries a lot and moves himself on his side, on the side he is fine and then I just keep saying the jingle and keep my hand on his back and he falls asleep within 5-10 minutes.
But wakes up at least 3 times a night. Sometimes falls asleep nicely after just saying a jingle, but sometimes just refuses to sleep. Putting him the position on his stomach like in the beginning causes massive screams and making things worse.
When he wakes during the night, like between 1-3, it is easy to get him back to sleep. But he has started to wake up 6 or 6.15 or 5.30 and just does not fall asleep. Keeps talking in a loud voice and turning around in his bed. One night woke up 3.30 and after 2 hours of jingles, fanning etc we were still in the same place, he was still awake. I had to get up and go to work, I had no choice. My husband took over and finally he fell asleep at 6.30, but then he slept until 8.30, which is out of the plan.

He used to sleep the whole night and now its again like being back in the beginning. What have I done wrong?
We have not "broken" the cure, the routine is the same, always same time dinner, bath, bed etc. He eats really well, all his meals and snacks during the day, according to the plan like we set first. I really dont know what to do

[Tin]

Hello,
ok truth bomb: Yes you have done everything the same (great) but you know what, kids are never the same, they grow, they change, they mature, they have new questions, etc.

Your job as a parent is to grow with that, that means you will have to change schedules, feeding times, tools with them WITH the same strong can do attitude. Sometimes its obvious what to change a parent such as dropping a day sleep, and sometimes it is not so obvious such as with tool to use when.

What ALWAYS stays the same though are the sleep principles.

• At night humans sleep - all humans big and little.
  Little humans don not need big humans physical being to be safe.
  Little humans are not in charge of when to sleep or to wake up.
  Big humans can only give the right conditions for sleep, not actually sleep for little humans.
  Its big humans job to LEAD, not little humans.

So with that said, a baby that is 10 month old do not need to be put down in sleep position with a hand on the back, they do not need to sleep on the tummy they can choose side themselves. You feed him, make him laugh for 10 minuter or more, them carry him in a dark bedroom, put him down and jingle while you leave the room. DONE.
When he wakes up at night (before 4 am), you stay outside him room and jingle, do not enter and do not put him down on his stomach, only if it turns into crisis ie he screams so much he cant stop himself (which it doesn't sound as if he is doing) you should enter the room and try a stronger tool than the jingle such as fanning. So confident jingles from outside the room, message should be a firm "at night we sleep" from the tone of your voice.
If its after 4am when he wakes up you should do as little as possible, do one fast, strong jingle and then nothing. This is so close to morning that babies think they have slept enough so strong messaging from parents that it is in fact still night is needed. Same if he wakes up in early morning, one strong jingle and then nothing. Leave him, you cant sleep for him, he is allowed to talk. Make sure its pitch black in his bedroom, no cracks from the door or anything. This early you can use another tool which is playing mozart outside him door.
Also when he has a bad night or morning do NOT give him extra time to sleep in the morning, normal schedule the next day. He will be tired, yes, but you will be back on track the next night rather than feeding into a faulty schedule.

It also matters how much food he eats, how much he runs around/crawles and how much time he spends outdoor. AND also your attitude as parents, think to yourself: Ok, my darling, of course Im here for you and I WILL help you get your sleep back. Take pride in the fact you have done it before, so you know you can do this. You just have to fine tune and adapt to a 10 month old. You've got this.

Think about my advice and information, paste you current schedule in (food and sleep) and us moderators can see if there is something there that needs adjusting.

hugs Tin

[MaesaarM324]

Thank you for your reply.

That is what we kind of have done in the evenings, put him to bed, let him choose his own position, jingle and then when he settles, we leave the room. I can only dream about putting him into bed, saying jingle and walk out. He jumps up in his bed and just stands there and jumps up and down and calls us. If we ignore him, he starts to scream and gets himself into a state. It is easier to settle him and jingle until he falls asleep, take about 10-15 minutes. He still cries a bit when we put him to bed and rolls to his back, then front, then side, then front, then back and so on about 50 times until he calms down and falls asleep.

