Sleep problems

Tink522

Ok I am about to lose it.  This is my 4th baby and my first 2 were great sleepers.  My third was 3 before he slept through the night and now this baby seems to be on that track.  I would LOVE to know how you are all making out with sleeping.  He is not napping barely at all.  Maybe 15-20 min a couple of times a day and that is when someone has fed him and he falls asleep while he is eating and they are holding him.  He is bf but takes bottles of bm when I am at work.  At night he will nurse and he is getting harder and harder to put down once he finishes.  Last night he woke up 2 hours after he went to sleep (after that process had already taken an hour) and then was up for 3 hours because every time I put him back down in the crib he woke up screaming.  I need some type of schedule and some help with what to do to change this now before these patterns get so out of hand that I can't change them. 

 Sorry so this was so all over the place.  I am so sleep deprived.

MalloryRudy

Our pedi. told us that we should let our LO cry it out and leave her be in her crib. She said at 4 months mostly the reason why babies start crying in the night is they wake up and arent sure how to fall back asleep. We had been getting up with her and feeding her thinking that was it, but pedi. said not to. She said that if we continue to do that, LO will associate falling back to sleep with "needing something" first.... 

unaveragejane

ArkansasMom, I have noticed DS do this, too! He will just be screaming his little head off, but his eyes are still closed tightly. When he did it after his first nap this morning, he had a leaky diaper. Even when I put him on the changing table he didn't actually wake up and open his eyes until I had gotten his pants and onesie off. Strange!

OP watching the clock for naps has helped me a lot. After I watched his patterns for a few days, I realized that I need to get him into his crib for naps after about 2 hours of awake time. We do a nap routine (clean diaper, read a story, sing "Twinkle, Twinkle," paci in, and crib). He is still not taking long naps consistently (20-40 minutes is his norm), but he doesn't fight naps nearly as much.

For bedtime, we also have a routine...pj's, bottle, story, song, bed. I am trying to get him away from falling asleep on the bottle so that he doesn't depend on it to get to sleep if he wakes up in the night. He usually does fall asleep when I am burping him before putting him into the crib, but he will wake up again within an hour with one more burp usually. Then he's pretty much set for a few hours. (Unfortunately, he is in the habit of waking b/n 10:30 and 11:30, but getting the paci back in usually quiets him back to sleep. I'm hoping we can end that habit soon.) Ideally, he goes down by 7:45. The nights when DS fights going to bed are nights when I haven't followed the routine or when he is overstimulated/awake too late. If I don't have him him bed by 8:15, I usually have to do a bit more to get him to sleep.

GeekFantasy

We're setting up bad habits and I know it but sleep is so precious since I work nights and some days have been up all night when I'm taking care of DD.  She is a pretty good napper - eats every 3ish hours, will then be up for 1.5-2 hours and then nap for about an hour, sometimes more.  But she usually naps in her swing.  She just sleeps so well in it!  She will go down in her crib too though.  At night she'll stretch her time between feeds to 4 hours, and last night she went 1:30am-8:30am!  For DH, of course. :P

kincaid44

I am having a similar issue with my son.  He naps fine during the day, but I absolutely dread the evening.  He is up so often at night that I am literally probably waking up every 20-30 minutes.  He wont sleep in his crib anymore.  He wants to be in bed with me and nurse all night long (he doesn't want to eat all night, but nurse for comfort).  The moment he unlatches he starts to cry. I can't get comfortable like that, so the sleep that I do get is horrible.  And I really don't want him in my bed because I am paranoid.  I am getting so worn down.  Some other ladies from our fb group have been talking about the 90 minute sleep solution and I think we are going to give that a try.  We will try just about anything except for CIO at this point.    

anonsouthernbell

MalloryRudy:

Our pedi. told us that we should let our LO cry it out and leave her be in her crib. She said at 4 months mostly the reason why babies start crying in the night is they wake up and arent sure how to fall back asleep. We had been getting up with her and feeding her thinking that was it, but pedi. said not to. She said that if we continue to do that, LO will associate falling back to sleep with "needing something" first.... 

that is your pedis opinion and not medically based