Won't go back to sleep after night waking...

drpayne · October 2011

Sleep training went well, for the most part (we used Ferber). I can now put LO down awake and he goes to sleep with little to no fussing. I usually put him down at 8 and he will sleep until 4-ish. He immediately dropped his midnight waking/feeding when we started sleep training. So I'm not complaining there - we've made a lot of progress. It's just that once he wakes up around 4, he will NOT go back to sleep. This morning he woke up around 3 and I nursed him and put him back down. He'd quiet down so I'd think he was asleep but then he'd start crying again. I finally caved around 6 and brought him to bed with us. I felt awful for going that long but I keep hearing/reading "be consistent/don't give in" (so don't flame me). If he did this at the beginning of the night, I'd assume he wasn't ready and try again in a couple of weeks. I just don't understand why it's so easy at bedtime and such a fight at 4 AM? I don't don't what to do.... I don't hate him coming to bed with us (I enjoy it, really). I just don't want to assume that this habit will go away on it's own. Any advice?

EVA116 · October 2011

This has been happening with our daughter too. I am interested to hear what people say. This morning I gave her a bottle and she went back down till 7. I really think she was super hungry. She ate an 8oz bottle really quick. Usually she wakes up at 5 and we keep her up but even that is too early and she still seems tired.

Bexxy10 · October 2011

This sucked but the only thing that worked for us was to put her to bed and not go back in until 5am. She cried 45min each time the first night, then 20min the second night each time then 5min the next night. Now on occation she wakes up at 3am and I just let her cry. And usually she goes back to sleep within a couple minutes. I really struggled with letting her cry that long, but we were up 3-4 times a night. Now when she wakes at 5-6am I go in and give her the sippy cup and don't say anything and she eats and generally goes back to sleep. If she does cry I just let her cry and she stops after a little bit. Then I get her around 7am. I had to turn the monitor down some to get through the rough nights. But she's a very happy baby in the mornings and doesn't have any issues of trust as far as I can tell. But we tried everything prior and nothing worked, so this was our last resort. Thankfully it's worked. On occation when she wakes up at 6:30 I giver the sippy cup and if she doesn't go back to sleep I bring her in with us. My husband doesn't sleep well with her in the bed with us. He's terribly paranoid about hurting her, but she just sleeps in my arms. So she and I usually go right back to sleep.