STILL not STTN

jag101

My LO is still waking up every three hours every night. He has never slept through the night. He wakes up and demands a bottle. I've tried just giving him water and a cuddle and put him back to bed, but he won't have any part of that. If feel like I'm missing something, (other than sleep) because he should be STTN by now. Any suggestions?

Iamsmalls

We were right there with you but it has started to turn (thank God!). We started the Ferber method a few weeks ago and he was doing really well...then got sick (pretty bad for two weeks) but once he was better we started up again. He now goes down happily at 7:30pm and usually wakes between 5-6am. I nurse him on one side at that time and he usually goes back to sleep until 6:30-7am. I want to get rid of that early morning nursing session but honestly, I'm getting up for the day at that time anyway so it's not a big deal since he goes right back down. I know some people are against the "cry it out" methods but it worked for us and I'm so glad we stuck with it. His naps are a lot better now too. Good luck!

Twirple

We're going through the same thing.  We'll have one or two days when he STTN, then he'll revert back.  Sometimes I get lucky and he only wakes up once.  Last night he was up at 12, 2, 4 and 6.  Yes, I'm tired today.  We've let him CIO a couple of times and he'll start to STTN for a few days, then he'll get sick, or start teething and he reverts.

GHBEA

I totally agree with the habit nursing/feeding.  LO wakes up at 1am.  She also wakes up a few other times.  DH and I agreed when she was one she was getting on a schedule no matter what.  Well we have like 19 days until she is one so I have been reading up on different methods to do and will come up with one soon.

ckolak

DD still doesn't STTN. She goes down at 7:30, wakes at 9, 10, and 11 to eat, then (usually) sleeps with me til wake-up time. Last night she slept from 10:30 til 4am in her own crib! I was thrilled! You are NOT alone. And whoever decided that babies "should" sttn by a certain age "should" be shot, because every baby is different. Some babies actually need to eat at night (mine is one of them). It you are really at your wit's end, I would recommend reading the No Cry Sleep Solution. It really helped me understand *why* my baby wasn't sttn. It didn't help her STTN, obviously, but it made me feel better.

lylahlove

Only 50% of babies are STTN at a year. You're not alone Try not to feel frustrated, you'll get there. I know that's not super helpful advice, but if you're trying everything else and your LO is still demanding a bottle, then he very well may still need that. This phase will pass. Not all babies are the same - some are great sleepers early on and others (like ours) take a while to get there. 

One thing we've done in the last month that has helped a bit is leave music on in Liam's room all night - we're also getting really good at putting him in his crib while he's still awake and patting him to sleep so he doesn't totally freak out and not know where he is when he wakes up. Not sure what your routine already is. And we put the bumpers in his crib because he was rolling into the rails and waking himself up.  

lilylow

Until about a month ago E would wake up every night at 2 AM. 

She wouldn't wake up and cry, just fuss a little.  If she was just fussing the first few nights I gave her 10 minutes to see if she would go back to sleep or start crying, then I bumped it to 20 minutes, then 30.  If she started to actually cry I got up and fed her, most nights she was able to sooth herself back to sleep.

Now she sleeps {75%} of the time from 730 pm - 630 am.  We have the bumpers in and her sleep sheep at the far end of her crib in the corner.  Some nights I will hear her wake up, crawl to the bottom of her crib turn her seahorse on and go back to sleep.

Ironically I am still waking up every night at 2 am.

 

misssurly

We've had some rough nights over here (usually up every 2 or 3 hours) and she's never STTN but the last 3 nights, she's got 8 hour stretches of sleep - her best yet. She's down at 7pm, I dreamfeed around 10pm then she wakes at 3:30am and can usually be put back to sleep with some patting on the butt for 5-10 minutes. Not sure if this is why she's getting 8 hours but I'll keep it up for now and see. I'm a little superstitious though, is it the avocado she's been having for dinner? Or the fact we gave her advil for teething those nights?

Last night she was up from 3:15-4:45am which was torture but then nursed and co-slept with me until 5:45 then 7:45am. The statistic that only 50% of babes STTN in the first year is reassuring because I can see progress, slow progress. I felt out CIO a little and Ferber intervals but she escalates crying and after an hour and a half of checking in and her just as pissed off, it didn't feel right for us. Nice to hear we aren't alone, I think keeping a good routine is super important and feeling out new things to comfort them in the night. Now we don't have to pick her up to get her back to sleep and I only nurse once, that's a huge change from a month ago and I think she was just ready when we tried something new.

janjag

We did Ferber.  He still wakes at 5ish (somewhere between 4-6) to nurse and then back to sleep until 7/7:30.  I'd love to drop that 5ish feeding, but will wait until I start weaning him to push the issue.

biblionerd

Linus just started sttn this past week. It's only been 5 nights so I don't know if I can say that really... Within the first 2 hours of going down he's cried and I've given him his paci, but after that he's slept at least 9 hours. I think he's finally figured out there are FIVE pacis in his crib with him that he can seek out. He's also really attached to his security blanket and I'll see him reach around and grab onto it. This also might just be a coincidence, but I broke down and got a woolino sleep sack and it's amazing. I noticed when he was waking up before his back was sweaty some times or he was chilly. Our house temps suck. This has regulated his temp and it seemed like that helped a lot.  So who knows if it was any of those or just coincidence, but my fingers are still crossed that it stays that way. I was beginning to feel like I was the only one without a baby sttn!  He'll wake up some times in the morning a little too early and I pretend to be sleeping still (his crib is next to my bed- moving to the nursery this weekend... fingers crossed!).  I peek and see him looking at me and talking to himself and rolling around playing with his pacis and security  blanket. Usually after 15 minutes - 1/2 hour he'll fall back asleep. He JUST started being able to do this though. He's never been a good self soother and I'm sure that has a lot to do with not sttn. CIO is a joke with him and not even worth the effort. I did start letting him fuss until the point of crying though without jumping up and shoving a paci in his mouth and it seemed to help. As soon as he cries though, all is lost... I might as well just start the bottle.

