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September 2015 Moms
caityrose
member
Bed times/getting lo to bed.
caityrose
member
Lo went to sleep so easily for awhile but alas we have regressed. She used to fall asleep herself watching the crib soother and mobile. Now I've been having to nurse her to sleep but now she's waking up after that too. I've had to come sit in the recliner chair So I can hold her and fall asleep myself. She eventually falls asleep with the tv on and I can finally put her down when I wake up an hour later or so. This is a bad habit. Help! It's nearly 2 am and she's still up. I think she is taking a nap too late and it's messing it up 
Re: Bed times/getting lo to bed.
I would suggest leaving the TV off at night since the blue light from the TV actually messes with the body's ability to go to sleep (for adults too!) and it may be contributing to her not being able to sleep. If I'm up with baby in the middle of the night I leave all lights off and if I'm bored I just look at my phone but have it at arms length away from baby's bottom so the light doesn't bother him. I used to have the TV on when nursing him to sleep and it didn't bother him, but now that he's older I have to have the TV off or he's too distracted to sleep.
We have a pretty strict nap schedule during the day, so LO goes to sleep after being awake for 2 hours consistently throughout the day. The times themselves very since how long he sleeps varies (he usually only naps for 45 minutes but sometimes will nap for longer), but we try to stick to his nap schedule as closely as possible. For his last nap of the day, we don't let him sleep longer than an hour and we make sure he's awake by 5:30/6 p.m. so he's tired enough to sleep at 8:30 p.m. Sometimes this means he's awake from 4-8:30 p.m. depending on how his naps fall during the day, but we don't want him sleeping after that point or he won't sleep well at night.
When he has been waking in the middle of the night, I only nurse him back to sleep once max and only if nothing else works (since I know he's not really hungry). DH and I take turns getting up with him throughout the night and rocking him back to sleep, but we wait a few minutes before going to get him to make sure he doesn't put himself back to sleep (sometimes he'll whine for a few minutes without crying then puts himself back to sleep).
I feel for you! It's hard to function when you're so sleep-deprived!
Now, it takes him 45 minutes to fall asleep at night. Then he wakes at 1-2am, I feed him and he falls back asleep. Then he's up again 4-5am and isn't hungry, just wants to be snuggled and have the pacifier but every time it falls out he wakes and cries so I keep him next to me in the bed. 7am he's up for the day and it takes him about 45 minutes of rocking/anything that I think might work to fall asleep for a nap. And I go back to work Monday.
No advice but I'm in it with you. And it's rough!
ETA: taking 4 hrs to fall asleep doesn't indicate to me that she isn't tired, it tells me that she is probably overtired.
General comment on the subject: this is kicking my butt. I was so smug about what a "good sleeper" my baby was. Then December 23rd happened and he hasn't slept through the night since. I'm reading all about it and have come to the conclusion I just need to ride it out for a bit. For me, any sleep training seems a little harsh for a 15 week old. I may change my tune if this continues for a few more weeks.
Solidarity sisters. I wish you all more restful evenings soon.
We've had two nights in a row now of longer stretches of sleep, thank goodness! The first night was probably because he was tired from his shots, but the next night I'm hoping was the real deal and is here to stay!
We won't be doing any sleep training on our little guy yet either, and I've never been a fan of the cry it out method, so any sleep training we do will involve comforting him, just more hands-off. We have been giving him a little more time to soothe himself before we pick him up and "rescue him" though and that seems to help. He will whine a little and kick, but he's been able to calm himself down and sucks his fingers until he goes back to sleep a lot of the time, so we try to wait to comfort him until he actually starts to cry. It's tough since he's in the pack n play next to us, but it seems to be helping him get back into the habit of sleeping longer stretches.