Trying to Get My 8 Month Old to Sleep More

I have the same prob. The only thing that works is letting her cry threw each wake up. She will learn to put her self back to sleep and not wake so much at night. It takes about a week...and it will be unbearable to hear...but sleep is near! Good Luck.

A good book to get "Healthy Sleep habits happy Child". Read this before you try to “sleep train“.

V.,
Funny how every Mom has completely different advice for you. The best advice I received on this topic was from my Pediatrician who said "your child will stop waking to nurse at night when you are ready to stop waking to nurse them at night". I personally haven't been ready yet. I nurse my daughter at least once every night. Sure I could let her cry it out, but my Husband and I choose not to. I suggest nursing her in bed with you so you can sleep and she can nurse. Don't feel pressured to make her stop or to cry it out. Trust your instinct and do what works for your family.

A.

we give our daughter an 8oz bottle of formula mixed with 6 scoops of cereal before bed, I nurse her during the day but have weaned her down to 2 sessions, the rest is baby food out of the jar and some table food, our baby sleeps 11 hrs. at night, so were happy with that

V.,
My son is almost 7 months and has only slept through the night 3 times since he was born! He wakes between 2 and 5 times a night. Sometimes I nurse him, or if he woke up within 1 1/2-2 hours of his last nursing, my husband bounces on a workout ball with him or rocks him back to sleep. Lately he is waking up 5 times again. I think it is a growth spurt because he is taking in so much milk each time and wakes up hungry for milk and cereal/fruit. He is also practicing rolling over (he can't roll from front to back yet) and I often find him on his belly upset that he can't roll back over. He didn't wake up from hunger. Maybe your baby is having a growth spurt, or maybe your baby is working on some developmental milestone. Also, how is the temperature in his/her room? We have temperature issues in the house we are renting and he wakes up from being too hot or cold sometimes too. I think it will pass. I am hoping my baby will sleep through the night soon too. I'm exhausted, but my baby is worth waking for. Maybe your husband can get up a couple of times and rock your baby back to sleep.
Hope this helps. :-)

Not sure when you are giving the formula but make sure it is at the bedtime feeding. I did this with both of my children and the formula always went much further before wake ups then the nursing did. And I had a huge 9.5 pound baby boy whom the breast was simply not enough!

Listen to Laura A, she seems super-smart. Not only is it completely natural, continuing to breast-feed on demand will delay your fertility returning if it hasn't already. You might consider keeping her in the same room at night, then you can just nurse her in bed and just fall back asleep.

I personally don't think it's natural or healthy to deny our children breastmilk at that age. And I certainly don't think she is just faking it. You want her to learn to just go to sleep hungry?

When I decided to stop nursing at night, I sent my husband in when our baby cried. After 3 nights of no breast milk, she slept through the night easily. This has worked for 2 friends also. However, my baby was 12mo and only nursing one time at night, occasionally twice. You may want to gradually decrease by sending your husband in for one cry then 2 then 3, etc until the baby sleeps through all the way. Good luck and try this over a long weekend when your husband can afford a lack of sleep :)

My first 4 kids were like this. I can offer no good advise, except don't stress about it. Some kids are needier than others. Just remember that you are being woke up by the cutest little baby around! He or she wants you and only you.

I just read every one else's responses and can't believe what I am hearing! It is awful to let your child go hungry until morning! If you woke up hungry you would eat or at least get up for a glass of water to fill you up! How about putting formula and cereal in bottles... It doesn't work! Baby Wise...? How about reading James Dobson's or Dr. Sears' books? At least they have hearts!!

If she's not crabby during the day (teething, low fever) then she probably could sleep longer at night if if mom leaves her there - THE HARDEST THING TO DO. Try extending bedtime a little, making sure the last meal of the day has plenty of protein & (good) fat, then don't get up at night. If anything, let you hubby get up and suffer through the crying for the few days until she realizes that Dad will come to rescue her, not mom, and he won't feed her. It might mean that you'll need to pump so he can feed her if she's hungry, but it's probably the closeness that she wants and nursing is the closest to mom she can get.
Or - could just be she's waking up to gas since she's eating now - or a million other reasons she can't tell you about! I'd let hubby handle the nighttime issue and make sure she really needs to nurse, not just snuggle.