katlizabeth

It sounds as if your LO may not be getting enough to eat during the day if he's only accepting a bottle at night (with milk/formula/bm in it).  I'd try upping intake during the day.  Like pp said...try something.  When ds was one, he was still getting up 1-3 times a night to nurse, obviously a habit.  We sent dh in to comfort him and it was tears, tears, tears in dh's arms for 20 minutes each time, but within a week he was sttn.  GL to you.

reesey625

not sure if you're still having problems but it took us 2 weeks of sleep training before our lil guy got it. it was not easy, but we are so much happier and well-rested now.

i used this advice from my friend; my notes are in CAPS below: she hired a sleep nurse when her son was 8 months old, fussy and cranky, not sleeping through the night, and she was at the end of her rope:

The sleep nurse came over and firstly observed Nathan playing. She then commented that Nathan was a not necessarily fussy but just very overtired. We took Nathan up to his room at his nap time and she had me do 4 things to teach him sleep cues:

1. Close the blinds in his room and then tell him in a firm voice "It's time to sleep now, Nathan".
2. Zip him up in his grobag (baby sleeping bag) and put him down in his crib. I HOLD HIM WHILE DOING STEP #3.
3. Pick 1 song to be used for all of his bedtimes and sing to him. I chose Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
4. Tell him again "It's time to sleep now, Nathan" and then leave the room.

Nathan of course cried when I left the room. It was heartbreaking to hear and I cried. But I was also desperate for this to work. While he cried, the sleep nurse and i sat downstairs where we could hear him. And she explained to me what the differences in his cries meant. He seemed to cry hysterically for 15 min but then for the next 30 minutes, his crying gradually died down and there would be pauses in between his cries. Finally there was silence and I realised that he had fallen asleep. He then took his longest nap ever to date (90 min). I was absolutely shocked. And when Nathan woke up, he was a different child. Giggly, happy and aware.

The nurse had me do the exact same routine for his next nap. Nathan cried for 20 minutes this time and again, fell asleep for another 90 minutes. We heard him crying around the 45 min mark but when we went into his room, we saw that his eyes were still closed. My first instinct was that he was awake and crying to be picked up but the nurse said that it was normal for babies to cry/make noises during their sleep and that if his eyes were closed, he was still asleep. And sure enough, he fell silent and slept another 45 minutes.

At night, she had me add in 3 extra steps to his sleep routine - bathing him, nursing him and reading a book. He cried for 5 minutes and put himself to sleep.

WE START AT 6:30PM WITH DINNER. BATH BY 7:15PM. MASSAGE WITH LOTION AND CHANGE. BOOB. BRUSH TEETH. DADDY TAKES OVER: BOOK, "TIME TO GO TO SLEEP," SING TWINKLE LITTLE STAR, "TIME TO GO TO SLEEP," BED. AND FELIX FALLS ASLEEP ON HIS OWN!

I couldnt believe that in just 1 day, my baby boy had learned to soothe himself to sleep. He still woke up at night for 1 or 2 feedings but as soon as I would nurse him, he dropped back to sleep again.

After this, Nathan settled into a sleep routine of 2 x 90 min naps and sleeping 11-12 hours at night. For the first time ever, I felt utterly liberated that I was no longer responsible for making him fall asleep. I was actually able to make plans to go out and socialise because Nathan's nap times became like clockwork. And most of all, my child changed from a fussy, unhappy and overtired baby to a superhappy and energetic baby boy. Ppl comment to this day that they've never seen a more happier or smilier child.

I look back at my notes of Nathan's newborn days and realise that he was only getting 9-10 hours total of constant broken sleep a day instead of the 16-17 hours of sleep that he should have been getting. No wonder he was sleep deprived, irritable and unhappy. All those times that I tried to rock him to sleep or rush in to pick him up every time he cried were harmful to him, even though I was well intentioned. It goes against every mother's instinct to let our baby cry but in this instance, it was the best thing that I ever did for my baby boy to teache him how to self soothe and put himself to sleep.

With our next child, I would not hesitate to sleep train him/her from 3 mths because I know that it works. As a first time mother, I found that having a professional sleep nurse relieved any fears that I had because she was able to explain exactly what was going on while Nathan slept. My biggest fear about CIO was making my child cry unnecessarily or making them feel abandoned.  I also didn?t have the confidence and experience to know if it would really work on Nathan.

Some people have the notion of sleep training as just leaving your baby to cry. But that?s not it. It?s about a different number of things ? having the awareness of when your baby is tired, providing them the opportunity to sleep before they become overtired, teaching them sleep cues so they know when it?s time to sleep and teaching them how to fall asleep on their own. If anyone has a child who is sensitive to sleep and does not sleep well even next to their parents, I would definitely recommend sleep training.