Sleeping in Bed - 8 Month Old

As a working mom, myself, I struggled with the same thing. To me, as an outside sales representative at the time with a large territory and lots of driving time, my safety was paramount. When our kids woke-up, I brought them into bed to have as much of an opportunity to sleep as possible.

I've not had a good night's sleep in about 10 years, so having young kids only compounds the issue.

Reading your post, I personally believe your daughter is simply going through one of many changes in her sleep patterns as she ages and changes developmentally - I think her new struggles with sleep are more to do with that and less to do with some of the other changes.

We have 2 kids. One is 3.5 and is an AWFUL sleeper. He always has been despite very little co-sleeping. Our daughter just turned 2. She co-slept almost from the beginning because she was so colicky, and then when I was going through chemo (beginning at week 11 for her), it became a necessity as I physically needed to rest more.

She's our ROCK STAR sleeper. She was in bed with me every night for the first year and now gets herself to sleep and sleeps hard through the night (unless sick).

My advice is to do what works for you so you can be the best mom/employee you can. If it's having her in bed with you temporarily, so be it if it works.

Good luck!

She isn't going to be able to get herself back to sleep by herself if she doesn't know how. First is to teach her how to fall asleep by herself. There are lots of options out there for teaching her to fall asleep. One that I have used is to lay them down and keep my hand on their back to comfort them and let them know that even though I am not holding them, I am still there. Then when they are able to fall asleep like that, I move down to the leg, then keep my hand on the bed, them just stay next to them. Slowly I move out of their view then out of the room. If she can fall asleep by herself, then she will be more likely to fall back to sleep as well. She might need your comfort at first, but she will get use to it. Good luck.

C.

i dont belive that cio method applys untill the child is one yr. Do you have a white noise machiene? i found that the white noise,black out shades, very little light and nice temp worked for us. at about five months our son hated to be swaddled. good luck.

I still have this problem with my 20 month old. If he wakes during night he expects to get into bed with me because that is what was easiest for me to get him to go back to bed fast but them I don't sleep well. The best thing that works is if my husband goes in when he wakes. My husband will change his diaper and put him back into the crib. I don't know why it works for my husband but it works every time and my son will sleep the rest of the night in the crib. Good luck!

Can you put a bed next to her crib and sleep with her for a little bit? I did this and then moved to the other side of the room before moving out completely. This gave my son some time to get used to his crib while still sleeping with me.

Here are some great sleep articles by expert Dr. Sleep that can help:
http://www.askdrsears.com/html/7/T070100.asp

I am not a big believer in crying it out either for infants, though around this age, is when it is more acceptable to allow her to start to learn how to self soothe.

For now, the bottle is her soothing mechanism for sleep. Once she wakes up during the lighter phases of the sleep cycle, she does not have the full bottle to get her back to sleep again, so she needs to learn how to find peace without it.

She is also outgrowing the swaddling and so don't feel bad if you stop doing that.

Also, is she napping well? Does she have a nap later in the day? If so, you may want to shorten it, or move it to an earlier time.