I don't have any advice but I sympathize with you. My son is almost 9 months old and also wakes up 4 or 5 times to nurse. It has been quite frustrating because he used to sleep much better. Thanks for posting your request. I enjoyed reading other peoples advice to you. Good luck!

I was having the same problem with my son and my friend told me about a book called becomming baby wise. It teaches you this skedule and she swears by it. she had her son sleeping through the night at 8 weeks old. I have just started it and my son slept untill 6:30 this morning! i hope it can help you get some sleep too.

This is an interesting issue because everybody has to find their own way that they are comfortable with...Our pediatrician told us that when our kids had doubled their birth weight they no longer needed the nutrition throughout the night. We used that as a guide, and around your baby's age stopped feeding at night. It is a behavior/reward system. When your baby cries, she gets fed, which is a great system, but at some point when they don't need to eat they are still demanding it because they can, and they know they can get what they want. I am not suggesting that they are manipulative at all, it's not that deep. Some people are not comfortable with the crying it out, and that is totally a personal decision. We decided to stop going to our kids at night around 8 months of age (we have three) and it took about 3 nights for each of them to get that they weren't going to be fed at night anymore. The worst of the crying was 45 minutes the first night for my first son, and then the next night he cried for 15 minutes, the third night for 5 minutes, and the fourth night he slept through the night. He is six now, and he has slept through the night every night since then except while potty training, and even then he just got up ,peed, and went back to bed. Our other two (almost 5 and almost 2) also sleep all night long every night and have since we did the sleep training. I am expecting a fourth and work full time, so I couldn't see waking up at night and being able to handle the demands of my life. I don't think my kids are any better sleepers than any other kids, I think we just taught them to be good sleepers. However, I have lots of friends who feel as if it's cruel to do this, and I can understand that. I just feel as if three nights at a very young age to be able to be good sleepers for their whole lives is a good trade-off. I know a lot of grown-ups who are still not good sleepers, and I can't help but think that has got to be residual from childhood. The book Babywise does have a good system that involves more work but is less cold turkey. Good luck!

my advice comes from a consult from a pediatrician. after 5 months, a child should be able to sleep 6-8 hours at night after feeding. give her a long feeding before bed time, and a little cereal to fill her up. then put her to bed. if she cries, comfort her, but not with a breast. love her, hold her, rock her, sing to her, and put her back in the crib. do not feed her! she will not starve. start on a thursday or friday night so it won't go over into the next week during the challanging time when the baby doesn't get it.

I went through the same thing. You need to let her cry it. Trust me i know this is difficult. It will be a couple of rough nights for you but its a habit that she has gotten into. She needs to be eating 3 meals a day too. Mine was on baby cereal at 4 months and solids by 8. It makes a world of difference...
You have to be strong. Tell your husband he has to help you when she wakes up he needs to go into the room and pat her back or give her the pacifer if she takes one.. They are smart she will figure it out quickly. They just like to play us because they know we hate to hear them cry and want them to be happy. You need your sleep too! You have to be consistent!!!!

8 months old need food...she should be on solids. get her tummy full and she should sleep more. just milk and cereal/oatmeal isn't enough. good luck.

I have the same problem, so I would appreciate it if you pass on any advice that you get that works for you. Many of my friends tell me that babies get used to what they get. Of course when they wake up they would rather be cuddled and nuresed rather than alone in the crib. My friends tell me that it may take some crying, but that my 6month old son needs to learn how to self sooth and fall asleep on his own. I have not tried letting him cry more than a few minutes yet, but I may have to soon. There is a book called the Baby Wisberer, which talks about how to get your baby to sleep by picking them up and then putting them right back down in their crib. This also requires some crying, but is supposed to work after a few days. It is so hard to know the right thing to do, because my son is teething, so I am not sure if he is waking up in pain and needs comfort or not, so I really understand what you are going through. I don't know about you, but I really need some sleep too. I have also heard of a technigue where you let them cry for 5 mins go in a pat them and then leave for 5 mins and do it again until they are asleep. The next night you increase it by a min and you keep doing this until they sleep on their own. I am probably going to try this. I don't know if any of this is helpful, please let me know what you find that works.

