Stay at Home Moms

How does/did your 12m old go to sleep?

I rock ds with a bottle.  I am worried because at 12 months when he switches off formula I want to take the bottle away.  The problem is that he uses it to go to sleep, and the two times he is up at night he won't go back to sleep without a bottle.  Was anyone else in this situation and what did you do?  I feel like at 12m everything changes and I am clueless!
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Re: How does/did your 12m old go to sleep?

  • I still rock him to sleep..it's painful.  he will go down a lot easier for my husband.  By just laying him in the crib.  I can't let him cry...I am hoping eventually he will grow out of needing to be comforted to sleep.  Read No Cry Sleep solution...she talks about your issue in there.
    Alicia
    Mom to Three Sweet Things
    Lifestyle Blog and Health and Wellness
  • I did read that and don't recall much about losing the bottle.  Guess I'll have to go back through it.

    I am with you on not letting ds cry, hence the up twice a night and rocking to sleep at almost a year.  It sucks to have my 5 month old niece sleeping great through the night and a few times a week have my sister tell me she doesn't know how I do it.  Ugh.

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  • we sat and read books as she  had a bottle- later switched to a sippy cup.

    we still read before bed, have a small cup of milk if she wants it, brush teeth and into bed. she was able to put herself to sleep at that point- but we still had our reading/cuddle time. still do

    a lot DOES feel like it changes- but just go with it and you will see your new routines form and take over. no worries

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  • We broke this habit around 15 months. It was hard at first- but what convinced me was the need to want to brush is teeth AFTER he has his bottle. Its not healthy to have the milk sugars on their teeth all night.

    So what we do now is he has his bottle, then we do "brusha brusha" (teeth brushing, then we get in our PJs, then we put him in his crib and let him "read" his books for a few minutes. He usually cries- but its that "oh man- do I have to go to bed?!" cry. Then I sit on the floor and sing a song to him. Its actually the song from "The Good Night Show" on Sprout. As soon as he hears me sing the song he lays down to go to sleep. He'll roll around for a little while then go to sleep.

    It took a while to get there- in the begining my DH and I had to sit there on the floor with him for like 45 minutes to get him to fall asleep. It took about 2 weeks for him to "get" this new routine. But now once the song is over he knows its time to sleep.

    So far this works for us- its kinda my own adaptation of the SuperNanny method, which many of my friends swear by.

    https://www.supernanny.com/Advice/-/Your-toddler/-/Toddler-care/The-sleep-separation-technique.aspx

    It is all about creating a new routine. They'll be some tears but they'll come around.

    Now, if I can just get him to sleep all night, I'd be set. After we are all recovered from our colds over here I'm going to try the Ferber method again. I had started it but then he got sick.

    Good luck

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  • Maybe my issue is with the two middle of the night bottles.  I don't have an issue with rocking him, I enjoy it.  I just feel like at this point he should be sttn, especially considering that he did for 3 solid months from 3-6 months, then all hell broke loose.  I just would like to find a gentle way to help him learn to go back to sleep on his own at 3 am.  The pedi suggested Ferber but when I hear the name all I can think of is cio and that is not us at all.  Maybe it's worth a look.
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  • We encouraged them to self soothe. Both kids had a paci at 12 mos, so they used that to fall asleep to. Everyone and every thing kept saying how detrimental bottles are to their teeth so it worried me and I never did that with them. We stuck to a bed time routine, then they slept with a paci until about 19-20 mos.
  • My DD was always so difficult to get to sleep. She would fight every approach I could think of. I did CIO myself, and she's done almost a complete 180 (let's call it a 150, lol).

    I just stopped bottles about a month ago. Just because "they" recommend you drop bottles doesn't mean that your LO is ready for it. If it's a comfort object for them (which in your case, I'm sure it is if that's the sleep routine) I think it's kind of mean to just cold turkey it. I would suggest starting to give him the bottle like you normally do, but put him down before he's completely out. Does he take a pacifier? I stopped "bottling" DD to sleep by giving her a sippy (with water) and a paci. She also attached to her musical seahorse and has to have that to go to sleep.

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  • Oh, yeah, and I did CIO at 12 months, too. I was firmly in the anti-camp until my whole family was suffering and I was up from 12-6am straight every night because she wouldn't sleep. It only took a few days (yes, of hell) but it made a world of difference.
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  • She goes to sleep the same way she always has....in her crib on her own with the FP Aquarium on. I haven't had to rock her to sleep since she was about 3 or 4 months old. I couldn't imagine doing it for a 1 year old. Why don't you just put the baby in the crib and let it go to sleep on its own? How will it ever learn to sleep if you rock it all the time?
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  • I can only imagine your frustration!  Maybe a bit of re-introduction to sleep training might help!  :)  I know with Emily we had to remind her how bed time works a few times those first 2 years, as teething and developmental changes interrupted her STTN numerous times.