The night wake up (usually before 4) is quite an easy one to settle with a jingle, but I usually go in and talk to him, as I do not want him to get into "awake state", as when I just talk from outside he gets up, stands up and starts to call us, when we ignore him or not go in, he starts to jump in bed and cry until we go in.

Morning wake ups are harder. This morning he woke 3.30, took me 15 minutes to jingle him to sleep. He woke again 5.30, was jumping in his bed by the time I heard it through my sleep. He was awake and very chatty and I kept saying the jingle and he settled. Woke again 6, then 6.30, then 7, all the same scenario. If I do not go in, he won't stay there on his own and chat until he falls asleep, when I won't go in, he gets up in bed and starts to jump. Jumps and cries until one of us goes there.
He is also teething at the moment. On the nights when we give him Iburprofen as he seems to struggle with the pain, he sleeps nicely until 4-5 and then when the painkiller has worn off he is awake again and wants to chew my hand when I go to jingle him.

daily plan:
wake up 7.30
breakfast 8.00 (porridge or Weetabix with milk or cerials or toast or egg or mixture of things; breakfast used to be problem, but since he started to sleep better in the night, since we started the cure, we have no issues with eating, he is a good eater and eats very well)
bottle of milk (210 ml) around 9-9.30
sleep around 10-10.45 (sometimes only 30 minutes)
snack 11.00 (usually cerial bar or yogurt or banana or boiled egg or egg fritter)
lunch 12.30 (meat or fish, veg, something sweet like rice pudding with fruit or yogurt with fruit)
sleep 13.30 - 14.30 (he is sleeping an hour, very rarely 1,5 hrs) also has 210 ml of milk before lunch nap
snack after sleep around 3 (same as before in snack comments)
dinner 17.30 (always warm food of meat or fish, vegetables, pasta or potato or rice, normally the same food we eat ourselves and then something sweet for dessert like fruits or rice pudding or yogurt)
bath 18.00
milk 210 ml before bed, sometimes finishes the bottle, sometimes not
bed 19.30

He is not at childminder's from Monday to Thursday and he has other kids there who play with him. He is very happy and comes back smiling and talking a lot, he seems tired as always falls asleep in the car on our way home, which takes around 10 minutes, but we always wake him up and wont allow him sleep more than 10 minutes the journey takes.
Fridays he is at his grandparents and when he comes home he is not as tired and happy, as I think he is a bit bored there, as it is not as interesting as it is at childminder's with other kids.

[TorsMamma]

Hi,

would you please be so kind to go to the top of the page, click on your name choose (control panel/tab profile/ signature) and enter your child's birth date and date of the cure you started. It is getting to difficult for me to keep track.

I think we do have quite some misunderstandings here and this might be some of the reasons you are not getting the results as you wish.

Now some people say: I just pick the raisins out of the cake. But the thing is, the stricter you follow the book the more exact of the result you get.

If you re-read the "Safari" chapter. YOU will understand by entering the room to calm down and jingle you disarm the jingle's magical effect since it is made for calming your child from OUTSIDE the room as the Safari says.
When you enter the room you are telling your child you are not safe without me being there to watch over you and to touch you. You are NOT safe if we are outside we need for you to scream until we enter and stay with you to calm down. (get my point?)

When he is at childminder's do you keep the exact same schedule for sleep?

When I read the schedule I get it to that he gets to eat around 8 times a day! That is WAY too often. We recommend 3 meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) and at the most 2 snacks (including the night snack before bed) Could you please see what you can do about consolidating the "all-day snacking" going on?

Also please re-read the "security" chapter. The less you do, the more trust you put in your child to learn and do better. The more you do, the less your child needs to do to learn and move forward. So you always need to think about how you do LESS and GET OUT of the room as fast as possible. Now, if he screams this is where the "Jingle discussion" comes in. It is not how fast you get him to calm down, this is easy! It is how much trust you put in him to sort things out with your support. That can take 100 jingles forth and back before he is satisfied with your answer.

So please re-read the 2 chapters I asked you to read and lets talk again.

