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Northern California Babies
I could use a hug...(Long)
I feel like I am failing at part of motherhood. My DS is so not a good sleeper. He doesn't nap great at daycare...(maybe 3 naps totalling 2.5-3 hours) and then the nighttime is crazy. I can count on one hand the number of times he has STTN. (like 7 pm -5 am) He goes down easily around 7 or 7:15. We do the same routine EVERY NIGHT. That part works fine. It's the waking up in the middle of the night and only going back to sleep if he nurses. If he wakes up before midnight, I can guarantee that he will wake up another time before I get up. (at 4:45). If he makes it to 2 or 3, he will eat once and sleep until 6 or so. I try to send DH in first (which he is great about) and he will try to give him the paci and try to console him. We figure that if I go in, DS will assume that he is going to eat (rightly so since I feel like that's the only trick I have to get him to go back to sleep). We have "tried' letting him cry - but I am sure we are not consistent enough. He has cried for an hour and 20 minutes (with us going in intermittently) and the only way that he stopped was when I nursed him. I feel terrible that I have created this situation, yet for some reason, I can't bear with letting him scream and scream. Maybe i could do it if I knew that there was a positive result in sight. My coworker said that it will just take 3 days to break him of it, and if in my heart of hearts i was sure of that, i feel like i could do it. Then I get so sad thinking about my poor DS not understanding why I changed the rules on him. I guess what I am looking for is some reassurance that he is only 8 ish months old, and that kids eventually sleep through the night.
I just feel like I am not giving him my best, and don't know how to do better.
Thanks for reading...i feel better having gotten that out.
This discussion has been closed.
Re: I could use a hug...(Long)
***HUGS***
Your son is adorable! I may be on the opposite end of the parenting. I am all about sleep training. I slept trained (CIO) both of my kids at around 3-4 months and they sleep through the night. My DD was waking up endless times, so I had to train her for the sake of the entire family. Plus, I think she is happier and sleeps much better during the day too (after training).
Just to let you know, it took about a week of sleep training to get her down to STTN. Some may say that's horrible, but I really think she is a happier baby and sleeps so much better after that.
Good luck!
here's the reason: he's your son and he's crying to try to tell you something.
have you read the baby sleep book? it's got a list of medical reasons for night wakings and lots of tips to help babies get consistent sleep. CIO - if you decide to do it - can be a last resort.
IMO - a child learns nothing after five minutes of crying except one of two things: 1) eventually someone is coming so i'm going to cry until they do. 2) no matter what is wrong, no one is coming.
i'm sure other posters will have really good "been there" advice. The AP board also gives really good sleep advice.
you're not failing. you're a good mother who cares about her son and is concerned for his welfare. that's a gold star mommy in my book.
hugs!
good luck!
Hugs!! It's so hard when your baby isn't a good sleeper.
Keep in mind that there are other kinds of sleep training than CIO. I used the No Cry Sleep Solution with E. It doesn't work for all babies (just like anything else) but it worked for us. If you don't want to do CIO, try NCSS.
Big Hugs!
Char was always a crap napper but a good night sleeper until she hit 6-10 months. I don't know if it was teething/skills/etc but she was horrible at night after going down fine. I felt like we tried everything. I can't say one thing worked, but eventually she got back on track. Once she started walking and went down to one nap, it lasts 2-3 hours. Finally!
I have no advice - just sympathy!
NorCalMOMS bio* NorCalBOTB* babywearingBIO
Harmony Doula
Hugs!
My son didn't sleep through the night until he was 11 months, he would wake once or twice during the night for a bottle.
My daughter just turned one and does not sleep through the night, she still wakes once or twice for a bottle.
So what I am saying is that it is completely normal for kids not to sleep through the night. I never let my kids CIO in the middle of the night because when they did wake, they sucked down a bottle, so clearly, they were hungry.
Does your son go back to sleep after he nurses? Is it a problem for you to get up to feed him? If not, just keep doing it and, when he is ready, he will sleep through the night.
As others have said -- STTN is a milestone, and parents are often misguided in believing that it needs to happen much earlier than it will for most.
