Babble

My four month old goes to bed like a champ around 7:30 or 8, and even stays asleep for up to three hours. Then it's Baby From Hell. Up at least every hour, some nights are just a blur of screaming, and sleeping for 5-10 minute stints until I cave and bring him into bed at 4am exhausted and crying myself.

First off, I am sorry you are going through this. Our son is almost nine months old, and he only started sleeping normally about a month and a half ago. Before that, it wasn't quite so bad as your son, but almost. I know different things work for different babies, & we never thought we'd say it, but crying it out worked for us; it not only worked but became a necessity when we found ourselves so exhausted that we resented our son every hour of the day. We went with Marc Weissbluth's "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child." It's rambling and badly organized, but it has some very good advice about training your child to sleep, and his musings on why it is important for children to sleep well motivated us to go ahead with it. Our son still wakes up once or twice during the night, but that because he has trouble gaining weight and we are eager to give him extra feedings.  He even naps regularly, which two months ago seemed like an impossibility to me. All I can say is that, as hard as it is to hear your child cry, it pays off when you see him wake up happy and well-rested. Some babies can get there without having to cry it out. For others it seems like the best available alternative. I hope you get some different advice here from other parents. Then go with whatever feels right to you.

We also went through this and found the Weisbluth book to be the most helpful. I really liked his moderate approach to everything and the case studies were helpful. That said, our son didn't really, truly sleep through the night until he was 9 months old and even then he was still waking up at 4am for a morning feeding but would go back to sleep for a few hours after that (we didn't wean him from that habit until he was over a year old and I was starting to wean him from nursing.)

Unfortunately for us we had to let him cry a bit in order for him to get to sleep. Every child is different and I really wanted to do a no-cry method but it didn't work and I was literally sick from tiredness. So we moved him into his own room and let him cry-it-out for two nights, by the third night, we put him in his crib and he was out.

Good luck!

This is such a tough one!  I thought the Secrets of the Baby Whisperer was helpful.  

I'll tell you what worked for us in case it helps you.  (Apologies in advance for long post).  We decided that the key to good sleeping was using very exact pre-nap and pre-bed routines and teaching our daughter to fall asleep in her bed (idea we got from Secrets).  I spent many hours over about two weeks "teaching" her (at about 4 months old) how to do this for naps and at bedtime, sometimes aborting the mission when I got too exhausted.  I would put her down in her crib awake but tired and sit there and wait for her to fall asleep.  When she started crying to the point I knew she wouldn't fall asleep, I would pick her up and rock or nurse her back to a relaxed but slightly awake state and then put her back in the bed to fall asleep in there.  Repeat MANY times.  Perhaps 50-100 times during the first attempts.  (fun, I know).   

It was pretty tough, but I have to say her sleep improved after only a couple times falling asleep in her bed.  After one week, we saw great improvement.  After two weeks, she was on a roll and we were satisfied with her sleeping at night.   It did involve quite a bit of crying, but I felt ok with this since I was there with her and she wasn't alone. 

Then, she started waking up a ton again at about 10 months- not sure why.  At that point, we let her cry and she really didn't cry much was "cured" of night waking, for the most part.  I used to be totally against cry it out, but, in our experience, letting our daughter cry a bit didn't traumatize either of us, but only you can judge how it's going for you and your baby.  I think you had a GREAT point about how the baby's sleeping habits can effect your daytime with the baby and what an important factor that could be.

 I wish you much luck!!

we're weisbluth followers as well. actually i don't know what i would do without this book. skip the first half full of theory and cut right to the part about what to do for your baby at his/her age. i think he recommends starting sleeping training at 4 months. we started a little after that. our baby is now 8 months and while we've been very religious about the whole thing, making it really a priority in our lives, every day is different. but for the most part, she naps twice a day. goes to bed at 5:30-6:00pm, wakes up for a feed once or twice a night and then is up at 6:00-6:30. one of the best parts is knowing her schedule. then i can plan my day around it. sometimes she'll cry when i put her down and then i stay with her for a few minutes of singing and talking until she's happy and then i leave. and usually she'll then just start playing in her crib until she falls asleep. she'll cry out sometimes, but generally she's very comfortable there. she does cry out a couple of time around 8, 9 or 10 but i don't go to her and it usually lasts something like 10 seconds and 2 minutes at the most. so thank goodness, i don't go in or i'd really disturb her.

Has anyone tried Ferber? I've heard he has this reputation for being hardcore, but a crunchy mama friend of mine found him less alarming than other sleep training books out there. (e.g., "You'll scar your baby for life if you let him/her cry!" all the way to "Your baby's development will be stunted if you don't do CIO!")