[MaesaarM324]

Hi,

Thanks, I get the message re entering to the room. Need to think how to solve this, as he is not laying down back to sleep on his own and just starts to scream. Will read again.

Re food, I am a bit confused now. When we started with the cure, my plan got corrected as there was a thought I did not give him enough food. Then I brought in snacks as you recommended, between breakfast and dinner. Milk still has to be given, as midwives here says I cannot cut out the milk until baby is one year old. So I am not sure what I should change?
Currently he gets 3 meals plus 2 snacks, the milk is just a comfort part, as most times he is not even drinking all of it.
He is not fat and he is not putting weight excessively, seems to be always following the curve same way like he was when he was born.

[Tin]

Hi,
well I agree with Torsmamma, read the book so you understand the basics as if you were being tested on it. Really it not about he details its about the big picture and outcomes.

Food:
You dont snack throughout the day, you eat 5 BIG meals spread out during the day. Snack eating leads to snack sleeping which is the opposite of what you want.
You CAN skip the milk, if he eats 5 large meals, and he does not want milk (as dessert), he is full. Milk is not as filling as real food, so again if the goal is sleeping all night long, real food is always better than milk. Here you have to use common sense, midwives have different advice all around the world so what do you think? (I was born in Sweden and had babies in New Zealand, neither of those countries recommended milk until 1 years old, although one of my kids had evening milk until maybe 3 because she enjoyed it not because it was a vital part of her nutrition intake.)
Have a look at you schedule, pull the meals together, remove all the snacks apart from a second break fast and I would skip ALL the milk apart from before the night sleep. Put the new schedule here if you want advice.
The food is less about following a curve (although Im happy he is nicely on the curve) and more about about getting enough real food in your system throughout the day that you can sustain a 12 h night, you get more food in you if you have time to be properly hungry in between meals and then eat full/rich meals.

Standing up:
When it comes to him standing up, this is where the jingle should work, this is why you have the jingle. Will it take longer - YES, will he wake up while doing it - YES, will you have to put some effort in - YES. Will he eventually understand what the jingle means and lie down - YES, IF used correctly. This is the way to full night sleeps. There will be hard work at first from both of you though.
If you believe he actually cant lie down himself after standing up in the cot and he is stuck, practice it in the daytime, again and again and again until you KNOW he can do it. Then at night, you can stay outside the door and jingle him down.

So, real talk , there will be hard work involved from you before this works, going in to his room because he might wake up more is taking a shortcut and he will never learn what the jingle means thus not being able to fall asleep on his own which is the key. So have a think, read the book chapters that Torsmamma recommended a couple of time (YES, more than ones) and then have a think if you are ready, yes if YOU are ready, to do what it takes and be consistent. You have received a lot of advice in this thread, if you read your thread again you will see you have lots of the answers but you keep doing something else.

When you come back, and you are ready to do this without shortcuts, we will be here and guide you through if you want to.
It is worth it.

hugs Tin

[MaesaarM324]

Hello again,

I know last time I asked too much and you ran out of patience with me, but I need your advice again. Sorry
Our boy is now 1 year old and I allowed him to settle back into old ways.. I know, very bad of me. He was ill and was having milk as a comfort and I allowed it, and soon it was back to how it was before the cure. He woke up up to 10x a night and was looking for his bottle.
So we decided that he is now old enough and does not need his milk anymore and we stopped all bottles day time and night and he can only drink from the cup. We started again with the cure. I read Anna's recommendations from the book about re-cure and started from the beginning. It went well, he forgot his bottle within first night and has not been asking it at all. On second night already he slept through from 8 to 7.30.

But recently we have had problems with going to bed. We do the usual brushing teeth, having fun and laugh and then I pretend that he is on the plane and we fly and he loves it and that makes him laugh. Everything is ok and he is happy, but as soon as we start to go up the stairs towards his room he starts to scream. He cries so badly, tears running down his cheeks and face is all buffed. He cries a bit in his bed and calms down within 10 minutes and falls asleep, but it is sad for me to see that he goes to bed with crying. As before he has just sighed and turned on his tummy and accepted it is his bed time. What are we doing wrong?