    Deciding which method is often the hardest part, as they all work for different reasons... you just have to pick the one that works best for you and your child. 

    We used The Ferber Method, which is NOT the Cry-It-out Method, as some people assume it is.  It's quite the opposite!  With CIO, you put them in bed and don't re-visit them until morning... you literally leave them all night long and let them just "cry it out".  Lots of people have had great success with this method!   We had actually read about The Ferber Method first, of all the methods, and it worked great for us all.  

    Here's a more professional description:

    What exactly is the Ferber method?

    In a nutshell, Ferber says you can teach your baby to soothe himself to sleep when he's physically and emotionally ready, usually sometime between 4 and 6 months of age. He recommends following a warm, loving bedtime routine and then putting your baby in bed awake and leaving him (even if he cries) for gradually longer periods of time. Putting a child to bed awake, says Ferber, is crucial to successfully teaching him to go to sleep on his own.

    Parents are instructed to pat and comfort their baby after each predetermined period of time, but not to pick up or feed their baby. This routine is called "progressive waiting." The suggested waiting time, which Ferber charts in his book, is based on how comfortable you are with the technique, how many days you've been using it, and how many times you've already checked on your child that night.

    After a few days to a week of gradually increasing the waiting time, the theory goes, most babies learn to fall asleep on their own, having discovered that crying earns nothing more than a brief check from you.

     

    Best of luck!!!  :)

    eclaire 9.10.06  diggy 6.2.11

  • Clarifying: I didn't do straight CIO - she wasn't abandoned from 8pm on - I followed Ferber, up until the point where DD became increasingly more upset with the checks. I had to stop doing the checks after the first few because it wasn't calming - it had the complete opposite effect. But, my DD is crazy stubborn and has always given me trouble. :P

    With my next child, I am putting them to bed drowsy, not completely conked asleep. That is the hardest thing ever to break, and nearly impossible to do with no tears whatsoever.

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  • "She goes to sleep the same way she always has....in her crib on her own with the FP Aquarium on. I haven't had to rock her to sleep since she was about 3 or 4 months old. I couldn't imagine doing it for a 1 year old. Why don't you just put the baby in the crib and let it go to sleep on its own? How will it ever learn to sleep if you rock it all the time?"

     

    Not everyone is the same...not all babies are the same...DS will not go to sleep like this, but will cry...some parents are not okay with that, including myself so we try to find other ways to get lo to put themselves to sleep.  Many a parent never let their child cio or did sleep training, and now their children sttn.

    If you are interested in learning more go to "parenting to sleep"  some great research and advice!

    Not saying what you are doing is wrong, just not for us

    Alicia
    Mom to Three Sweet Things
    Lifestyle Blog and Health and Wellness
  • DS is 14 months and still gets a  betime bottle, we are slowly weaning but this will be the last bottle to go. That being said we always put him down awake so no issue with rocking or bottles there.
  • imageTobeMrs.Shavers:

    We used The Ferber Method, which is NOT the Cry-It-out Method, as some people assume it is.  It's quite the opposite!  With CIO, you put them in bed and don't re-visit them until morning... you literally leave them all night long and let them just "cry it out".  Lots of people have had great success with this method!   We had actually read about The Ferber Method first, of all the methods, and it worked great for us all.  

    It IS a Cry-it-out method, but it's not "extinction". That's where you don't go in at all. You go in at intervals, until they STOP "crying" and put themselves to sleep.

    I've done both Ferber's method, and extinction, depending on the age and personality of my kids.

    Currently, I nurse DS to sleep (he's 13 months). When I drop my nighttime feeding, I will use "extinction" and not the Ferber method, because it'll work the best for DS.

    With DD#1 I did extinction CIO.

    With DD#2 I did Ferber CIO.

    GL!

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  • I guess it isn't the initial going to sleep at night.  He does fairly well and no longer fights us tooth and nail and I can usually put him down drowsy.  It is the middle of night wakings.  Last night it was 4 times.  He won't go back to sleep without eating which means he isn't getting enough throughout the day.  He won't eat more during the day because he is too busy to slow down.  We tried a bottle of water last night and he woke up again a half hour later screaming of hunger.  If we just ignore him he goes into full on panic mode.  I bought the Ferber book today even though I really am not a Ferber type parent.  I'll see if it has any information that might be helpful to our family.
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  • We've been putting our LOs down drowsy but awake since they were 2 months old (with twins it's really hard to rock each baby all the way to sleep or do anything else really intensive!). It has worked really well and they go down without a fuss. We're now doing sippies instead of bottles but it hasn't seemed to be a big transition. We had started doing bottles right before the rest of the bedtime routine so now we do sippies and then brush teeth, wash faces, put on nighttime diapers, PJs, sleep sacks, rock while singing 1-2 lullabies, hugs, kisses, bed.
    fraternal twin boys born january 2009
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