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December 2010 Moms
lulu8109
member
F/u to my "sleep help needed" post
lulu8109
member
I posted a week or two ago that LO was flipping his lid when we tried putting him down asleep (we nurse/rock to sleep). Well, it may have just been a phase. It's been hit or miss since then. We've been able to put him down asleep, but he'll wake an hour or two later and flip his lid. We end up putting him in our bed, which I do not want to do on a regular basis. One time, I was able to put him down awake and soothe him to sleep! It was amazing, but it only happened once.
DH thinks LO needs a cozier sleep environment in order to sleep. He thinks this because he'll fall asleep in our arms. He'll sleep when we put him down on the sofa or in our bed. DH has suggested a softer mattress (LO currently has a firm Colgate Classica), sleep positioners, or giving LO a blanket. DH's friend has suggested letting LO snuggle up against a bumper. All of which I know is not considered safe, so it makes me uncomfortable. Also, DH's co-workers have suggested swaddling, but I don't know how safe that is at 6 months.
We are considering sleep training, but we are not very comfortable with the idea of any of the CIO methods like Ferber. It is an option, but one we would prefer not to do unless we have to.
So, any opinions on the above? Suggestions on what to try? At what point, if at all, do you go against what we've all been told is safe/unsafe?
TIA.
This discussion has been closed.
Re: F/u to my "sleep help needed" post
Have you tried a "sleep buddy"? Ava has a monkey that she only gets when she goes down for a nap or to bed. It's the Angel Dear "Pair and a Spare" line like this: https://www.amazon.com/Angel-Dear-Spare-Blanket-Yellow/dp/B004U8X1MW/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1310405628&sr=8-3
It's basically a really small blanket and I just watch her on the monitor to make sure she doesn't put it over her face. She sleeps in a sleep sack and snuggles the monkey when she goes down. We also did do sleep training, which worked wonders...I know you may not want to do it. It DID teach her to go back to sleep by herself, even if she wakes up in the middle of the night. Just throwing that out there. We used HSHHC.
ChicagoBroad - Thanks for the sleep training info! We are considering all of our options, so it's helpful to hear what worked for others. As for the sleep buddy, I couldn't tell from the picture, but is it something like this? LO has that, but we haven't tried giving it to him to sleep.
Kat81 - I just thought it was safest for LO to have nothing in bed. That's good to know.
Yep! Very similar to that. Except with the Pair and a Spare they come in sets of three. I figure that she'll probably get attached to it, so we have two extras in case one gets lost/torn/is in the wash, etc.
You know, I have been wondering about a softer mattress myself, because when G is having a terrible time sleeping (waking up every hour in her crib, as an example - like last night), she will sometimes sleep much better when I lay her on her back on a down mat that's on floor where I sometimes crash out. I wonder what a "soft" crib mattress feels like. I'll have to check next time I'm at BRU or BuyBuyBaby.
We are also unsure of doing CIO. Sorry, I guess I'm just rambling and am not being of much help!
We are dealing with something very similar. We've always rocked/nursed to sleep, and over the past month or so, the time she's stayed down prior to totally freaking out has diminished. She will maybe go for one 45 minute sleep cycle now before needing to be helped back to sleep. Like you, we turned to bed sharing, but that is not a viable long-term option for our family.
We tried some of the No Cry Sleep Solution methods this weekend, and I honestly don't know if I can keep up with it. Some of the things we were already doing (bedtime routine, a non-rigid but scheduled day, etc), and we added in some of her suggestions (lovey). She also blames sleep associations, as does Ferber, for these wakings from which LOs are not able to return to sleep on their own (so since we rock/nurse E to sleep, she cannot go back to sleep w/o being rocked/nursed again). She uses a four or five phased method to help break the association, and we started with phase one this weekend. Basically, you nurse to the verge of sleep, and then have LO stop nursing. When LO is drowsy but awake, you take them to the crib, and put them down, but you keep your arms around them, keep a rocking motion, etc., so they fall asleep in their crib but with your help. I know you're supposed to give it time, but it just hasn't really worked for us. I can get her to stop nursing, but then the minute I stand up, she is wide awake, and we have to do it all over again. The few times I got her into her crib in a semi-asleep state, I spent 30 minutes+ bent over the crib trying to keep her from waking back up. Since her mattress has been lowered, my back and calves are killing me. She inevitably wakes back up, and I bring her to bed with me. I just couldn't keep up with it at 2 a.m.
