- Pregnancy
- Baby & Toddler
- Parents
- Getting Pregnant
- Baby Names
- Product Reviews
-
Registry
- Community
-
More
Want a personalized experience?
Download the free app
Babies: 9 - 12 Months
juniper75
member
XP: Sleep Help Please
juniper75
member
Sorry this is long... Ok so we are smack in the middle of a major sleep regression. Sleep has been an issue for us forever and I know I probably need to do some sleep training and am looking for a little advice here on where to start. She is 9.5 months old and BF, will not take a bottle or pacifier, we are well established on solids.
She sleeps in her own room in her crib and used to go down easy and only wake about twice a night and I could get her back down in about 15 minutes with nursing and rocking - now she's up more often and only wants to be held by me. Some of the time I can get her back down like I used to but now every night we have a 2 hour wake period where nothing will get her back down. She will scream bloody murder unless I hold her the whole time and it has to be me, she wont let DH. The time varies but it happens every night and lasts 2 hours. Naps have always been a problem so DD naps in my arms twice a day ( in her room, dark, sound machine nursing and rocking). We generally fit in the 2-3-4 for naps and bedtime. Her morning nap is 1 hour and afternoon is 2 hours.
Right now she is moving leaps and bounds development wise and is learning new things daily - she also cut two teeth in the last two weeks. I think more are coming. I've been reading both ferber and pantley and need to start something, but I wonder if its even possible with everything else going on? She doesn't appear to be in pain at night. I do give her ibuprofen for the teething the nights when she seems to be sore. It doesnt seem to help her sleep anymore than usual.
If I do start training should I start with nights or naps? Should I wait - it seems like now there will never be a good time.... Thanks for your time!This discussion has been closed.
Re: XP: Sleep Help Please
Ok - yes you have a LOT going on and so does LO.. but if you are like me - there doesn't seem to be a good time to start anything - I finally just decided - I'm not sleeping - she's not sleeping and something has to change.
I can't tell you what you "should" do - I can tell you what I'm doing after a simliar / different situation.
1) I really really believe nights are different then days. They are related and they do cross over - but they are different. I Read once that different parts of the brain control nap sleep versus night sleep and based on my child - I think thats true. SO I have always done one or the other and rarely both at the same time - thought was I'll preserve one sleep so that she doesn't get over tired. (this is just based on my research which is mostly anocdotal from various moms / blogs / boards / time)
2) How does she go down? Awake? If not - thats the first thing I would do - make sure she goes down awake. We were nursing to sleep - so I started nursing her after bath and diaper, then put lotion on her, put on Jammies - kiss - love you - night night - in crib awake. I've heard / read / seen that this is supposed to help with the motn wake ups because they have everything they need to fall asleep. (We have been doing this for five nights - some nights are better then others) - My other thougths on this are eventually I'll need to drop the nursing to sleep as my goal is to pretty much cut off bottles / boobs by or around 1 year - and we are at 9 months.. so since again we weren't sleeping - I might as well get somethign out of it.
3) Though this is going to KILL you - could you try to NOT pick her up for the screaming session? Honestly - if that means you are sitting by her crib holding her hand crying yourself for the first few nights - anything to STOP the being held. This is really where your parenting style / wishes / desires / gut feelings come into play. Honestly the ONLY way she'll learn to stop this behavior is to stop it. Ferber type methods would say - let her cry / scream / play / talk / fuss for intervals and then go in and pat, soothe, etc WITHOTU PICKING UP. There are pick up / put down methods there are lots of options. I'm still working so what we have done is when she starts fussing (our baby fusses, sleeps, fusses sleeps, cries, fusses, sleeps for 10 min intervals for HOURS) I wake up - watch her on the monitor notice if she's ok and has her binky (thats her soothe tool) and then I turn the monitor off - set my alarm - and then re check on her when it goes off. The time varies. This is the only thing that has worked for me because if I go in she gets more upset and I can't lay there every night and watch her for hours.