My friend paraphrased Ferber as saying that the sleep problem will be solved eventually and it's really up to you as a parent whether you want to solve it now or let it work itself out. I found her representation of his philosophy really comforting. But then, I have a knee jerk mistrust of dire warnings "experts" issue if you don't follow their advice. Pre- and post partum, I read too many "experts" and got myself in a state of anxiety over conflicting messages.

Our friend who did Ferber felt she was a much better mama to her daughter and that her daughter was much happier when they were all getting rest. On the other hand, we soldiered through 6 months of shitty sleep and came out just fine on the other end. In retrospect, I missed out on a lot of joy in my daughter's early months as a result of sleeplessness and post partum depression. We might have all been happier if we'd done sleep training. Even so, no regrets. 

I guess my point is that you as a parent know your baby better than anyone. And you know better than anyone else how well and how long you can function as a parent without enough sleep. No matter what you choose, it's not a permanent decision and you really can't screw it up. Babies change constantly so if you realize what you are doing is not working, you can change course.

You're going to do great! 

Our two boys both had issues sleeping through the night as infants.  They each responded differently to different methods, though, so you may need to try several before hitting the jackpot.

We decided to start gently with our first.  He would wake up every couple of hours whether he was hungry or not.  After nine months we were losing our minds, so we talked to our pediatrician.  We followed her recommended course of action, which was to go into his room whenever he cried and soothe him for a minute then leave for five, repeated until he fell back asleep.  The first time he spent nearly two straight hours awake and screaming, with me sitting in the bathroom reading National Geographic between comforting visits.  His waking fits grew farther apart, though, and after three nights he slept through the night without interruption.

Our second son, however, did not respond to this method.  After two weeks of miserable nights produced no change in his sleep whatsoever, we caved and left him to cry it out.  Similarly, after three nights, he finally slept without interruption. 

I'd recommend trying the methods that you're most comfortable with at first, then moving on to "harsher" tactics if necessary. 
 

Thanks so much, all of you...

Oh, this issue looms large in my life these days. My son is almost 11 months old, and it seems that we had a brief month (when he was around 6 months) where he slept for 8 hrs straight consistantly, then 3 more, but since then, he's all over the map. He goes to bed with a formal routine at 8pm... we used the Ferber book and he now rarely cries even a second when being put to bed at night, but then he is up at midnight, 4am, and 6am -- I take him into the bed with me at 6am and nurse him there and he often sleeps a bit more next to me til 8am when we all get up for work. (Well, he's not working yet, the freeloader, but you know what I mean).

I don't know if any other working moms here have a similar issue, but for me, it's hard not to breastfeed him those times in the night since I am away from him for 9 hrs a day (pumping at work, of course), so I feel like I want to have as much chance for him to breastfeed as he needs, and I've been reluctant to let him cry it out in those late-night hours because of that, even though it's hell on my own sleep.

I figure when he's a year and we think about weaning, I'll be more likely to try to cut out that 3-4am-ish feeding. When I do let him cry, sometimes he goes back to sleep in 5-10 mintues, but a few times I've let him cry as long as a half hour before I break down and go in to him.

I'm rambling, I guess I don't have advice. I've come to the conclusion my little guy is a lot of great things but great sleeper is not one of them. I hope when he's older, we will all look back and laugh at this little foible of his infant personality. 

 

 

 

Mim, I think you might consider putting your baby to bed earlier because I think you'll find that the baby will still wake up at 6am but will have slept longer. actually i don't know any babies that sleep past 6-6:30/ 7 at the latest.

Thanks for the advice... of course, then there is the whole issue of how much we should manipulate our childern's schedules to work with ours... In our case, I get home from work at 5, my husband at 630, and we have the routine of all three of us having dinner at 630, then some mellow time for reading to theo, etc, then bedtime.

If we were to go to a much earlier bedtime, all of a sudden  my husband would lose pretty much all weeknight time with his son. But, as I say, is it fair to possibly give theo worse sleep at night for our convenience? I really don't have an answer, just explaining why your advice is not something we can just try without thinking long and hard about whether to do it.

I will note that theo does have a 12 hr cycle when going to bed at 8... usually he's getting up in the morning around 745am (well, he gets up around 5 or 6 for the first time, but I nurse him and he usually will go back to sleep with me or babble to himself in his crib for a while til we all get up close to 8) so 8 to 8 would work great for us, if only he wouldn't wake up and want to nurse so often!

