are there answers?

[bostonsmama]

ok, my ds is 10 mos old (today!) and has never slept through the night--which, is fine with us.....but, lately he has been waking every 2 hours from about 9pm - 6am. does anyone have any ideas on how to get him to sleep for longer periods of time? we've tried everything i can think of. he sleeps in the middle of dh and i, and when we put him between myself and the wall, he just wants back in the middle, so i dont think that has anything to do with it...
he does eat a couple times during the night, and im sure at this age he should be able to sleep through the night without waking for a feeding...shouldnt he?

ANY suggestions would be greatly appreciated, but i know tons of mama's ask related questions all the time with no good answers.....are there any at all??? :)

[LadyBird]

Well you are not alone...Elizabeth has been the same way since birth. Finally now at 14 months I have gotten to where she will sleep from about 9pm till 6am. She will only wake enough to feed a couple of times through the night, but at least she isn't getting up ready to go play every couple of hours like she was! :eek

Suggestions? well I don't know what has changed with her...maybe that I am feeding her more solid foods now? and nursing a bit less during the day? Or maybe it is just an age thing...hard to say. But I wish you patience and soon a full nights sleep! Hang in there :hug

[Irene]

you can also try the no Cry sleep solution book. She has a lot of tips in there that helped up with dd. I implement some with ds too, but havent gone full out yet. Its very AP and shes a great author, very gentle momma

[KarenBoo]

Yup, I really like that book too! :hug I will say this, between 9-11 months, my DD went through a phase where she seemed to wake constantly. I nearly went crazy! I think it was either developmental, teething, allergies, or a combination. But it was very rough! I took a lot of naps and tried to go to bed at a decent hour every night. Hang in there!

[kris10s]

I second the recommendation for the No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley :tu.

[crunchymum]

hmmm.... is he going through a transistion, maybe? teething? about ready to walk? crawling? i seem to remember around that time my kids' sleeping patterns were all messed up. :shrug

as far as being too old to need to wake up for a feeding... there are so many reasons besides hunger that babies nurse at night... thirsty, wanting comfort, needing to suck, ect... plus, his tummy still is so tiny, he really might be hungry! :) give it another few weeks... sometimes by then they'll have passed a milestone and things settle down. :heart every baby is different, and sometimes our expectations ( or other people's!) can make us frustrated. hang in there! :hug

[milkmommy]

It seems normal for babies to suddenly increase waking times about this age. Ive read it a lot here, on more "ezzoed" type boards and we experienced it ourselfs. Is baby learning a new skill? Mine started walking at 10 months and she got her first teeth and we really started introducing solids at this age.
We did a sleeping solution I believe simliar to the NCSS and we transitioned her from the side car to sleeping "on her own" in her crib but still sharing our room. For US it turned out to be the best solution.

Deanna

[bostonsmama]

thanks everyone for all the great replies... he is learning to walk, and still has no teeth, so maybe that is whats going on? (i was wondering if you were here deanna~i love reading your posts!....HI!) the thought of moving him out of our bed makes me want to :cry2 not that anyone suggested that.....how do you know when theyre ready? i figured we'd just wait until he could tell us...maybe i'll start a new thread for this question? anyways, thanks so much!!

[milkmommy]

thanks everyone for all the great replies... he is learning to walk, and still has no teeth, so maybe that is whats going on? (i was wondering if you were here deanna~i love reading your posts!....HI!) the thought of moving him out of our bed makes me want to :cry2 not that anyone suggested that.....how do you know when theyre ready? i figured we'd just wait until he could tell us...maybe i'll start a new thread for this question? anyways, thanks so much!!

http://pages.prodigy.net/rogerlori1/emoticons/wave2.gif Hello nice to be back thanks! I'll answer the "when did you know" question and nope not saying its the answer. DD began getting very restless at night. She spent very little time sleeping, more time jumping on top of us or crying. (one extreme or the other) I could no longer nurse her to sleep or rock her to sleep and she seemed to be over stimulated. DH and I as well as her weren't getting sleep so we finially decided something needed to change. AP is listening to cues her cues were screaming what ever your doing isn't working.
So we decided to try seeing if giving her her own space would help, we also decided it was a good time from a safety stand point. (she could now wonder through the house) I got DH on board and we developed a plan. We would really give it a try. We figured she might cry being something "new" but we vowed she wouldn't cry alone or without comfort. At bedtime (done by following her cues and by loosly following a set bedtime) I nursed her rocked her, read to her sung to her etc till she was "calm" We then layed her down and rubberd her back talked to her etc till she calmed down and layed down. We did everything just shy of outright picking her up. Even holding her in a cheast to chest hug in her crib. When she calmed and layed down we layed down beside her crib siliently. Shed pop up every so often to check we were their and we just gently shhed her back down. After a bit when her body seemed super calm etc we left. If she cried (day one she did within a minute of us leaving) we IMEDIENTLY responded. Our belief was yes we did believe it was time but we still had to establish trust. CIO to me teaches a child "Stop crying because noone cares. " Thats NOT wwhat we wanted our child to learn we wanted to send a message. "No need to cry because Mommy and daddy will always be right their for you".
DD still Co sleeps on occassion we have an open bed policy even with her in her own room now. Shes free to join us at anytime. SO when I'm asked do you still cosleep. I say yes. IF I'm asked did you sleep train? I say yes but gently with out CIO. It's simpily what worked for our family.

