Hi Moms,
Our son will be 9 months old in a few days and is nowhere near sleeping through the night. On a good night, he'll wake twice, nurse, and go back to sleep. Other nights, he has multiple wakings. I am never quite sure if he truly is hungry or just seeking comfort. He eats some solids but hasn't taken off with it and so most of his diet is still breastmilk. I've been experimenting with pureeing different foods and so long as whatever I give him is smooth, he seems to do okay. I think part of his restless sleep is our fault...he has been in our room with us and we developed a bad habit of picking him up out of his crib the second he cries, and putting him to the breast, and then leaving him in bed with us the rest of the night. As a result, my sleep is interrupted, my stamina during the day is low, and my mood is off. I do believe that sleeping through the night is a developmental milestone but I also believe a lot of babies need a little help from their parents to get there, and I don't think we've been helping him achieve this. We waited 16 loooong months for our daughter to sleep through the night (7pm to 7 am). I had to night wean her completely before she slept through and boy was it a glorious day when she finally did! I cannot imagine waiting that long again. My son is super attached to nursing and even though I'm all for baby-lead weaning, I am starting to feel drained by the amount he wants to nurse (at night) and am entertaining the thought of trying to wean him at 1 year old.
So, one idea I had was to move him out of our room and in with our daughter but my husband thinks this will backfire...and that we need to wait until he sleeps through the night (I think he has a better chance of sleeping through the night if he's out of our room). He thinks we will end up with two kids awake because his crying will wake our daughter. I honestly don't know what the best solution is and sleep habits change so much...in another month he could be a totally different sleeper. Any thoughts? Thanks.
None of my grand kids actually slept through the night until they were very close to 20 months or older. They all took times of where they would wake up multiple times per night. The baby is going to wake up and cry, I would do whatever you needed to to let the older child sleep and not start her going too.
rather than all-or-nothing, why not start gradually? don't cold turkey the night time feedings, keep him in your room but put him back to bed after he nurses. get him acclimated to that before you move him out of your room altogether. if you just put him in with your daughter, you're likely to have 2 exhausted cranky littles, which won't help you out at all.
this is such a difficult phase.
good luck, mama!
khairete
S.
Give him a chance to self soothe. try reading the Dr. Ferber book. A new spot for his crib, somewhere other than her bedroom, or yours might help him establish new/ better sleep habits. While not being too disruptive.
Good luck to you and yours,
F. B.
All I can say is that I never had a baby in my room ever. They learned to sleep through. They learned to self soothe. They learned to entertain themselves. Sometimes, they didn't need to be picked up or fed or changed. Sometimes they just needed to go back to sleep...
If there is a place other than your daughter's room to put the baby, I'd do that. I think your husband is right -- you'll have two children awake and miserable if you put them together.
YMMV
LBC
I can't give you advice on sleeping through the night...my guy did not sleep through the night consistently until 19 months. However, I wanted to share that you don't have to wean completely to drop the night feeds. I continued to nurse my son about 6-7 months during the day after we night weaned. He was not really nursing at night though, just latching on and going back to sleep instantly (waking as soon as he was returned to bed). So I stopped offering at night. Of course he was upset a few days bc i would just pat his back back to sleep instead of picking him up and letting him latch on. He just wanted to sleep latched on, with me holding him in a chair and after a year +, I could not do it any longer. I was beyond exhausted. If you have any doubt your son is actually nursing for nourishment, be sure he is getting extra during the day before doing anything new. Good luck.
We've never had a baby in our room, mainly because every little sound and grunt keeps me up. Baby #2 never woke up his older brother. Now we have 3 kids in one room, and baby #3 never woke up her brothers in the middle of the night. It's a little more tricky in the morning, though. If it's 6-6:30, my younger son will also wake up...but my oldest son can sleep through anything. There are still some rare occasions when the boys might wake up crying at night, and it's never woken up the baby.
Have to agree with your husband on this. Had he been in your daughter's room from the day he came home it would be different, it would be a bigger adjustment for her now, hearing him fuss and cry and being disturbed. Is there a place other than your's and your daughter's room to put his crib? A hallway or closet will work if there's no other room.
Learn to let him self-soothe, no need to always pick him up, you can change his diaper without picking him up, too. Sometimes all babies need is to have their back or leg patted or their face gently stroked to relax them back to sleep, or to be left alone to figure it out, they can actually learn this much earlier in life. Leave the light off when you go to him, speak in a soft whisper, don't pick him up, try to soothe him and reassure him, then leave before he is asleep. Limit engaging with him so he senses it's time to sleep, the more attention you give him the more he will need. Also, have your husband go to him when he wakes since he can't nurse off Dad, and have him soothe him so he can go back to sleep.
Work on him sleeping through the night along with the weaning, you should be able to go to just one feeding through the night now, nurse him right before he goes to bed. When you have that feeding eliminated work on no more others through the night, just at bedtime and in the morning and you can hopefully get a full night of rest. Breastmilk is still the most important nutrition for him right now, until he's a year, so nurse him a little, offer the solids, and you'll see that as he eats more solids he will need to nurse less.
Once he's sleeping through the night you can put him in with big sister : )
Other than a few months when the baby was in a bassinet in my room, my kids all slept in the same room. When baby cried, I went in, got the baby, took care of feeding/diapering, and put them back to bed. I don't really remember the other one waking and demanding that much attention... the other one learned to sleep through the disturbances.
There were times when I couldn't get the baby back to sleep, I admit, so sometimes I ended up taking them downstairs to the LR, putting them in the swing, winding it up, and falling asleep on the couch!
Also... I may be remembering the GOOD/EASY times... after all, my youngest is 20 years old, the oldest will be 30 this summer. Yep, that was a while ago.
