- Pregnancy
- Baby & Toddler
- Parents
- Getting Pregnant
- Baby Names
- Product Reviews
-
Registry
- Community
-
More
Want a personalized experience?
Download the free app
Austin Babies
S/O Sleep Training - Extreeme Waking Up Problems
So I just read through all of the post about sleep training and I'd like to hear your thoughts on what solution might work best for Max. Here is the recap I wrote to a friend of mine today - Keep in mind that both DH & I work from home. So we work a swing shift with Max. DH stays up late and I'm up with him in the mornings.
Max has never been a good sleeper. We've tried to do everything we can to get him to sleep. We have tried him on two different types of schedules - one with strict nap times, the one we're on he takes his first nap 2 hours after he wakes up, his second nap 3 hours after his first one and bedtime is always at 8:30 (same bedtime routine each night) and then he's up around 8 - no later than 9:30. In the early days we had him in a swing, then swaddled, now in a magic sleep suite. All seemed to have their good days, but those quickly wore off.
On an average night Max wakes up anywhere from 10-25 times. It's always random, the times are not very consistent. He can start waking up anywhere from 15 minutes after he went to bed, to up 2 hours after he went to bed. After he wakes up he'll start waking up over and over again ? then have random longer stretches of sleep. Either DH or I go back into the room to get him back to sleep. It's usually pretty quick - just giving him his pacifier and patting him on his side. But once the waking start, they don't really stop. I usually go to bed around 11, DH stays up with him until about 3:30. At that point I get up the next time Max wakes up - I feed him again and he will go back down for about 2 hours at a time until he gets up for the day. I sleep in the room across the hall from his bedroom so that DH can get some sleep.
We can't do this anymore. Everything we read classifies him as colic baby or extremely fussy. And he is every bit of it. But how do we move on, how do we get him to sleep more? We know he's over tired. We're a tired family. We want to start teaching him good sleeping habits. I understand he needs to learn to fall asleep on his own. So I'm putting him down for naps -drowsy but still awake. I do the same at bedtime.
We started reading the book - Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Baby and we're trying to put the "Cry it out" or "Let baby cry" into place. Yesterday we started it at nap time - during his first nap he woke up and we let him cry for a full hour. After that hour I went back in there and rocked him back to sleep. He slept for 15 minutes and woke up again. I got him up at that point. For his second nap he went to sleep for about 30 minutes, then we let him cry for another hour. By 5pm he was a monster - screaming, bitching, clawing his face or at DH; so DH went and rocked him to sleep again. He slept for about 30 minutes again but woke up as soon as I left the house to go to the store.
For bedtime we did our normal bedtime routine, I put him to bed drowsy and he slept from 8:30 - 9pm. We let him cry for 30 minutes and at that point we gave in. He was coughing and gagging himself - we didn't feel like we were doing the right thing. I nursed him and then rocked him to sleep and he slept until 10:42, slept again for another hour, etc. (not sure about from midnight until 3:30 because this is when I got to sleep) I got up to feed him around 3:30, he was awake at 4, 5 and around 5:30 is when he wanted to play. I let him cry for a little while, once he was quiet I went back in there and rocked him back to sleep. As soon as I laid him down he woke back up. I held his pacifier in and kept his arms down - he fought it and cried a little. Eventually he relaxed and I left the room. That was around 6am - he cried until 7am and slept until 8. For his morning nap he went down at 10am, woke up at 10:30 and cried just a little, then fell back asleep until 12:15. For his afternoon nap he cried for 30 min, slept for 30 min then cried another 30. After that I went back in when he was calm and got him up.
If you made it this far - thanks for listening.
This discussion has been closed.
Re: S/O Sleep Training - Extreeme Waking Up Problems
I'm sorry ((hugs))
Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but does he sleep longer after a feeding? Maybe try feeding him everytime he wakes up? At 6 months I was still nursing both my kids at 90% of the night wakings. But then again I work out of the home and my kids didn't drink a lot of breastmilk while I was gone... so they were hungry all.night.long!
I hope you guys all start getting some sleep soon!
I nurse him right before bed. I use to nurse him to sleep - I'm trying to stop that to help him learn to fall asleep. When he wakes up we can tell if he's hungry - if he is I have no problem feeding him. Sometimes I get up around 12, 2, 3, 4. But most of the time it's around 3am. He'll sleep again for another couple of hours. When he wakes up he sometimes nurses again or just needs his paci. (I feed on demand during the day)
I'd say he slept good while I was on maternity leave - up until he was 10wks old. He would sleep from about 11pm - 4am in a swing. When I returned to work his sleep started going to crap.
What I can't tell from your post is whether you do the true Ferber cry-it-out method or if you are leaving the room and letting him cry for a whole hour until he goes to sleep.??
I would recommend reading through the true Ferber interval stuff and trying that. It will take a couple days, but you need to do the intervals so he knows you're still there and will still take care of him, but also that its safe to sleep, etc.
If you are doing Ferber, then I'll reevaluate.
6-yr-old Elena and 4-yr-old Julia.
My Blog! All about my girls and quilting
the one big thing i might try is an earlier bedtime. my max goes down around 7 and last night it was 630pm.
we too read healthy sleep habits, happy child and we've really tried to keep to the up around 7am (that rarely happens as max is an early riser, usually around 6), first nap between 830-930 and second nap between 1230-130.
i don't know if you've gotten to the part in the book where they talk about nap sleep and nighttime sleep being regulated by different parts of the brain so we still rock to sleep for nap, he'll sleep anywhere from 1-3 hours for his naps but we put him to bed drowsy but awake. around 9 mos we had to do the extinction because we were still rocking to sleep and he would wake early and wouldn't go back down. it took 3-4 nights but now he sleeps through the night.
ok, i want to type more but max is demanding my attention:)
good luck!
