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Attachment Parenting
Still not sleeping at 10 months
My 10 month old son still is not sleeping longer than 2 or three hours at a time, and this is driving us crazy, we don't know what to do.. Please help us! We BF him to sleep around 7:30 but he usually wakes up around 9, and we have to BF him to settle him down and go back to sleep, only to wake up around 10:30 to 11, at which point we just take him to bed with us, since its the only way to get SOME sleep. He wakes up every couple of hours cosleeping and we nurse him laying down. Naps normally during the day, eats normally during the day... But night times have never been good.
We were hoping he would outgrow the attachment to his mommy and start sleeping longer when we introduced solids, but nothing has changed. Now we are afraid it's too late to do any kind of sleep training other than CIO!
Baby boy just does not sleep without BF, does not like his crib, cannot go to sleep on his own. I read about moms complaining that their LO is waking up once a night; I WISH that was my problem at this point..
We are at our wits end.. Please, someone out there tell us this happened to you and how we can fix this.
Very sad in CA
We were hoping he would outgrow the attachment to his mommy and start sleeping longer when we introduced solids, but nothing has changed. Now we are afraid it's too late to do any kind of sleep training other than CIO!
Baby boy just does not sleep without BF, does not like his crib, cannot go to sleep on his own. I read about moms complaining that their LO is waking up once a night; I WISH that was my problem at this point..
We are at our wits end.. Please, someone out there tell us this happened to you and how we can fix this.
Very sad in CA
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Still not sleeping at 10 months
I'm right there with you! The schedule you just described is exactly what ours is like, but my LO is 13 months old. We have had maybe 4 nights in the last year where he slept for 4-6 hours at a time, but I guess they were just flukes.
I'm reading The No Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers (I already read the baby one). It has some good tips, but it hasn't really solved our sleep issues. I'm starting to think LO will never sleep more than 2 hours at a time until I wean him, but I'm not ready for that yet. His pedi says there's nothing wrong with him waking to nurse so much as long as I'm ok with it... So until I wean him, I'll just use the tips I read about in the NCSS.
DD 8/28/2014
DD 5/24/2016, stillborn at 40 weeks
we were at a similar point at that age, honestly nothing helped until we did CIO and nightweaned at 13 months (i felt like it was old enough that they could go without eating).
I wouldn't have wanted to do CIO with a little baby, but at that point something had to change (6-10 wakings per night between the two and we couldnt take it anymore).
I've struggled with whether to reply to your post or not, because I have no solution....but I have been there with DD and am there again now with DS. I did eventually transition DD to her crib full time around 12 months because she was not only waking to nurse but was crawling all around in her sleep and freaking me out. It took several weeks of gradually putting her in there for longer and longer periods, and she still woke a lot and I had to get out of bed and go to her room every time, so it was not exactly awesome. I nightweaned her sometime around 18 months, I think, and that didn't do a thing either. The good news is that she did grow out of it and by age 2 she was STTN in her own bed with no drama whatsoever.
Know that it will end eventually; probably not as soon as you would like, but it will. I do best if I don't look at the clock during the night and just roll over, nurse, and go back to sleep. If I start keeping track of how long it's been since the last waking, etc. I get frustrated and that just makes it worse. Of course, you can try No Cry Sleep Solution and/or any combination of sleep plans out there that involve crying; whatever you are comfortable with is worth a try. Nothing really did much for us but time, but it really won't go on forever. I know it's brutal.
And this would be a significant part of why we are done after two (non-sleeping) kids.
What happens if you don't feed him for one of the wake ups? How long would it take you to calm him down in another way?
If my LO wakes up before 1 my H goes in and gets him back to sleep. Sometimes he is a little more upset and it does take a little longer. We have specific music we play when he's upset and that seems to help. We also have to walk/bounce him. Then when he wakes up after 1, I feed him. I'm sure my son would have continued to eat more often in the night if I hadn't partially night weaned that first feeding. I know a lot of moms are okay with the mutliple feeding, but the disjointed sleep was causing my migraines to return and I knew he was getting all the nutrition he needed during the day. You have to do what works for your family- which might mean a gentle night training. (That's what I like think I did. . .)
Could there be a pain thing going on? Teething, ear, or belly ache?
Well I think what you should do depends on what you want to do. We had periods when LO was like this, usually teething was the culprit but often I have no idea why, and periods where LO sleeps longer stretches (like 4-5hrs).
We bedshare, and LO nurses with me barely waking. So that is an option. If you don't want to do that, I've heard good things about the No Cry Sleep Solution.
And ultimately remember this too shall pass. It's hard when you're in the midst of a sleep deprived mess and you feel like you'll never sleep again, but you will.
Statistically, 9-10 months is the peak of night-waking for BFed babies. So, though this is tiring, it also is more normal than the general population might have you think. Is it actually a problem to you or does it just seem like baby should be doing something else? For us, DS1 woke every 2 hours to nurse from 7 months until after a year old, but it wasn't a problem. Bedsharing was our strategy. I could latch him on and go right back to sleep. Would I like to live the rest of my life waking so much like that? No. But, it gets the job done!
In all honestly, it sounds like your baby is very normal. If the frequent waking is livable for you--great! If not, then you can try things like not offering the breast at every waking, reading No Cry Sleep Solution. etc. But, at under a year, it does make sense that baby's primary source of nutrition is BM and BM does process as quickly as 90-minutes.
More Green For Less Green
Hypothyroid/Fibroids/Stage 4 Endometriosis
10/2010 Open myomectomy to remove 3 fibroids largest @ 8 inches. Stage 4 endometriosis and inoperable/blocked left tube.
3/2011 Laporoscopy/Hysteroscopy. 3 endometrioma cysts, hydrosalpinx, left tube and half of the left ovary removed.
5/2011 IUI #1 medicated w/injections, 1 follie = BFP!
6/2011 Blighted Ovum/ D&C
9/2011 IUI #2 medicated w/injections, 2 follies = BFP!
Have you read any books? I have read a million but most recently Richard Ferber's book. I have also read the No Cry Sleep Solution and Happiest Baby's Guide to Great Sleep.
Even if you don't want to sleep train, I highly recommend Ferber's book. He talks about strategies for bedsharing babies. I hesitated to get it because I wasn't interested in sleep training but really like how it is scientifically based and he talks alot about sleep associations and how they can actually be bad for babies because you confuse them by changing things up on them in the middle of the night (sometimes I am in my crib, sometimes I sleep with mommy, sometimes I get to nurse and sometimes I don't) - how are they supposed to know what to expect and do? The sleeping environment should be safe, consistent and predictable, whatever that looks like for you.