ERICAPERICA   Im so sorry I know first hand about what your going through My son is 9 months and we're still up every hour and a half. We got so excited at about 7and a half months he started to sleep from 10 till 6:30 we were so relieved finally we'd be able to sleep through the nite but we were wrong. And what amazes me most is the doctors say to let them cry it out and dont tend to it but we realized if we changed him gave him a bottle while he was still in his crib he went back to sleep pretty quick and one thing I wasnt expecting was teeth and the doctor said he was to young to be teething but she was wrong so maybe check his gums he may be getting teeth thats why were up again more teeth hes 9 months and working on his 4th tooth also if your in the same room try a stuffed animal thats not to fluffy or anything and put him in his crib about an hour before your ready to hit the sack hell associate the stuffy with sleep if u dont feel safe leaving the toy u can remove it before u go to bed also what i found that helps is if i want Joel to sleep untill say 6 I put him to bed at 10 and if u can dont let him nap after 6 if he still gets up around a certain hour mave back nap time no naps after 5 so on n so on it took a combo of these things for us to get a good nites sleep because lets face it it may sound harsh "o u dont let him nap after 5 how mean is that" but guess what those people probably never had kids that screamed bloody murder in the middle of the night and mommy cant give her all if shes sleep walking  If u need someone to talk to email me starbriteprincess@yahoo.com

My husband and I were given a book by Gary Ezzo called 'babywise'. It described ways of encouraging your child to sleep by creating a regular (but not timed) routine in the day. Within 2 days our son started sleeping 8 hours through the night. The improtant thing was he had a full stomach, then had some time 'playing' with me, then i put him down and left him. The first day he cried for 1 hour straight. But I didn't go in, because i didn't want him to learn that the longer he cries the more likely i am to come in. Now I just put him down and walk out, he cries for about 1 minute then he's asleep. When he got to 3 months we stopped getting up in the middle of the night. The first night he woke up crying and then after 5 minutes he just went back to sleep. Ever since then he has done between 10 and 11 hours everynight. The trick was trying to know that he had had a full feed, so then i knew he wasn't crying because he was hungry. Ezzo is often misquoted on the net as having strict scheduling, but the next feed would always start when the baby woke from his sleep, irrespective of whether or not he'd reached his next feeding time. Now that he is 5 months old, my son has slotted into an almost perfect 4 hour routine during the day. I would recommend babywise to any mother who is exhausted at the night feedings!

I did the "Babywise" book also. It has worked rather well for me and my 11 month old son. I started it a little late (around 5 months) but it still worked out. My son sleeps 10-11 hours every night. The only time he ever wakes in the middle of the night is if he's got a tooth coming through.

Maaaan.... we were (and are) so so so lucky.  Our 22-month-old has been sleeping thru the night since she was about 9 - 10 weeks old.

But if we had anything to do with it, here's how we did it. 
(We did read some books, but then just decided to "wing it.")

When Lena was born, I was bound & determined to breastfeed. Well, her mouth was so little, and my boobs so big, she never could get a good latch. So we finally "caved in" & did pump 'n' bottle, which worked GREAT. So anyway, the first few weeks, she slept in her bouncer in a Snuzzler (she was a petite flower), in the top of the Pack & Play, in the Living room, and whoever was feeding her, (usually me), just sort of camped out in there & napped on the couch between frequent feedings. So there were always other people around. (and low conversation, music, barking dog, quiet.)

At about 4 weeks, we moved the bouncer to her crib (her room is right off the living room). We always, always responded to her crying, and she got mucho cuddling. Still does.

She developed an upper respiratory infection at about 3 mos. and kept up a round of sniffles, one round of RSV, and a couple of colds for about 6 mos. so we kept putting her to bed in the bouncer to elevate her head. Also we'd park the bouncer on the kitchen table for naps, and in the bathroom if parental showering was necessary & she wanted to see one of us. At Daycare *gasp* they put her in a bouncer for sleeping, too, since I asked 'em to.

So when she finally cleared up we started laying her down in the crib, in a sleep sack.

 Ever since, we've done "night-nights" right before bedtime (about 7:15) involving books, songs, and cuddling. (it used to also involve the last bottle of the night.)

Then she goes to bed (in fact she ASKS for it... "nighnigh! nigh nigh!!!" ), rolls up on her side and sleeps 11 - 12 hours.

Again, if she fusses in the night, we go in, rub her back, and say loving things till she settles. That happens about once a night.

Then again we might just be super duper lucky.  She was an easy teether, too.  "Oh, look, another tooth. How cute!"
 

GOOD LUCK!!!!  My sister has a 4 year old and twin 18 month olds, and NONE of them is a good sleeper. She would definitely understand how hard it is!!!!!!!!!!!!!