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kastle
member
7 months & not STTN
kastle
member
Well, Sprout is almost 7 months. He usually wakes up every 4-5 hours during his night (7-7:30pm to 7am). Generally the waking up is to eat (no amount of rocking or CIO will result in him going back to sleep). I've tried making sure he gets 32 oz during his waking hours, in addition to lots of solid food, and no dice. I'm fairly confident he's not actually hungry when he wakes up.
It's like he's got a habit of just waking up that long.
Any advice? Is this something he just needs to figure out on his own or should we be doing something? I've just heard so many ppl with younger babies have them STTN (an adult night, at that!) much younger & I'm wondering if we're doing something wrong.
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Re: 7 months & not STTN
If it makes you feel any better, we had to take Ben to the doctor the other day and the doctor said to me - "6 months - so of course he is getting up during the night to feed, right?" I think night wakings are much more common than most people think. I suspect those with the best sleepers talk the most about it - and those with the worst sleepers are following Moxie's advice to just lie when asked how your kid sleeps;)
If you have tried more daytime food, soothing and CIO, I don't know what else you could do to try and get him sleeping more. How much does he sleep during the day? Is he BF'ed or FF? How much is he actually eating in the middle of the night feedings? What kind of CIO did you do?
Mine STTN at 5.5 and 6 mo respectively (FF) so 7mo isn't too much of stretch but mine also slowly dropped their overnight feedings so I did see progress. There was some interim time where the times were weird because they would start pushing back one feeding and then working out the next feeding or when we woke up would be a little off. Also as they got a little older I did let them fuss (not hysterical cry since they would not calm themselves down after that), but some people might think it was low level crying and they would learn to soothe themselves back to sleep.
If I were you here would be the things I would try. Does he take a paci - would that maybe soothe him through a feeding? Going to bed earlier - Maggie had about 6PM bedtime around that time but Molly's was later so this is very kid dependent but something you could try. Try putting him off for an hour when he wakes up to get him used to later and later feeds. Wait a month and try CIO again.
Good luck, sleep issues are so hard. Also don't let the fact that other babies are STTN so much earlier make you feel like you are doing something wrong. My nephew STTN totally at 6 weeks and I am positive BIL and SIL did nothing to make this happen - he was simply one of those angel babies that needed no soothing to go to sleep and STTN very early. I felt that way with Maggie and then with Molly I just relaxed and went with it more and she only STTN 2 weeks later than Maggie did but she put herself to sleep at night much earlier without soothing (Maggie needed CIO at 9mo when she would no longer let me rock her to sleep and she just wanted to play).
is something up with the bump? this post got an awful lot of views in 11 minutes...
how much does he eat when he wakes up in the middle of the night?
Right now he eats 2 meals (breakfast & dinner). We try to feed him until he doesn't want anymore. Breakfast is usually 3-4 Tbsp of some sort of cereal or whole milk yogurt mixed with a few tablespoons of some kind of fruit. Dinner varies, but he's been known to eat half of a small avocado plus 3-4 tablespoons of veggies. Last night he had 3ish Tbsp of pureed chicken in the same amount of pureed acorn squash (maybe like 4Tbsp?) followed by half a banana mushed into a bit of rice cereal. And he was still hungry, so I made a little more. In short, at dinner he usually eats a ton. In addition to a bottle.
I'll try today adding in lunch.
And, if it's relevant, he's probably about 18 lbs which isn't too above average.
Thanks for the advice. We'll try to incorporate some of this. I have a feeling everyone's right, though, that it's just something he'll do in his own time. Which is fine. I feel kind of lucky that he at least only wakes up 2x during our night so that each of us only have to get up once!
As the mother of 2 kids who did not consistently STTN for the first year, I would just reiterate what one of the other pps said--you are not doing anything wrong. The suggestions that people gave you are good ones and may work...or they may not..just like you have tried some different things already. I think the fact that he's getting up just once a night is a good sign--I would be more concerned if he was waking up more often every night.
