the only way ds will fall asleep lately is if we make him cry first...
he will get almost asleep in the glider and then when i put him on the mat to go to sleep (still nursing), he wakes up and wants to play, crawl around, etc. i then call in dh and he helps shhh and pat. the only way ds will go to sleep is if i leave the room (thus, making him cry) for a few minutes, dh stays with him and then i come back and nurse him to sleep. it has been taking an average of 45 minutes to get him down.
i hate making him cry! i do remember reading that some babies need to cry at the end of the day to get out energy, but i don't think ds is one of those. he will escalate.
i don't want to continue this (making him cry). it makes me feel awful, doing it knowing the result.
any suggestions or has anyone had this scenario? thanks.
Re: the only way ds will fall asleep lately is if we make him cry first...
I was just about to post about this. Our LO has been waking every hour to 1 1/2 hours for the last 2 months. She's never been the STTn night type of baby but she'd at least get a 3 hr stretch in here and there as a newborn. Anyway as you can imagine this has been very taxing on me (I am home alone all night with LO while DH works). We had to bite the bullet and start a modified Ferber approach to help her sleep, tonight being the first night and it worked! She cried for 1/2 hour the first time with us checking in every 5 minutes for that 1/2 hour. Then she woke again an hour and a half later and we soothed her every 5 minutes which we only had to do for 10 minutes before she fell asleep! It worked like a magic charm.
I;m sure alot of babies need to let out tension as PP said, think about us adluts, sometimes I let out a big huge sigh efore I get ready to go to sleep. This lets out the tension of my long day. babies don't know how to differentiate so everything is a cry and it's all communication. in our case LO needed to cry a little to learn to sooth and get herself past the wake ups of the end of her sleep cycles. She was crying because she was pissed at us but it's in her best interest and it's working!
I've never heard of a baby needing to release tension but it does make sense. DS was about 5 months old and he wouldn't fall asleep in our arms anymore. We were at our wits end trying to put him down every nite because a bottle and rocking him to sleep all of a sudden wasn't working anymore. The pediatrician suggested letting him cry for 20 min. I was like I can't do that. But my husband talked me into it. As long as I could go somewhere I couldn't hear the crying constantly I was ok. It worked! Now DS only cries 10 min max and goes right to sleep. Its so much easier putting him down for naps and at night.
O and I have noticed that on days when DS is with the gmas and they don't put him down for a nap, when I put him down at night he usually wakes up several times because he is over tired. I hate this, but it is wat it is. I try not to leave him with gmas all day very often.
My DS was like that for a little while. I would nurse him to sleep and wouldn't be able to move him, so the routine went 1) try to nurse down 2) DH hold and rock while screaming 3) nurse to sleep. It just lasted a few weeks, including a week of vacation which might have been part of it, but it sucked. It just didn't seem like that could possibly be right, but trying to let him cry in the crib instead of DH's arms didn't work, nursing without the crying didn't work, so there wasn't really anything else at that point, esp the vacation part.
It's happened a few other times randomly that I have to do a hold and rock while crying for nap, but not for a while. I think it is tension, and just adjusting to the fact that he does have to sleep and can't play all of the time.
my daughter used to do this when i'd put her in her cosleeper instead of our bed. now i get her to where she's almost asleep, put her in the cosleeper, and let her suck on my finger for a minute or two until her eyes are no longer open. then i'll pop it out and either replace it with a pacifier or, if she doesn't seem to notice, leave it alone.
i've just begun transitioning her from our bed to the cosleeper and it's getting better every night with no crying. it might not work as well for you but you could try it.
DD has started something similar in the past week or so. She'll be out cold (we generally nurse to sleep) but as soon as I lay her down she's up and won't go back down. I either have to lay down with her for a good half hour (minimum) or have DH take over, which leads to screaming.
I figure, like everything else, it's a phase that will pass.
DD2 8.22.13
MMC 1.4.17 at 16w
Expecting #3, EDD 1.29.18