7 Month Old Terrible Sleeper at Night & Naps! HELP!

Updated on January 20, 2009
A.H. asks from Orange, CA
4 answers

Hello everyone, my family just moved into the Orange area from Albuquerque where I found the Mamasource community to be very helpful. I have a 3 1/2 year old who was (and is) a great sleeper and had hardly any problems with her. Daughter #2 is a great baby except her sleep pattern (which was like this before the move).
Here goes:
She is a breastfeed baby who was started on solids at about 5 1/2 months. She has always wanted to eat pretty frequently during the day... and at night (in fact I've lost more than my baby weight so far). I feed her cereal 1-2 times a day as well as a vegetable.
She naps 3 times a day for usually only 30 minutes. For the interval between naps I used to wait 3 hours since the last time she woke and fed her right before putting her down but in the last several weeks I try to go 2 1/2 hours (because she always seems tired) and feed her at least 30 mintues before naps (so that she doesn't associate it). I have tried to "force" her to sleep longer by letting her cry/patting/trying the pacifer. FYI- I tried for months to give her the pacifer and it just didn't work like it did with the first. I can use it sometimes to soothe her after shes been crying awhile but thats it. Anyways, after about 1/2 an hour of crying she'll go back to sleep for up to an hour. Usually this means that she sleeps even worse at night.
It seems to me that a 7 month old should be able to get by at night with only one feeding. Last night she was up 4 times and then awake at 6:30am! The only thing she does well is fall asleep on her own at 7 pm. I then would like her to sleep until at least 1 am and definately not wake before midnight.
I am not opposed to letting her cry, but heres the problem: We just moved here and can't get a house until the other one sells (not to mention houses are at least twice as much here) so we're with my in-laws. We were originally set up to have the girls in the same room but with the baby crying frequently at night my older one doesn't want to sleep in there anymore and the guest bed we're on isn't big enough for three so I've basically switched places with her and so I've been sleeping in the same room as the baby. However for the next few months my husband will be away on training. Anyways they, especially my mother in law (whos very nice and would probably accept... or at least not interfere... with any method I tried), doesn't like to hear the baby cry and keeps thinking up excuses like something must be wrong, shes teething, shes hungry, she just wants mommy, etc... I might be willing to let baby cry but what about the in-laws who think I'm doing the wrong thing?
Does anyone else have a "short napper"? Does that seem healthy? I have read several books from the library "healthy sleep habits, happy child" seemed most in line with my feelings except it makes me feel guilty that my baby isn't sleeping well. I read "The no-cry sleep solution" which sounds nice, but I'm not sure I have the patience. And frankly I felt like a doctor with tons of research and hands-on experience with bunches of patients was better then a researched mom with 4 kids (just my opinion). I have tried to just soothe her by patting but I eventually pick her up... I put a pacifer in then and she goes right to sleep, but then put her down and shes wakes up, how much of that can I take when I know I could feed her and she'd fall back to sleep?

ahhh... any suggestions about whats worked for you would be helpful. Thank you!

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V.B.

answers from Los Angeles on

I have found that the hardest time during parenting is when you have an audience. What would you do if you lived with just your husband and kids? Do that and ask for patience from your in-laws. Ask them to remember when their kids were little. I'm sure they will think back and probably be able to sympathize with you. As long as you aren't "slacking off" and just ignoring the baby I am sure they will understand. Good luck with this stage and keep positive thoughts about your house selling so your family can get back to normal!

~V

Smallavatar-fefd015f3e6a23a79637b7ec8e9ddaa6

S.B.

answers from Los Angeles on

When my son was your daughter's age, he was waking several times in the night, too. Will she eat when you offer the breast or is she just using it to soothe herself back to sleep? My son was an eater meaning he would actively suck and swallow for some time before he'd fall back to sleep. Our pediatrician recommended giving him a rice bottle (actually putting rice flakes in with expressed milk - or formula - with a fast flow nipple) right before bed. Since that was one of my only changes to breastfeed him directly, I didn't exactly want to do that, but what we did instead was give that to him the first time he woke in the night. This seemed to help fill him up and get him through until morning. Again, according to our pediatrician, waking once at that age was normal. It wasn't until he was nine months that she suggested working on getting him through the night (which was a whole other ordeal). As for napping... maybe she's ready to cut down to two naps which might help make them longer? If you'd like a detailed breakdown of my son's "schedule" at that age, feel free to e-mail me (I don't want to bore everyone with the specifics). If nothing else, know that you're not alone out there. Welcome to the OC!

Smallavatar-fefd015f3e6a23a79637b7ec8e9ddaa6

M.B.

answers from Los Angeles on

Hi A. - my little boy, 3 1/2 months, has the same sleep patterns, i wrote in about 2 weeks ago. I downloaded an e-book from www.thesleeplady.com which had some good recommendations... but what seemed to help (last week) was swaddling him... it increased his naps significantly... but this weekend was bad again, back to 30 minute naps. Attempted for an hour yesterday to get him back down for his nap when he woke 30 minutes into it... finally gave up and let him stay awake until bed time. Last night i put him down at 7:00 and he was up again at 10:30... i'm wondering if it's a growth spurt or something.. but i do feel like it's not enough sleep during the day -- i understand your frustration! Sorry can't be of more help, but i'll be reading your responses, too! Best of luck!
M.

S.R.

answers from Los Angeles on

this is one of those things that you have to look into your mamas instinct for, not in a book written by some doctor that doesnt know your baby, and it doesnt matter how much experience he has because its not better than a mothers instinct when it comes down to this sort of thing.

with my first two kids i did attachment parenting, we slept with our kids and we all slept GREAT! i was a heavy sleeper then so it worked out, because i would just automatically put my baby on the breast when they woke up at night.

but with my third little guy, for some reason i couldnt sleep anymore when he was in the bed with us (by now our older kids are in their own beds) so i tried to breastfeed him at night and put him back down, that was horrible! no sleep whatsoever! i was the crankiest mama! so i figured out that he loves to swing so much that he falls right to sleep once he is in the swing. so i tried putting him in there at night, and he slept all night long! he also slept there for naps. he didnt even want to feed during the night, but boy was he hungry in the morning! so i started to feed him an extra serving at dinner before he went to bed. and he did great again! so we used that for a while until he got sick of it then we put him in a little crib and now he still sleeps all night and hes so good about it too, he is 11 months now and we started this at about 7 months. i think he didnt like the bed or crib at first because he was having acid reflux and it hurt to lie down.

sometimes you need to let them cry and sometimes it doesnt work to do that.
this is what worked for our little ones, you have to find out what works for yours! and im sure you realized by now that every child is so different!

good luck!

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