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November 2011 Moms
FHALMER
member
Sleepless Daughter...HELP
FHALMER
member
Since my daughter was 4 months old she has not slept through the night... She is turning 1 next weekend and I am at my wits end!!! How do i get her to sleep through the night?! I have tried everything... cereal before bed... cereal in bottle before bed... strict bedtime routine... Do i really have to resort to sleep training?? Please help me!!!
Sincerely,
A sleep deprived mother 
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Sleepless Daughter...HELP
My LO started sleeping the night around 6 months, but then around 10 months he stopped and I got into a really bad habit of getting up with him, nursing, and then if he wouldn't go right back to sleep, playing with him for a while until I could tire him out and get him to go back to sleep without crying. All of this was in an attempt to minimize both crying and the number of times DH got woken up, since he needed to be well rested for work. I hoped that this night waking would just stop on its own, but I was enabling it big time. After about a month I had had enough and we sleep trained. It was really not bad on the whole. The first night he woke and cried for an hour...that was tough. But after that he improved dramatically. Some nights he'd still wake, but we'd let him cry. There were maybe two nights that he cried for 45 minutes before going to sleep and other nights it was 10 or 15 minutes. Now, a little over a month later, he has, for the most part, stopped night waking altogether and sleeps from 7:30 til at least 5. All three of us are so much happier.
Sleep training is not the devil! Give it a try for the sake of both your sanity and your baby's sleep--she needs it!
It's very normal for babies this age to be up at night, so I need more information. How many times is she up at night? How many hours does she sleep in a stretch? How many total hours does she sleep at night? How many hours does she nap during the day?
Generally, the first step to fixing a sleep problem is going to be making sure that the schedule is appropriate (early enough bed time, enough hours napping, no stretches of awake time that are too long, etc). Then I would make sure that there's nothing wrong with the environment (too warm/dark, too hot/cold, needs white noise, close door, open door, etc). Last if the schedule is good and you can't figure anything out with the environment AND the sleep issues are beyond what's developmentally normal or what you feel you can handle, THEN I'd move to sleep training.
If you decide to do sleep training, be sure to research your options. There really are tons of ways to do it, so be sure to pick something that's right for your family. I like The Sleep Lady Sleep Shuffle from Good Night, Sleep Tight by Kim West. Some people hate it and it might not be the right one for you.
~Working Mom~Breastfeeding Mom~Cloth Diapering Mom~BLW Mom~
Blog - No Longer on the DL ~ The Man Cave
Shawn and Larissa
LO #1 - Took 2 years and 2 IVFs ~ DX - severe MFI mild PCOS homozygous MTHFR (a1298c)
LO #2 - TTC 7 months, surprise spontaneous BFP!