We are a little all over the place. I'm also not a big fan of this book, it's gives you so many options. It is not clear cut. It tells you to reference one page and then when you go to that page it references back to the same page I was reading. The book says to work on naps first, do whatever you can for sleep at night. So we're starting with that. He was getting sleepy around 6:30 so I put him down at 7. I just want to do what is best for our baby.
Thanks for all the thoughts and advice ladies!
We had huge problems with Kate's sleep, but I was very resistant to sleep training for a long time. Finally at 9 1/2 months DH put his foot down and we did Ferber. Before we did Ferber, Kate would cry/ scream from 7-10 while we rocked her. We literally rocked her for hours. Then at 10:00, DH would go to bed with her and she would finally go to sleep, but she would wake up every hour and would not go back to sleep unless I nursed her. She also never napped unless she was latched on for the entire nap or if we drove around (for up to 45 minutes) until she fell asleep at which point we could park in the driveway. Obviously this was unsustainable.
We tried many different sleep books, but none of them worked for Kate. We finally settled on Ferber because I was absolutely unwilling to do extinction cry it out a la Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child. I tried to read that book and it infuriated me. The No Cry Sleep Solution did nothing for us because it dealt with breaking sleep associations, and Kate pretty much wouldn't sleep at all. Some days she wouldn't nap at all no matter what I did. Many days she would only nap for 20 or 30 minutes total. She never slept in her crib.
We did Ferber's intervals and it was horrible. Probably the worst 3 weeks of my life and I'm not exaggerating. For a long time I contemplated not having any more children because I couldn't see going through sleep training again. However, it did work At the end of the 3 weeks, our whole family was much happier. I don't think I realized how exhausted Kate (and DH and I) were until we started getting some sleep. And I don't think I realized how burned out I was from never getting a break until one day she took a nap. It was amazing.
I will say that I got significantly *less* sleep while we were doing the sleep training, but DH and I made a commitment going into it that we would give it a full week before we made any decisions about stopping. He took the next weekend, and that got us over the hump. After 10 days she was sleeping through the night and going down without crying. It took one more week for her to start taking a morning nap and a third week for the afternoon nap.
Sleep training is probably much easier for 95% of the population, but Kate was a very willful child. I do think that if you are going to do it, you need to commit to it. Starting and stopping arbitrarily seems cruel (to me).
Bottom line. Does it work? Yes. Would I do it again? Only as a last resort. I would have continued to night nurse once or twice a night for much longer, but only sleeping in 45 minute chunks was killing me. We were also happy to continue rocking her until she was done with the need to be rocked, but it wasn't working for her- it wasn't putting her to sleep.
We had a realy similar problem after we had to quit the swaddle until about 7 months. DD would wake up all night long, and she wasn't acting like she was hungry.
The first thing we did was put the big cushy bumper in there. I know they can be a hazard, but she was rolling into the side of the crib constantly and waking herself up. The 2nd thing we did was start putting her on her tummy with a light breathable blanket over her, tucked into her hands. Everytime she woke up she needed to be grabbing on to something. These 2 things got us 3-4 hours at a time. Then when she was 7 months old we did Ferber intervals, the intervals are nice b/c you can go back in lay them back down put a paci in and get them calm for a minute. DD still wakes up anywhere from 0-2 times a night, but it's usually when something is wrong. Oh and I started putting paci's in her hand all the time, so she could learn to get it in her mouth. There's been plenty of times she's woken up, cried for 15 seconds and stopped, we're assuming she found the paci and put it in.
Good luck and hugs it's sooooo hard to make decisions or know what the right thing is in the middle of the night.
A few responses to Kiraox & Ebat
I?m fully committed to sleep training. I wasn?t ready before but I am know. I?m willing to do whatever it takes. I feel like Max is old enough.
I can commit to extinction cry it out during naps but I can?t do that at night. Maybe that defeats the Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child. I will get the Ferber book and we?ll read it too. Maybe it?s the better option. It seems more popular. HSHHC is so all over the place he goes back and forth with what he says. I thought I was not comprehending the book and had DH read it after a good night sleep ? he was just as confused as I was.
Max is good with two naps a day and going down ? but I usually nurse him to sleep. Our problem is just staying asleep. I want him to get a good night sleep. I don?t mind if I still need to feed him once or twice (if he starts going to bed earlier).
I?ll start teaching him to find his pacifier too. Maybe that will help? He only gets it now when he sleeps.
So far tonight he woke up at 7:30 and 8 ? just needed his paci back and right back out.
We have been doing Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child.
FYI- Ferber says to throw in the towel for naps after they've been crying for 30 minutes. I have gone up to 40 before once she got to the 20 minute intervals, but not longer than that.
HSHHC has a bunch of plans for babies of different temperaments, right? According to Kate's temperament, extinction CIO was the only option in that book. At that point we looked at Ferber.
To be fair, I did cheat a bit. In the middle of the night, I would rub her back sometimes to calm her down. I even picked her up a few times. Don't tell DH. We did follow the intervals exactly though.
It's okay. I don't mind. Sounds like Kiarox and I have the same classification baby. Maybe ferber is a better option. I just ordered it.