I am absolutely anti-CIO for my own children, so I went through a series of steps over time with K to change her sleeping habits. It went something like (and this happened over many months, as we did each step when it made sense in terms of her ability to "deal" with the change w/o crying):
First, move her out of our room; this happened around 8-10m. That led me to understand that part of her waking, even when she wasn't sleeping in bed with us, was because DH and the dogs were so restless that their movements and night noises were waking her up. I liked cosleeping, so that was a little sad
Secondly, stop nursing her to sleep, instead attempting to nurse her and then put her drowsily down in the crib so she could self-soothe better. (Around 14m)
This evolved at 15m into nursing her before bed outside of her room and then putting her down even more awake. This worked to some extent, but she was still waking up to comfort nurse whenever I went in to her. So, we spent a couple of weeks where, when she woke up before, say, 4am, DH went in -- and while she was soothed by his presence, she stopped depending on me so much and started sleeping longer stretches (so she wasn't waking up 6+ times a night, but now more like 2-4).
Only at 18m has she started doing some semblance of STTN, and it's not even an always-thing.
My point here (beyond giving you some ideas that I hope help) are:
a) if you ever wanna talk about this offline, I'm happy to
b) go easy on yourself, STTN is not something that comes easily to most parents and certainly doesn't usually happen early (especially from what I've seen from coworkers, friends with kids, and from other parenting communities)
the secret blog
If it makes you feel any better, my son is only a month older than yours and does the same thing.
I have limited myself to feeding (ie nursing) only once in the night. I usually wait till 2-4am for that feeding. But he'll wake up intermittently at midnight and sometimes 6am.
He used to STTN from 2-4 months then stopped. We do the same thing that we did with our DD and she STTN from 3 months on. Our naps with him are rough too. With us he'll take a nap in the morning and one in the afternoon, probably around 2-3 hours total. At daycare he takes only 1 nap and that is 2 hours max.
Just wanted to let you know that I'm in the same exact boat and I figure once I start weaning form bfing at a year he'll not need me in the middle of the night.
Thank you ALL so very much for your support. I think that I am just surrounded by people who don't have these kind of sleeping situations, so I may not have realized that STTN is not as common so early. I am going to take a lot of this advice and try to relax and just enjoy being my little guy's momma!
You ladies are awesome
Big hugs to you. I agree with 2bearichards. S did not sleep through the night, not even once, until she was 11 months old. She would eat at least once and, many times, twice a night. She was hungry and would immediately fall back asleep after eating. Does he fall asleep after eating? If so, he's hungry. It was totally exhausting so I sympathize with what you are going through. But it does get better.
I know the subject is controversial and everyone has an opinion so you have to do what works for you and your family. For our family, feeding S rather than letting her cry it out felt right so that's what we did. And, except for teething/illness stuff, she sleeps like a dream--so don't worry about creating bad habits.
Yes, he usually eats and falls right back to sleep. It would make sense that he was just hungry and would be asleep if he could be. I think my concern was that if I continued to feed him - he would not eat more during the day because he would "count" on eating at night as one of his meals. It sounds silly as I type that! I just read something that suggested that weaning might decrease the waking up too. I guess I just had a rough night last night.
Sleep is such a hard, hard thing. It was what I was most clueless about prior to having kids, I had zero idea that babies could feed at night for so long.
With Andrew he woke up once a night to eat until he was 15 months old. He'd sleep 9.5-10 hours, eat and then go back to sleep for an hour to hour and a half. It drove me batty that he couldn't just get all the way there, he was so close. It didn't help that his bedtime was 6-6:30 so even after that long of a stretch it was early in the morning. We did everything, NCSS, Ferber, CIO, water down the bottles, have DH try to soothe him ect, ect. Nothing worked, some things helped, mainly with naps and the earliest part of the night but he finally STTN right after the last of his 1 year molars came in.
Cooper randomly STTN from about 3 months on, and he was happy to transition off feeding at night but then he'd want to lay around in your arms and be rocked for 2 hours before you could put him down. We did CIO with him and it was very successful, I think right about 8 months. For two nights he cried off and on about 30 min, and it was the muffled laying down and trying to get cozy kind of crying. When we did it with Andrew it was the standing at his crib jumping up and down the entire time screaming his head off which was brutal!. Even after that training Cooper would still wake at night 1-3 times a week but he STTN more consistenly. Now he's in a cycle of cutting 6-8 teeth (he only had 5 at a year) so he's waking again in tons of pain and miserable.