Deanna

[Miss Priss]

How old was dd when you did this?
I'm thinking the restlessness is part of why Liam is nursing so much all night.
In bed at night he scooches away from me, and wants his own space.
I honestly think the others of us in the bed are bugging him (the sister he favors was like this, too and she went in her crib at 3 months and promptly slept through the night. I hated her being in her crib that early, but is was what she needed).

[milkmommy]

How old was dd when you did this?
I'm thinking the restlessness is part of why Liam is nursing so much all night.
In bed at night he scooches away from me, and wants his own space.
I honestly think the others of us in the bed are bugging him (the sister he favors was like this, too and she went in her crib at 3 months and promptly slept through the night. I hated her being in her crib that early, but is was what she needed).


She was between 9/10 months we just used her cues to guide us. If we got to a point and she seemed uncomfortable e backed off and countinued when she was ready. About a month ago after sleeping in her own bedroom for months decided she HAD to be in our bed again and that was fine with us. (we have an open door policy) then as quick as she came into our bed she decided she'd rather be in her own bed. Soo do what works best I like the idea of my DD bein comfortable both with us and on her own. I will say though we did keep her in our room till we moved a bit before her second birthday. I wouldn't want my baby in another room at 9 months.

Deanna

[crunchymum]

dd was had a pretty restless time as well... what worked for us was to side car the crib, so that after i nursed her, i could scoot her into it... she did sleep more soundly, and we had a little extra room! :)sometimes, she would end up inbetween us, and i would be half in the crib... :lol it was a nice comprimise for us.

[Miss Priss]

I like the sidecar idea, we did it with dd#2 before she moved into the crib in her room... but dh doesn't want to take the crib down and move it and put it back up. :rolleyes

[ServantofGod]

but i know tons of mama's ask related questions all the time with no good answers.....are there any at all???

I've been on ap boards now for 7 years, have read thousands of posts and have concluded that the answer is........(DRUM ROLL)........










no :shrug

[bostonsmama]

lol...thanks danielle! i am starting to believe it! :) but, i do think the mamas on here gave some pretty good answers!

[Irene]

I just want to make one more comment ;)

I agree that there seems to be no answers, after much searching myself :) BUT I will say that being AP has given me a different outlook on sleep instead of thinking its something my kids are out to get me and my life is chaos etc and everything else Ezzo tries to convince us of, its something we can gently and gradually work on together :)

[ServantofGod]

After thinking about my reply, I wanted to add this, in case my comment offends anyone:

I think if you sign up for the ap concept of sleep, you have to bring with it a load of acceptance that you wouldn't "have" to bring to mainstream cultural notions of sleep. You have to accept that your nights may be simple or difficult, that putting your baby to sleep may involve a lot of different ideas, many of which will fail and that it could be a long time before you sleep the way you did pre-children. :cool Sometimes I feel ap as a community has not been frank enough in this assessment.

[greenemama]

jude is 10 months old -- tomorrow, actually! :)

he is going through a similar thing. he's a lot harder to get to sleep at night. he can't unwind and he's really, really curious about what's going on around him. it's driving me a little crazy. last night i just wanted to sew and he was flailing around and whining and wouldn't sleep. ugh. ugh. ugh.

he wakes every couple of hours to nurse, too. i think he's honestly hungry -- he's growing a lot! and he's so active during the day. he's trying to walk and he crawls everywhere. plus we've been getting a lot of fresh air so he's really energized during the day. so i think he definitely wants to nurse for food's sake.

on top of that, he's getting teeth.

so many factors. i remember henry was really difficult at night from about 8 mos to 1 year and after that he'd sleep almost all through the night, maybe waking up once to nurse. so nice. :)

:hug

and lots of coffee. :cup

[Irene]

Sometimes I feel ap as a community has not been frank enough in this assessment.

I agree with you there ;) I think I get so terribly down about sleep that I have to talk to myself daily that I am making the right decisions, and have made them (not letting ds CIO). Im just trying to look on it in a positive way right now. or I think I would go crazy :crazy