Infant Waking While Sharing Room with 2 Other Siblings

Maybe you could try putting a sound machine in the room with the white noise background on loudly to help drowned out the crying? Good luck!

I think the best way to go would be ditch the pacifier! We had to do the same thing with our 15 month old. It really wears on you and I was pregnant so it made the fatigue during the day worse.

When she got sick with a sinus infection and couldn't have the pacifier in her mouth because she couldn't breathe we took it away for good. It took her 3 full days to start self soothing but after that it was smooth sailing.

Hi! If you let the other two cry it out, I would suggest doing the same with your 6-month-old too. I was amazed at what my 2-yr-old could sleep through back when my youngest was a colicky infant. If you did it over a weekend, when everyone can get a little extra rest, you might find that by Monday morning the battle is mostly won. One way to start the transition might be to pull the pacifier out as soon as she gets into a deep sleep. My son was the only child of mine who used a pacifier, and we did this with him, as I wanted to avoid the problem of nighttime waking looking for it. This way he used the pacifier to get to sleep, but didn't need it to stay sleeping. Just an idea...hope you're able to find something that works, as I know how tired you must be!
Take care of you ~ R.: SAHM of three (14, 7, and almost 5).

My girls are 14 months apart. They were supposed to share a room...in theory. My first is an extremely light sleeper. We try not to even go into her room when she is sleeping because no matter how quiet we are...most of the time she will open her eyes and think it is time to get up and play - even though we have never gotten her out of her crib at those times and let her cry herself back to sleep. We tried having the new baby sleep in the same room in a separate crib. The fact is...babies cry at night with or without a pacifier for various reasons. Even with the new baby only waking up once a night it stills disturbs the other and wakes her up so then we have two crying kids. We tried to go a whole week just recently (they are now 3 months and 1 1/2 years) with them sleeping in the same room and the one waking up and what not to see if the older one would get used to the noise in the middle of the night and just sleep through it. No luck. Our younger one is a very hard sleeper so a bomb could go off and it would not disturb her. I was hoping, after reading your question, that there would be something really helpful here... I think you could try to ween your child off the pacifier... but it is going to take a period of time when your family can stand to be sleep deprived. My other thought is...kids go through growth periods and each child is different...with my first, she went through a period of time during 6-7 months when she needed a small bottle. It didn't last long but maybe something you can do is feed her some of the baby oatmeal at night before bedtime? Good Luck!!!

One of my friends had her babies sleep in the living room until they learned how to go back to sleep on their own.
You may also want to consider getting rid of the pacifier, at least at night. My babies always slept better after I got rid of their crutch. You might have a few looong nights, but it will most likely pay off relatively quickly.

Put her in your room in a portacrib and that way you can attend to her w/o disturbing the rest of the family. You can bring her into bed with you (what we did) and get a lot more sleep.

SAHM of seven, 23yr-17 mo., in a small house, kids share rooms

A friend of mine had 5 kids and 3 bedrooms. She would keep the baby in a crib in her room even though her room was tiny. That way she or her DH could attend to the baby without disturbing the other kids. Once the baby was slleping through the night consistently then he joined one of the other bedrooms of kids.

We have been going through a lot of that too. I have an 8 mo old, and she sleeps in our room. We just got over an AWFUL stage where she woke up at night at 2 AM and (unless I let her sleep in our bed and suckle) would wake up every 20 min to hour after that all night! Weather she was teething or growing, or just having seperation issues... I do not know.

I think that this is a phase, and will probably last only a week or so... but if you need a night off from it, you will have to put the baby in a seperate room. Maybe your other 2 kids can camp out in your room for a couple nights, so you can let the baby scream it out. That's my best advice.

I'm with ditching the pacifier, too. Move your other kids into the living room or your room for a few nights, and let the baby get used to falling (and staying) asleep without the pacifier. It'll be hell for a few nights, but after that, it'll be clear sailing. Good luck!

Hi there!
I have 2 children that had a room of their own when they were younger, however,they would also wake several times at night and the pacifier would always put them back to bed. Like you, I got tired of getting up quickly to find the binky and quiet them back down over and over. I found that if I tied several baby bumpers to the outside of the crib (I felt like that gave them more room to sleep) that that worked as a barrier to hold binkies in....then I bought 8-10 binkies and scattered them all around the crib and showed them to the kids before bed. After 1 or 2 nights they finally figured out that when they woke at night all they had to do was reach around and a binky would appear, pop it in their own mouth, and back to bed. It may sound kind of looney, but it worked and I was sooooo thankful! I wonder if that would help?

J.,

For us, baby #3 was also our first experience in room sharing. I did the same thing. I was so scared the baby would wake up big sister, I ran in and got him every time I heard him. It completely undid all of the training he had learned to put himself to sleep.

I eventually realized what deep sleepers children really are. My kids wouldn't wake up unless the baby screamed for 30-60 minutes - which was so unusual. If for some strange reason, your kids do wake up, you tell them to lay there and go back to sleep. 3 1/2 and 6 are old enough to follow directions like that.

With baby #4, we learned to just let everyone alone and the baby rarely woke up and usually went back to sleep within seconds. With something unusual - teeth or fever - my kids sleep right through anything as long as I don't turn on the light.

Because your baby is binky dependent, but can't find it in the dark, you may just have to let her cry it out until she learns to comfort herself without one.

Good luck,
S.

If the baby is eating solids try giving him/her a bowl of cereal at night before bed. My daughter was the same way until I started doing this. Only she was hungry every time she woke up. The cereal helped her to sleep longer. My son also used to wake up and cry at night and I did the same thing with the cereal. My daughter slep through the night from that day on. Hope this helps.