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Babies: 9 - 12 Months
DS not a great sleeper still.....9 months..advice please
DS has never been a great sleeper and it seems like it's always something. He's either teething (he has 8 teeth - just cut the top 4), a growth spurt so he's starving and drinks a lot of breastmilk via a bottle throughout the night or he has ear infections. Needless to say we end up bringing him to bed with us anytime between 12am and 3am (he goes down at 7:30pm). We have a good routine and he goes down in his crib but we have a hard time getting him to go back down in his crib.
I've read a few books and they haven't helped.
I don't believe in letting him cry it out. We let him fuss for 5 minutes or so but that's about it.
Anyone else in this same situation? My fear is that we're creating a monster if we haven't already. Any advice? I'm thinking I may camp out in his room this weekend so that I'm not too tired to put him back down.
TIA
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Re: DS not a great sleeper still.....9 months..advice please
This happened wih my dd around 7 1/2 months and we were bringing herinto our bed earlier and earlier every night. We ended up doing Ferber and it worked well for us. I know you said you don't want to let him cio so that may not work for you. Our dd never cried longer than 10 min.
I hope it gets better for you!
We went through this from 6-10 months. It was always something...teething, learning new milestones, sick etc...
We ended up co-sleeping a lot of nights for sanity (went to bed in crib, when he woke up he came in with us). We did not want to CIO either. I read the NO Cry Sleep Solution and tried some of the tricks and they did help, but no completely. He was still VERY hard to settle down though so we would lay him down in the crib and rub his back. He would cry a bit so we'd either settle him by hugging him or rubbing him. When he was calm we'd walk away. If he cried we'd come back, lay him down and settle him. It seriously took one nighttime wake up and one nap and now he puts himself to sleep no problem in his crib and sleeps great. The process of putting him back down and settling him took about an hour each time, which was hard, but I liked that we were still responding to his cries, but at the same time showing him the crib is not scary and he is capable of settling himself. I think a mix of this process and also kind of outgrowing the stage of milestones and sickness was what worked.
Good luck!
my advice- CIO. nobody enjoys it while its happening, but it's worth it. read healthy sleep habits happy child before you do it though.
This is going to be REALLY long - sorry!
I may not be the best one to give advice since we have the same problem, but I can commiserate & tell you what we are doing...
We also do not believe in letting her cry it out. Aside from not believing in it, DD is a child who will get more & more upset very quickly, and we know she'd be one of those babies who vomits after like 10 minutes, so there's no way we're doing that.
I read NCSS & it didn't help us at all. I read Baby Whisperer, and it definitely helped her daytime schedule and greatly improved her naps, but it did not help nighttime sleep one bit.
What our DD does is wakes up sometime between 12 & 2, and she's awake for 1-2 hours no matter what we do - rock her, feed her, she still stays awake. Sometimes she jumps around like she wants to play, other times she just lays peacefully in our arms, but will cry if we put her back in the crib.
Our pedi suggested that if we're not comfortable CIO, to put a mattress on her floor & when she wakes up, lay her down next to me (not in my arms, just next to me) and pretend I'm asleep, even if she crawls all over me & even all over the room (make sure it's babyproofed). We thought the mattress thing would just create another habit, so we took the idea & modified it. This is what we've been doing, and we don't know WHICH of these things is making her sleep better, or if it's a combination of all of them:
1. We put her on Prevacid. We told our old pedi for months that we think she has reflux but she refused to put her on meds. We had always suspected reflux might be waking her up. As soon as we told our new pedi her symptoms, she immediately put her on Prevacid.
2. We began using the white noise machine. It never helped before, but we decided to try it again so we leave it on "rain" all night.
3. We set the thermostat for the heat to go up 2 degrees warmer than we had been keeping it at night.
4. We stopped feeding her at night (she had no problem with that at all, we did it cold turkey, and we had been thinking for a while anyway that she really didn't need to eat at night).
5. We started putting cereal in her bedtime bottle (I know that's a no-no, but it is supposed to help reflux, so we thought we would try it). We also started giving her her bedtime bottle downstairs BEFORE our story, etc., instead of in the dark right before we put her down, to give her time to digest a bit.
6. We stopped picking her up when she woke at night: this is how we modified the pedi's recommendation. When she woke up, one of us would go in her room, lay our head on the crib rail & hang one arm in her crib & pretend we were asleep. This way, she had our presence for comfort, but we provided no interaction whatsoever because we pretended we were asleep. I said night-night & just laid my head down. The first few nights, she stood there & clawed at my face, pulled my hair, etc., & fussed a bit but didn't cry-cry. After about 45 minutes, she sat down, then 20 minutes later she laid down, which is when I put my hand on her back or belly. Then she rolled around & tossed & turned for another 20 minutes & finally fell asleep. After about a week, she was only doing this for 30-45 minutes, and it's been about 2.5 weeks since we started doing all these things, and she's sttn several times & isn't staying up as long if she wakes.
Also, so you know, we DO pick her up if she wakes from a dead sleep crying, which she's been doing more and more of lately. We pick her up, hold her but don't rock her, and when she calms down we lay her back down. Sometimes we have to put one hand on her back & one on her tummy so she feels "cuddled" for a few minutes, but at least she's laying in her own bed.
Overall, we're seeing improvement. We don't know what's doing it, but it's getting better. Sorry this is so long. Hope it helps!
You're not alone. DD still wakes up at night. I'm not really a big help. She goes down just fine(730-8:00) but will wake up around 12 and then again around 3ish. If we feed her she goes right back to sleep but I'm also afraid its creating a horrible habit.
This happened to us. It was a nightmare. Eventually he wouldn't even go into his crib. He always slept with us and we were both (Colin and I) exhausted.
We started Ferber 2 nights ago and it has worked miracles.