4) You can wait for the developmental stuff to calm down if that is your comfort level.. I struggle and go back and forth when its obvious to me my child needs soothing and she's not doing so well herself then I soothe her. Its a fine line - I need her to be able to sleep because in our situation she's not getting enough sleep to stay healthy, happy and grow.
At some point - some will say at the same time - you should probably address your nap situation. everythign I said above will also work for naps. I tend to attack night time stuff first because naps are sooo much harder as they aren't as tired normally. That said.. sometimes its easier to listen to your baby cry during the day when you aren't super tired.. so really in my honest opinion - take your pick
Sorry this is so long..
Thanks so much - I really appreciate your thoughts and suggestions!
I guess I would say she goes to bed asleep, most of the time she wakes up as I am laying her down but it she's been sufficiently nursed and rocked she just moves into a comfy sleep position and goes right to sleep - otherwise she"ll start crying often before we even get to the crib.
I am not adverse to some crying - mostly because it seems to happen no matter what I do these days anyways so might as well let her get it out. I also have a video monitor so I watch and wait a bit when she first gets up to see if she is even trying to get herself back to sleep - if she is I wait and see how she does. Sometimes it works - most of the time it doesn't. With her 2 hour wakeful periods I usually don't stay with her the whole time, I go in feed and rock and try to put her down, then even if she cries I leave and give her 15-20 min to try and put herself down - we play this game over and over again until she eventually goes to sleep. Last night she went down on her own about 10 min after my last visit - although for those ones its ALWAYS after 2 hours of being awake - sigh.
I suspect we will have to do full blown extinction with her if I decide not to pick her up - I have tried just shush/pat or staying in the room before for wakeups and it just seems to make her all the more angry!
I have tried to be patient and let it resolve on its own but I can't wait any longer. I am lucky enough to still be on maternity leave but have to go back to work soon enough so I need for daycare to be able to feed her and put her down for naps - I also need some sleep myself!
I would tackle night time sleep first, then move on to naps later. DS was like your LO in a way - by the time he was about 6 months, he would go to sleep easily but then would wake up in the middle of the night and would be very hard to get back down unless I rocked him and held him for 30 - 45 minutes; and that happened 2 to 3 times a night. And like your LO, DS wanted only me. I didn't mind getting up to nurse him if he was hungry, but it was clear that he wasn't hungry and he just wanted to hang out with mommy. I was back at work already so after 2 months of this, I was exhausted.
I started with the SleepEasy method, which is a variation of Ferber that allows you to do check-ins at 5, 10, 15 minute intervals. I had lots of friends who recommended it. But I think it depends on your LO's personality. It didn't work at all with DS. I tried that for about a week and it got me nowhere - he got more and more worked up every time I checked in on him; so every night I gave up after an hour or so and held him and rocked him back to sleep and it became a 2 - 3 hour process every time. I was so exhausted by the end of that week that I almost got into a car accident. So we went full extinction. He cried for an hour and 32 minutes. I sat in my room watching the video monitor and cried my eyes out. I wanted to go get him many times but then just kept telling myself that if I did, then all his crying would be for nough and we'd have to do this all over again. Eventually he exhausted himself out and fell asleep. Next morning he woke up and was perfectly happy. He cried for about 20 minutes on night 2 and then not a peep on night 3. This happened when he was around 8 months.
DS was watched by my parents during the day and they rocked him to sleep for naps. I didn't have the resolve to try and change that and was really worried that he would have problems at daycare. He went to DC at 9 months and in between the crying, eating and playing, was so exhausted by nap time that he had no problems falling asleep by himself there. So that was that.
I had really hoped to be able to reconcile sleep training with night nursing, but I couldn't do it successfully. In Ferber's book, he discusses that this can be a challenge (I think he calls it "unstable" because you can't be 100% consistent with your responses. One time you pick up and nurse and the other times you don't interact but do the checks). If I were a baby, I'd be super pissed about that, and mine sure was!