I think the best thing you can do, for yourself and your kiddo is find a good sleep book, something you feel comfortable with. Learn about sleep cycles, it will help you figure out why he wakes when he wakes and then you can makes some decisions on how to attack the problem. I would have been a much more successful parent with Andrew had I read a good sleep book before he was born and learned how sleep cycles work and the natural transitions and light wakings they go through all night long.
Good luck!
Also know that the period he is in now is notoriously difficult for sleep. Many parents lose their minds right about then and think they must do something to fix their kids sleep, without realizing it might be a phase that will end even if they do nothing.
I was losing my mind then too. But I did nothing about it other than read some books. I continued waking to nurse my boy, and he continued going to sleep after that. At about 11 months, he consolidated his naps to one a day (which took 3 months to be consistent), and once he did that we realized he needed more night time sleep. So we gave it to him and he slept better overall. At 21 months he continues to wake up hungry and I continue to nurse him when he does.
Huge hugs, I have totally been there, and still am occasionally. DS has not STTN but is getting there gradually. The first thing to do is NOT blame it on yourself or your parenting skills. I have found, based on reading and experience w/ other parents/kids, that sleep is extremely dependent on the temperament of the child, which you can't control! And yes, part of it is how you respond to their needs, but you have to do that based on what feels right to you, not what you think you "should" be doing because xyz parent or book says you should.
Once you can accept that you are doing your best, that DS is doing his best, and that he is a happy healthy little guy, THEN take some time to consider what new plan you want to implement - if any. If you are going to undertake some kind of sleep training (whether it's no-cry or CIO or somewhere in between), figure out what kind of support you need to do it consistently. In my case, I had to have my mom stay with us a few nights a week so I could catch up on sleep during the day. I also had to stop drinking wine with dinner, because that would lower my willpower significantly
Good luck and more hugs!
Hey!
As you can see the responses run the gamut here... I'm a sleep trainer myself but everyone has to do what's right for them.
The book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child worked wonders for us and it outlines CIO and non-CIO solutions. I'm actually reading it again now in prep for #2.
The other thing I wanted to add that wasn't mentioned yet is that mobility, for me/us, was a HUGE helper with sleep. One the kiddo starts walking he is going to tire himself out like no one's buisness and you will be in for a whole different ball game! Be patient, he will learn. Enjoy enjoy and don't let anyone who nay-says your choice bug you- they suck. You're the mom and you know what's right!
H
Ditto!
You've gotten tons of great advice but here's another rec for No Cry Sleep Solution. It work wonderfully for us. There are several steps and truthfully we never completely took away the nurse/sleep connection because I was fine with it. She even says hey look, if you are ok with how things are going, don't feel like your kid needs to do xyz by 123 because people say they should. And J turned (eventually!) into a fantastic sleeper who now asks sweetly to go right to bed after getting changed and dropping the nursing all on his own.
I think you live here in Carmichael, right? If you want to borrow the book you're more than welcome.
As so many others have already said, it's a developmental milestone. With that said, my son was a TERRIBLE sleeper. At 9 months, he was waking every 45-60 minutes ALL night long. I was miserable - he was miserable. It sucked. I was so tired that I actually took him to the dr because I was sure there was something wrong with him. Turns out he was fine - he had just trained me to come every time.
Since you're getting decent chunks out of him, I'd say that you're doing just fine. Ryan never "slept through the night" (which by definition is only 5 hours) until he was 11 months. He was about 14-15 months when I got 8 hours out of him....and about 18 months or so when I started getting 12 hours out of him.
Hang in there - even though it helps to know that he's normal, it doesn't help you feel less tired.
I like this advice best because my own personal story matches it. Darrian did not STTN until he was about 10/11 months. He would wake up to eat and go right back to bed. He was drinking down a 8 oz bottle so I figured he was hungry. There was a point (and I can't remember when it was, this is a gift to allow people to have many children lol) where he started getting up every 4 hours again after long stretches. I put a tshirt I wore in his crib with him and slept with his blanket and put it in there and it worked too.