Another sleep issue post..sorry, a little long

jlbeanza

Hello ladies, I have been lurking ever since I found out I was pregnant, and have enjoyed your advice from afar, but now my daughter is almost seven months old, and I feel that I need to come out of the woodwork and get some support, or at least to hear that I'm not alone in what I'm experiencing with my little girl.

Essentially, she doesn't sleep. I EBF, and am happy to feed her in the middle of the night whenever she asks.  I honestly don't mind waking up a couple of times each night to do that.  The problem is that while she goes to sleep just fine at 7, she wakes up 5-8 times BEFORE midnight every night for the last 2 plus months.  Sometimes she'll sleep for an hour before this begins, sometimes she goes right to waking every 10 minutes or so.  When she wakes up she starts with fussing, and my husband and I don't run to her right away, because sometimes she's still truly asleep and settles back down.  Most of the time though, it escalates to crying, and we go pick her up at that point.  It usually takes about five minutes for her to be soothed back to sleep, then we put her down, then 10 minutes later she's up again.  Once she's down (5-8 visits to the nursery later), she'll often sleep for 2-5 hours, which is great, but it's getting to that point that is so hard.

I'm not sure what to do, because I'm uncomfortable with any of the CIO methods, but my pediatrician has been pressuring me to try it, and my husband is finally at the breaking point where he thinks it might be a good idea.  I don't know, because again, I don't mind her not sleeping through the night, but we are both exhausted and can't get anything done because of the early night wake-ups, and more importantly, she's exhausted and I think it's wearing on her.  She has to nap almost immediately when she wakes up every day despite waking up happy at 6 am. Has anyone else had this much trouble just getting your LO to sleep in the first place?  Any suggestions or success stories with sleep training for a unsure mama?  Thanks so much in advance!

BluepointToasted

My baby is about 2 weeks older than yours.  He was doing the same thing, waking up a million times a night, and it seemed like what was happening was that he was rolling in his sleep and then getting mad.  I started letting him cry on Saturda

ctj82

I'm sorry to hear that you are having such a hard time. Can you give more information? What are her naps like? What times and for how long? What is your bedtime routine? Does she use a pacifier, or is she rocked to sleep? How often is she nursed during

linzeek44

What you describe was pretty much my life until a few weeks ago. He would wake up every hour between 7 and midnight, and then one or two times between midnight to seven.

We actually met with a sleep consultant to figure out some options since

linzeek44

https://m.thebump.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/73226569.aspx

Here are the notes from our meeting. We aren't nap training yet because he needs decent day sleep to get decent night sleep [which was part of our problem]. He now will put himself to sle

arilevine

linzeek44:

https://m.thebump.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/73226569.aspx Here are the notes from our meeting. We aren't nap training

jlbeanza

She's not a great napper either!  She was doing 30 minute cat naps for a long time, one about an hour after she woke up, another late morning, one more mid afternoon.  This is getting better, but it's still hard to convince her to fall asleep

jlbeanza

linzeek44:

https://m.thebump.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/73226569.aspx Here are the notes from our meeting. We aren't nap traini

jlbeanza

BluepointToasted:

My baby is about 2 weeks older than yours.  He was doing the same thing, waking up a million times a ni

Ken&Anna

We were having the same problem until about 2 weeks ago--I would nurse DD to sleep, put her down in the crib and she would wake up 10 minutes later.  She didn't want the pacifier, didn't want to be rocked or bounced by DH--all she wanted was to nu

jlbeanza

Thanks Ken&Anna, my husband and I had a long talk about this last night, and one of things we decided is that we (aka I) need to work on putting her down awake.  It's so hard to resist just nursing her to sleep as she so desperately wants, and ge

linzeek44

arilevine:

linzeek44:</

moking2

Not sure if you are still swaddling or using Merlin's sleepsuit, maybe too old for that.  COI is really tough and not for everyone, but for us it was a couple a hard nights and that was it and then she slept great.