LO is almost 8 months and he wakes every two hours all night long.
This isnt a new thing for us, he has done this since birth, with a few good nights here and there where he mysteriously slept 6 hours through. But 95% of the time, he wakes every 2 hours.
Here is the issue....I can very easily put him to bed. We have a very consistent bedtime routine which ends with him nursing and falling asleep at the breast. i then lay him in crib on his belly with no problem.
He then wakes 2 hours later. When i go to him I can now just rock him on my shoulder until asleep again and put him back down until he wakes 2 hours later and we repeat.
Up until recently he insisted on nursing when he woke but now he is just fine being held until he falls alseep and then we put him back down. Also...We have played around with earlier bedtimes and later bedtimes and it made no differnce.
So, the issue is staying asleep, not falling alseep.
Any tips or book suggestions?
Re: which sleep solution book for this type of sleep problem?
I strongly suggest the no-cry sleep solution by elizabeth pantley.
It sounds just like what she talks about, the baby cannot put himself back to sleep when he wakes during the night (which we all do, we just roll over and go back to sleep and don't remember it)
The solution is to put him down just before you would have. If he tolerates that, keep putting him down a little sooner and sooner. If he doesn't, pick him up and repeat, putting him down just before you would have, just before he really conks out.
The theory is that he learns to fall asleep himself, so in the future when he wakes and doesn't need anything like food or diaper change, he'll just put himself to sleep without 'needing' help.
I second the NCSS. My guess is that it would really help if you could put your child down awake, rather than fast asleep, so he could learn how to put himself to sleep. It may involve a bit of fussing (with you right there, of course) as you find the happy medium between fast asleep and wide awake, but it's worth it. When I stopped nursing DD to sleep and helped her learn how to fall asleep on her own, she went from waking up 7-10 times a night to sleeping in 6-8 hour stretches. It's far from perfect - even now, at almost 2 years old, she still rarely sleeps through the night like most kids her age (i.e. 10-12 hours without waking), but it's way better than it used to be.... Good luck!