Not all babies need solids and they do not guarantee that she will sleep longer. Try giving her the formula at bedtime, this should keep her full longer. However, breast fed babies process your milk faster so they get hungry quicker then formula fed babies.
What time does your daughter go to bed? I am asking this because if she goes to bed at 6:30, even 9, then the poor girl is going to be hungry. Have your husband feed her at some of the feedings, this way she doesn't always associate the boob with waking up.

At this stage we were co-sleeping so our daughter was fed on demand. Now that our daughter is 17 months she is sleeping in her own bed and sleeps thru the night.

Good Luck!

I agree with some others that feeding her the formula at night might help as it is heavier. Also, to ween my daughter off the multiple feedings, we just slowly took one feeding out of the equation. So for example, if she goes down at 8 and is up at 10, rock her, pat her, give her the pacifier or whatever, to hold her off until the next wakeup. After a few nights, she should hopefully stop needing that particular feeding and begin to sleep thru it. Slowly do it for each one- if she is waking up 4 or 5 times, this will take some time. Since you have 2 others, I'm sure you're experienced in this and perhaps this little one is needing more than the first two did. It's tough when they are crying which is why I think at least letting her know you are there is helpful for both of you. Our 5 1/2 month old is now sleeping soundly from 7:30 to 5 or 5:30 and then back to sleep after a feeding until around 7.
Good luck!

Dear V.,

Sorry, I have no advice - just my story and opinion (I seem to say that a lot here . . .)

I think that this is a personal thing - meaning everyone is different and will sleep through the night on their own schedule - some say that bottle fed or cereal fed babies sleep better longer - my own situation refutes this. Everything I read at this time said that sleeping through the night for an infant is different than how we normally think of it - that sleeping through the night for babies means 4-5 hours at a time. My son (bless his heart), at five weeks (and by the way, breast-fed only) went five hours one night, then ten hours the next. The third night, he woke up after five hours again, but the fourth, he slept ten hours AGAIN. On the fifth night, when he woke up after five hours, I said, "No way!," stuck his pacifier in his mouth and patted his bottom and he went back to sleep for another five hours. He slept ten hours through the night from that point on . . . My "baby" was also a very good sleeper (and also breast-fed only - at least at this point) and was sleeping through the night by the time I went back to work when she was six weeks old. (This was always a concern for me because I have worked graveyard since my son was born, and worried about asking someone else to get up with my baby during the night.) We went through some other issues with my baby, however, and at six months, I was told that I needed to wake her and feed her during the night (which I found slightly insane). I was able to stop feeding her through the night around 12-18 months. But when she was three and four, she was still not able to get through the night without getting up. It was my mother who made the connection between her still getting up at this age, and the fact that I had been instructed to wake her and feed her through the night as a baby. (The good news is that she did eventually out grow that habit - thank God! - and at fifteen sleeps through the night just fine.) Circumstances when my middle child joined our family were not easy from the beginning - though I had a normal pregnancy and delivery (though REALLY fast!), and even though she was my biggest baby at eight and a half pounds, she spent a week in the NICU with pneumonia, my two year old had a horrible stomach flu a month later that lasted an entire week, and then one week after returning to work, I came down with chicken pox (which of course I passed on to the two year old and then the two month old! It was the longest six weeks of my life!) So, wouldn't it just figure that her sleep pattern would be screwed up, too. I don't know when it really started, but I noticed it when I was nearly hysterical with fever from the chicken pox. She wanted to play all night long. She was wide awake and happy - as long as she had company. But I had a fever - and it was going up. I finally told her, "I don't care what you do, I need some sleep, I have to get up with your brother in a couple hours," and I parked her in her bassinet across the house (and then listened to her cry through the vents). I tried to keep her awake during the day so that she would sleep at night, but when I was too sick to watch the kids and gave them up to my husband, he simply followed her lead, so when I was better, she was up all night and sleeping all day. Now this I fought - I woke her up every two hours during the day to feed her in an attempt to get her on a more normal day/night sleep schedule. Honestly, if she had been my first baby, I don't know if I would have ever had another. (And by the way - she is still my most difficult child at seventeen!)

