DD has been STTN since 6.5 months. She falls asleep on her own very easily. But for the past 6 weeks, she's been waking 1-3 times at night and isn't able to go back to sleep on her own (not sure if it's teething, walking or sep. anxiety).
We've been letting her cry for a bit (to see if she'll put herself back to sleep) but usually the crying just escalates. Then we'll go in and pat her back. Usually if she doesn't fall asleep within half an hour of us patting her back, I'll resort to rocking her back to sleep (which takes forever and isn't a habit that I want to start).
I'm exhausted and need new ideas! How do you get your LO to go back to sleep at night?
Re: What do you do when your LO wakes up at night?
I have found that if I go in right away and rock him he falls back asleep rather quickly. Sometimes I'll give him a sippy of water b/c he seems thirsty. He takes a small drink and crashes.
If I wait to see if he'll fall back asleep he gets himself so worked up that it takes forever to get him back down....which is why I don't do that anymore.
This. We also just let them CIO...usually lasts 10 minutes tops. If they don't stop crying we go in lay them back down without saying anything and leave. Repeat until they are asleep. We didn't want to get them used to being rocked again.
I am having a similar problem with my 13 month old little girl. She's always slept pretty well and falls asleep on her own. Several times in the past week she has been waking up a few time a night crying. I agree with the first writer- it could be teething for her too (we can see the tooth coming in), walking, could she be ready to drop to one nap? We often go in, change her diaper, give her motrin and hylands teething tablets and put her back down. She'll sleep for another hour and then wake up again. I guess I'm more concerned about something that is preventing her from sleeping well than trying to get her to go back to sleep. Any ideas?
Since doing Ferber for bedtime a couple weeks ago, we've gone from 3-4 night wakings to virtually none. If she does wake up and cry during the night, she usually puts herself back to sleep within 2 minutes at most. The few times she's not been able to calm herself back down, it's because of a diaper - and then she goes back to sleep right after we change her.