Another Sleep Question.... - New Baden,IL

I have 4 kids and one on the way. They all had different sleep patterns and thankfully, my 4th had the best one. Sleeping 10 hours at night starting at 7 weeks old... wow! I know that my kids who had food allergies and reacted to my breast milk because of what I ate, didn't sleep as good. I aways tried to keep them awake more during the day and keep them on a consistent schedule. Now they are ages 16, 14, 9 and 6 and they are ALL good sleepers NOW. Hang in there! This too shall pass... now I'm expecting a little one in about 3 weeks so I'll be back to sleepless nights again, I'm sure. Good luck and congratulations to you!

If you think it is teething, then you may want to try some Tylenol/motrin before bed, just to ease it. Another thought is to shift his bedtime later so that he gets that longest stretch when you go to sleep. Do you have any sort of schedule for him during the day? Feeding every X hours, or anything. Doing that may provide a bit more consistency and help him to understand when he is supposed to sleep, or be awake. I think without a set amount of sleep a day, he may always have a random sleep pattern.

Around 4 months of age, their sleep becomes more adult like in terms of the way it cycles. What is happening is that your baby is waking after each sleep cycle and wanting you to help him go back to sleep. So, you have to teach him how to self-sooth and roll back over. Everyone wakes up between sleep cycles, but we typically just roll over.

My daughter continued to get me up a million times a night until I nightweaned her. Her brother, who is almost 4 months, went from sleeping 8 hours and only getting me up once a night, to now getting me up 3 times. I am sure he will continue to do so until I night wean him because we have now established it as a -habit-. The only real solution is to let them CIO, or, if you do the non-cry-it out method, to literally hang in there while you teach him to fall asleep without the patting. It can work, but it will take time. You need to gradually wean him from it. In other words, you need to create a new habit. It took me three months to create a new habit with my daughter. So, you can either try to establish some new sleep associations or break the cycle within a week with CIO.

In other words, he is waking because we all wake between sleep cycles. There is nothing wrong, it's just the nature of the beast.

Hello,

I totally relate! Our almost 8 month old is also not a great sleeper. In an 11 hour period, she's up between 2 and 4 times, with most of her wakings happening in the latter half of the night. She also does not take a binky, and is in a great mood during the day. She dropped her 3rd, late afternoon nap so she takes 2 naps a day, and they are unpredictable both in terms of when she goes down and the duration.
Like you, I don't mind giving her some cuddling, etc throughout the night, unless it begins to impact my functioning during the day, and it is. I'm grumpy most of the time, and in general in a rotten mood and it's all related to interrupted sleep for the last 8 months. It's just so hard to know what to do...I'm sorry I don't have any brilliant ideas; just wanted you to know you're not alone.

R.