DD#1 was a horrible sleeper for most of her first year, but she is a FANTASTIC sleeper now. DD#2 has been slightly better than DD#1, but she still, at almost 13 months, often wakes up once a night--and pretty easily gets back to sleep. I do think that some babies are great sleepers and others are not (I'm sure someone has research to disprove my statement, but I stick by it;)--it's like so many other things with kids--there is no magic age for when they will start doing something, whether it be STTN, or walking or stacking blocks.
Hang in there and GL!
Hey my 7-month year old woke up 5 times last night and 4 times the night before. Sleeping 4-5 hour stretches is something he does rarely.
Our pedi told us we should CIO, but I'm not ready to do that yet.
We've been doing the No-cry sleep solution for 10 days. We have seen progress, slow progress but progress nonetheless. Once I read the book, though, I felt a lot more empowered and comfortable because we had a plan for getting him to sleeping through the night. Also, because I understood better why he was waking up so much.
Off to the beach
DS 7/18/2010
Handy 2.0 Due Early August
2011/2012 Races
12/17/2011 Christmas Caper 10K
2/11/2012 Have a Heart 5K
3/17/2012 DC RNR Half Marathon
4/22/2012 10M Parkway Classic
10/28/2012 Marine Corps Marathon
Just wanted to let you know we're in the same boat.
DS was STTN at 5.5 months, so DD (who is almost 8 mos. old) has been a rude awakening. She eats SO much before she goes to bed...she has dinner of veggies and rice cereal at 5:30-6:00 and then has 6 oz. of formula at 7:30. But she wakes up again at midnight for a bottle and then again between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m. Until two weeks ago, she was pretty small (she's not huge now but she just outgrew her 6 month clothes) but the recent growth spurt has made no difference in her sleep pattern.
I'm just riding it out at this point.
This, times a million. We have a cruddy sleeper, he always has been. He started slowly STTN around 8 months, but it took a LONG time to get there consistently. Seriously, people started asking me at 6 weeks if he was STTN. I literally wrote a whole blog post venting about it because it made me so crazy that that was their first question. I think those with good sleepers talk about it a lot, those with bad sleepers tend to not talk about it, because they think they must be doing something wrong. You can definitely try more food, but for us it just took time...no fun, I know!
I don't think it's weird that he isn't STTN - C didn't until 9 mo. BUT, for me, 4-5 wake ups a night would not be something I could live with for that long. We did Ferber, pretty much by the book, at 5.5 mo for exactly that reason. Went from 5 wakings to 1 (which I was okay with and we kept up until he STTN on his own) in a few days. If you've given Ferber an honest try, I'd just keep looking for various sleep training methods until you hit on one that works.
That's assuming that you are not okay with the current situation - I personally could no longer function as a human being.
We did Ferber by the book as well at 5.5 mo to cut out both the night wakings and the night feedings with pedi's OK. If you think the wakeups are not from hunger, would you be willing to give another sleep strategy a shot?
Ferber for us resulted in him STTN from 8 pm - 5 am for the next six months. That was a long time of early wakeups. We didn't have sleeping in past 6 am until he was after a year old and we did some Ferber + light timer sleep strategies. Now he sleeps great at night, but is a cruddy napper. I'm sorry you're struggling with this, but it is normal I think.
Just to reiterate, you aren't doing anything wrong. My two kids were very opposite when it came to sleep. I didn't do much different between the two! It's just how they are/were. DD1 STTN about 5-6 hours by 3 months old. It was fantastic. It always took us a long time to get her to sleep, but then she SLEPT. DD2 didn't STTN til she was 14 months old. It sucked. I'm hoping for a magical easy-to-sleep-STTN sleeper this time around
My DD still gets up at least twice a night to eat. I don't think she's even close to STTN, honestly. I think all babies just reach that milestone in their own time.
I will say that she went through a major sleep regression around 9 months, though, which from what I understand is common. I don't say that to scare you, but just to point out that sleep isn't "linear" so things may change a lot, for better or worse, in the coming months.
are you still nursing? maybe try giving a bottle during the night and then gradually decreasing it. you may have to let him whine it out a little bit but then he'll get used to it.