[TorsMamma]

Hi and welcome back! So what is the schedule like now? I'm guessing he had his first birthday and is one year old now?

He should with this in mind have 13,5 hours of sleep/night.

[MaesaarM324]

Hi,

Yes, he has had now his 1st birthday. He walks a lot and likes to spend a lot of time in the garden and that seems to really make him tired by evening, as he sleeps a lot better then.

Obviously currently the routine has changed, as we are in lockdown in UK and me and my husband are both at home with him.

Current schedule:
Wakes up 7.30 am

Breakfast 8.00, eats very well especially after we stopped giving him milk. Usual breakfast fried egg, slice of toast, blueberries and raspberries or porridge and blueberries and yoghurt.

Playtime inside or in the garden, from 8.30 to 10.30 - then has snack like muesli bar and banana or sandwich
lunch 11.30 - frittata or cold chicken and avocado and beetroot and yogurt and fruit puree. After this we usually go out.

walk outside - when he usually falls asleep about 12.30 and can sleep sometimes for 2 hours, most days only about 45 minutes. If he has had really restless night or cried long time when going to bed, then he sleeps longer, like 2 hours.

15.00 snack - sandwich usually and biscuit


17.30 dinner time - big dinner usually- potatoes or pasta or sweet potatoes, meat or fish, vegetables which he absolutely loves and eats a lot of them. dessert some fruit or fruit puree and yoghurt or rice pudding. We tried later dinner time, as I tried to follow plan for a 1 year old from GNS book, but 18.30 was too late for us and he was not eating much and it worked better to have the dinner at 17.30

18.00 bath and fun games with dad after

18.45 baby night time tv programme and play (he does not really watch is sitting down, watches his favourite parts and then plays with us)
19.30 we go upstairs, brush teeth and put him to bed

He usually sleeps his night 12 hours nicely. Sometimes gets up 15 minutes earlier but just chats to himself in bed and calls us, but not crying or anything.

Last week he has suddenly started to scream when we walk upstairs. My husband manages to put him to sleep within 10 minutes, saying the jingle and he protests and cries but settles rather fast. With me he is just screaming and it can take up to an hour for me to put him to sleep. Of course then he wakes up in the morning tired, as he has not had his usual 12 hrs sleep. Usually when he cries for a long time, when falling asleep, he wakes up again around 22.30 as well and has another cry session, which also can take up to an hour.

[TorsMamma]

Hi,

Many thanks for the info.
So one thing I think you need to do is have a bit of a stricter schedule. So if the night is 19.30-07.30 then the midday nap should be offered 12.30-14.00 and no other time. And actually, NOT more nap time to compensate, this will result in him not understanding when things are the way they are.

If he wakes up earlier from a nap, he can if possible just stay in bed and talk to himself a bit.

When lying him in bed at night, I think you might need to just fly him up like an airplane and just go Poff in bed, walk out with the jingle. Don't stay, don't say a bunch of things or nothing. Ensure the bedroom is already pitch dark for the night, have a light on outside the room. Fly in, and exit faster than 30seconds with the happiest of jingles on your way out. It needs to be SOOOO happy that even you smile and laugh on the inside saying it. If you convince yourself you will convince him.
I think his father has better success do to the "Attitude " that Anna writes about in the book. You need to have the expectation he wants, can, and will sleep without crying. And see him going to bed happy. If you project it, it will happen. He is asking questions and you are falling for them.

He is asking you, should I cry when going to bed? Am I safe here? Can I really fall asleep on my own? and more! The jingle is to convince him of just this fact, where you answer of course you can, I will be standing guard right here outside the closed door. Re-read the safari in the book! Children who sleep really well with have short periods of time when they as questions and will keep asking until satisfying answers are given. Ad he gets older you will find that he will say "water" "toilet" "pee" and so on, this is also questions but in "assertive form". You think he is expressing "needs" but they are in fact questions as well.

So please have 20 min laughter and fun all the way up into the room, poff in bed, out with the happiest of jingles so you convince him that sleeping is the best natural thing in the world.