I have posted here before asking for advice....yet I still need some more!!
Here's the background: LO is currently 8 months old. LO has always been a crappy sleeper. At 6 months she was waking 4-5x a night and i would always nurse her back to sleep. We tried the sleepeasy solution and got down to 2 night wakings (she has never had an issue with putting herself to sleep at the beginning of the night or with naps).
Last Friday I started Ferber to try to wean down to 1 night feeding after 3am. However, 6 days in, she still wakes around 1ish and cries on and off for about 1.5 hours. It is more of a fussy cry, not a cry CRY (does that make sense), and she never goes longer than 10 minutes, so we never go and check on her. But, she will then fall asleep for a couple minutes, then will cry for 5, then sleep for 2,etc, etc. Then evenutally will fall asleep and wake around 330-4 when i feed her.
I find it hard to believe that she is actually hungry when she wakes for her first round....shouldn't an 8 month old be able to sleep 6-8 hours without a feeding? (She feeds at 7, then asleep by 715).
I have no idea what to do at this point. it's been 6 nights since we started and i feel like we aren't making progress. I am also personally at my wit's end. I need to sleep, i've been sick since december and I just can't take it anymore.
Advice please!!
Re: sleep training/CIO WWYD????
DH has rarely made more than 5 or 6 hours without eating. I'm nursing too, and I really don't know how much he's taking, so I feed him when he wakes around 1am.
He's a little over 6 months, and eats 2 times at night.
We've struggled with DD's sleep, and we finally got some peace in our household when we decided to do WIO (Wait It Out). The philosophy of WIO is that young children can't truly "self-soothe"; a baby that never cries at night has just given up on getting comfort when he or she wants it.
WIO for us involves co-sleeping. We start her out in her crib, and set a general limit for how long we want her to sleep... usually about 2am. Anytime after 2, I usually just bring her into our bed to co-sleep. Some nights, she only wakes up once or twice and I leave her in there, and then some nights she wakes up three times before 2am, and I just bring her in so we all can sleep happy and comfortable. My philosophy is that she's still very young, and she's more secure knowing that we're nearby.
I know that not everyone is comfortable with co-sleeping, but if you're interested, or interested in the general philosophy of WIO, I'd recommend checking out nurshable.com There are a hundred different solutions to infant sleep that don't involve a child crying on his or her own.