Breaking the Holding Habit

bonchat21 · March 2013

My almost five month old baby girl loves to be held when she is sleeping. I think it's my fault because I did it a lot when she was little but I also know she just loves to be physically close to me. The problem is getting harder though. During this last month she started waking up a lot more at night and I got to the point where I was just putting her in bed with us at two or three in the morning because I was so tired I didn't want to sit up and nurse. My husband and I are breaking that habit and putting her in her crib all night but she hasn't been sleeping soundly for more than a couple of hours. A lot of the time as soon as we set her down after she falls asleep in our arms she wakes right back up and cries. We have tried letting her cry it out even though we really didn't want to and the result was that she won't give up and just go to sleep but will cry for two hours straight if need be. (She actually did this one night even though we went over to comfort her.) We have tried rocking to sleep, nursing to sleep, a bottle of formula to keep her full longer (she's EBF), an extra feeding after she's been asleep for an hour, starting rice cereal, putting a heating pad on her mattress to warm it up (removing it of course), giving her a pacifier to sleep. She eats every two hours during the day and naps typically four or five times. This worked fine until a few weeks ago when she went from sleeping around five hours straight and getting up twice (usually 3 and 5) to being up tons. I just want to know if there are any other ideas that we could try. If we have to deal with it then we have to deal with it, but we are wiped out!

nanabanana06 · March 2013

I co sleep with both my kids, and I let them decide when they were ready for space. With my daughter that was 7 months. It was no fight or learning. She just decided one day that she liked it better than with mommy. My son spends half the night in his RnP

sschwege · March 2013

What you probably have to start working on is helping her to fall asleep in her crib. Imagine being all comfy in someone's arms then waking up alone. What we did with DD was to establish a bed time routine. Change diaper, PJ's, nurse, re

Anjvatier · March 2013

Could be partly she is going through her wakeful period also. My LO started going through it right before her 5 month birthday also. She too would only nap being held. Once I was pretty sure it was the wakeful she was going through, we transitioned her to