DD's taken to adding a second or sometimes third or fourth waking to her nighttime sleep. She was sick about 2 weeks ago and since then is waking up more often and louder than ever. She has now taken to shouting with turn into super loud angry cries rather than the usual baby "I'm awake, save me" cries. And the usual comfort techniques are just making it worse. She'll calm for a boob but never actually nurses. We don't know if it's teething pain or what. It's so frustrating!
How do you calm your LO at night? Are they STTN? If not, how many times do they wake?
Re: Night Wakings
I ignore night wakings unless he didn't take his bottle before bed. If that's the case the first time I hear him I give him the bottle and put him right back down.
Maybe I'm mean but he's been a good sleeper so I don't want to risk starting any bad habits by always going to him.
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I don't think you're mean, I ignore night wakings also. As long as I ignore it, he doesn't get angry. It's very very rare that he'll get up and actually start to cry. He eventually puts himself to sleep, and I refuse to feed into it, it's night time, it's time for bed, talk and do whatever to yoruself in your crib, but I'm not going to run to him and reward him for waking up, I know that makes me sound like a big as$hole, but like Dream said, he's been a good sleeper for so long, I do not want to risk starting any habits, either. (no offense to anyone who doesn't have this parenting style.)
Jeanne has been STTN since 6 months. We did the CIO method. It took 3 nights. She does sometimes wake and talk to herself. But nothing more than 5-10 minutes before she falls back asleep.
When she is sick, and cried in the middle of the night, we do wait a few minutes before going in. Once we know that she is feeling better, we do not go in. The last time she was sick, she cried 2 nights in a row, and we checked on her. Once she was better, she skipped a night then cried the next. We didn't go in. She did get louder, but realized we weren't coming and went to sleep.
When she was 6 months the doctor said she did not need to eat anymore at night. So I cut out the night nursings. if you want LO to go back to STTN or closer to it, you may just have to cut out a feeding. Or give water in a bottle to start. Or have your DH go in there. That worked for us when I stopped the night nursings bc she associated me with food. Shawn would go in, give her the paci, and she went right to sleep. Unfortunately, you sometimes have to ignore the cries. It is hard, but that is the only advice I have bc it's what worked for us.