We're probably going to try Ferber this weekend. I know the longer we go like this, the harder it's going to get to break her of this habit. I know bed sharing works for some, but it's just not for us.
Mands - Thanks for your response. I just wanted to clarify my post... I'm not considering bumpers or sleep positioners. I was just thinking out loud and those are some ideas that have been tossed around in our house. I'm just grasping at straws, trying to find something that I'd be comfortable with.
I don't think sleep training is unsafe and I don't judge anyone who does it. DH and I just don't think we'd be able to let LO cry any longer than it would take for us to get to him. When I say "CIO," I don't mean leaving LO to cry indefinitely. From what I read, "CIO" referred to any method where parents let the baby cry for a period of time. Now I stand corrected and I won't use that term that way.
Okay, so A has never been a great or even good sleeper but around your LOs age it was particularly bad. I can honestly tell you that I was at my limit in terms of sleep loss and considered CIO because we'd already tried everything else. Ultimately, I wasn't comfortable with doing it though, I kind of felt like if he was ready to sleep, he would do it without us trying to force something he wasn't ready for.
In our case, it was like a flip was switched in LO about a week ago. It now takes about 10 minutes for us to put LO to bed and he might wake up a time or two during the night but he fusses for a minute and then goes right to sleep. It used to take an hour at least to get him to sleep and then we would have to put him back to sleep every 30 minutes to 2 hours all.night.long and he never, ever in his entire life was able to go back to sleep on his own.
I noticed on the 6-9 board there are a lot of posts similar to yours so hopefully it's just a phase he's going through and he'll outgrow it very quickly!
Even if you don't want to do any CIO/Ferber-ish methods I would still recommend reading the book. It's got so much great information on how infant sleep works, sleeps assocaitions, etc.
I'm a big fan of getting to the point where you can put them in their crib/whereever they sleep awake and put themselves to sleep. Ferber has a great analogy in his book about it. Imagine if you feel asleep in your bed and then woke up in the middle of the night and realized someone moved you to the living room floor. You'd probably freak out too. This is what usually happens when babies are rocked to sleep and then just barely wake up in the night and they are in a different place (crib) and not being rocked anymore.
lulu - I'm glad your LO is sleeping so much better! There IS hope, haha. I might have to lurk on 6-9 to see what's up. Thanks!
TMNTgirl - Which book/method do you recommend? I plan on going to the library this week to check out some of the different sleep training books. I had read the same analogy and ultimately I want to get him to go down awake and fall asleep on his own.
I've read both Ferber and Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child. I thought both books had a lot of great information. We ultimitely did Ferber and it worked really well for us.
We had a terrible sleeper! And now he generally sleeps 11 hours at night and 2 naps (1 - 1.5 hours each). It's amazing. Of course we still have random off days/nights (like when we were traveling for 4th of July). But I would say that he can go down awake in his crib and sleep well about 80-90% of the time.
And for what it's worth - he sleeps with a blanket and a lovey. He always cuddles with them in the beginning of the night, but they are all thrown off and he's in a total opposite side of the crib by morning.
N sleeps with a lovey and with breathable bumpers. Have you ever looked into those? We ordered them on walmart online. They are soft and even though not fluffy he seems to like to lay with his back against them. Also, I have found him a few times with his face smashed up against them but he was breathing just fine since they are mesh.
I would suggest reading some sleep training books as well. Even if you don't try the methods, you might learn something new that you could incorporate!? We used a sleep training method from HSHHC. It worked great for us...and we had a teerrrriiible sleeper. Good Luck :O)