I know that we all need our babies to sleep through the night, because our lives don't stop when we are blessed with their presence, but unfortunately they all do this in their own time.

Good luck! And remember, this too shall pass!
B.

hi,
I might not have an adive for you but I just want to show simpathy for you since I had been through the same issue with my baby boy as well. He is now 10 months 1/2 now but when he was between 5-7 months old he always woke up at nights about 4-5 times to nurse. I could not find a way to get him to sleep all the way through the night. So I decided that I would just give up. So I let him sleep with me so he could nurse and go back to sleep. I figured that that was so conforting for him since he has been teething and some times they wake up to get comfort from mommy and the booby or, if your are exclusively breastfeeding him as I am, the food demand is always growing as they grow. I learned that breastfeeding babies need more feedings than formula-fed babies. So I just go with the flow. It was a challenge for me since I wanted him to stay in his crib, but with time I managed to keep him next to me in bed if I fall sleep with no problem, and some times I would stay awake until he slept and put him back in his crib. But, it gets better, now that he is 10 months old he wakes up about 2 times to nurse and I do the same thing still. Some babies like to have booby times more often than others. Hang in there, it will get better.

Susana

Hi There,
I feel for you too! The book "The Baby Whisperer" really helped me. Her suggestions on getting your baby to sleep through the night are great. She suggests to not use the Ferber method or the bed sharing method, but her own methods which are in between the other two (sorry hope that isnt confusing).
I also use aromotherapy mist on her sheets before she goes to sleep. It's completely safe and natural. Let me know if you want more info.

In Secrets of the Baby Whisperer (book) she would say that your baby is really just using you as a pacifier. She has good suggestions for that and similar parenting challenges. Grab a copy and you'll be all set!

I am not cure what ages your children are, but i had 3 very close together. My oldest was 29 months when my baby was born, and there was one in between. I used to read a story to everybody in my bed and then we would all lay down together for at least an hour. Usually everyone would get a much needed nap including me! I also kept my baby in my bed when they were going through that. They liked the warmth and comfort of being near me when they were teething. They could nurse at will and we all slept better. We had a huge bed and I am a light sleeper so this was a good solution for us. Lastly, we made a larger opening in a few nipples and mixed breast milk and rice cereal in a thin mixture for the bottle. This gave more substance to the night time feedings and helped baby sleep longer. Good luck!

That is 100% normal for a breast fed baby.... and since all babies were meant to be breast fed, you can translate that into, it is 100% natural, and exactly as nature/God intended. That isn't to say it's easy for moms these days, especially those who do not sleep right next to their child. I learned to sleep right through night feedings with my four. Before you know it she will be a teenager and you will be longing for these days. :0)

It maybe that she needs a little bit more substantial food during the day. Then maybe she can make it through the night. Breast milk is the best but it goes through them quicker. Maybe a little more cereal with pumped milk?? At 9 months I weened my daugter because of this very problem. It just wasn't enough for her. I pumped as much as I could and added to her cereal. Ask your doctor how much more solids you can start giving her.
The nursing at night could also be providing comfort. My daughter was a big time binky baby (pacifier), especially at night. When she was about 2 years old we stared weening her off of that too. I know a lot of people don't like the pacifier but it never hurt my daughter. Just provided her with the comfort she needed at the time. You will know if the pacifier works right away and also when to ween her off of it.
I hope this was helpful.