bedtime

Howie always used to fall asleep in the car -- very handy when going to visit relatives, as we could time the journey to coincide with his nap and have peace and quiet all the way. Sadly, the last couple of times we've driven anywhere this has failed to work, as the prospect of shouting "Car! Bus! Truck!" is far too exciting to sleep through.

boys

somehow this has become a non-issue.

naptime's still a challenge but bedtime established itself as some time between 7:30 and 8, like clockwork. i have no memory of how this occurred.

how long does yr guy sleep until?
our girl settled into a regular 11pm bedtime, sleeping until a very decent hour in the am, but then my wife decided that 11 was too late for a baby to be up until, and we tapered her down to an 8pm bedtime, but then she started waking up, like really waking up at 5am, which just don't fly. So now she goes to bed between 9 and 10 and wakes up just in time for me to change a diaper and hand her off to her mom before I go to work, instead of, um getting up two hours befoer I would otherwise get up to go to work. The tradeoff, though, is that we had "free time" at the end of the day when she was going to bed at 8.

well for a couple of months we did an 11pm snack, where i'd go in with a bottle and kind of half-rouse him, enough to get it down him, and he'd go right back to sleep. then he'd wake up at 2, and again at 5, like clockwork. last week we were like hmm, let's see what happens if we skip that 11pm meal. the first night we skipped it he slept through til 6am and it's been like that for a week now. 6 is still.. sorta sucky but often he'll go back to sleep on his own til 7 which is awesome when it happens.

With O I had a pretty strict routine (she more or less handed it to us): eat at seven, wake up at eleven and then sleep till seven. She skipped the 11 pm snack at four months. Elisabeth had the wake-up-every-2/3-hours routine for more than a year. But now she goes to sleep at about 7 pm and wakes up at... EIGHT AM.

I fear when we will go to Japan next months. Urgh. Ophelia never did have a problem (only she didn't sleep much on the plane) but Elisabeth? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

how did you all transition from rocking to sleep to just leaving the kid in the crib? we still havent managed this with beeps. i really doubt it would fly with her at all.

Hmm, we did sleep training when Howie was 9 months but a two-year-old requires a different strategy, I should think. Does she have a regular bedtime routine (bath, stories, milk etc)? If so then I might be tempted to just follow the normal routine then put her to bed (with lots of explaining that she's going to sleep, you'll see her in the morning), leave the room then see what happens -- she might just surprise you. (You could practise putting her dolls to bed during the day, too.)

If this upsets her too much then you could try a 'gradual withdrawal' method, the idea of this is that you start with rocking her to sleep, then step by step over a few days at a time move slowly away from her. Eg you cuddle to sleep for a few days, then hold hands, then sit by the cot, then move closer to the door, until eventually you can leave the room while she's awake.

There is a good explanation of the gradual withdrawal method here.

Thanks, Meg! Good advice.

our dude goes to sleep on his back in the crib with a dummy and some shushing. no idea what would happen if we didn't use the dummy. chaos probably.

yeah beeps never wanted a pacifier. lord knows we tried to make her want one. probably a good thing now though.

uh oh

sleep is becoming rocky, no idea why

Is he 4/5 months?

Is he 4/5 months?

hahahaha, sounds about right! Aidan's sleep got horrendous round about this time - he was waking up every hour, drove me potty.

Yep, this was when Howie's sleep went completely haywire. I think it's partly growth spurt and partly all the developmental gubbins. I survived (just!) by co-sleeping, it seemed a bit easier to deal with when I didn't have to get out of bed.

also teeth maybe? or is that too early?

Oh god, I'd forgotten about teeth. Got to go through all that again...

I never understand why, given that people are usually all to happy to tell parents to be that they'll be shattered, the birth will be horrendous, abandon all hope ye who enter here etc. that more isn't said about how horrible teething is, and more importantly HOW LONG IT LASTS!!!! I seriously had no idea that teething would be such a protracted nightmare.

eep

care to elaborate?

Well I just thought that teeth would come in pretty quickly but it's such a drawn out process. Some kids don't seem that bothered, others go through what seems like torture. With Aidan he didn't get his first tooth until almost his first birthday and several would come in at a time, so we'd have a week or so of yucky nappies and an unhappy restless sleeping Aidan. It felt that from 11 months - 14 months was just relentless. A tooth would come through and he'd go back to his normal happy self, and it seemed like a week later we'd be back to the miserable whingey boy.

It's just something that no-one had really mentioned to us, so we didn't know to expect it

Oh yes. Up to three weeks of clinginess, moaning, manic dribbling, sleepless nights and horrific nappies, then a tooth pops through, then you get a short break then it all starts again. Repeat x 20 baby teeth until driven slightly insane.

why are the nappies crazy??

babbys get diarrhea, fevers and runny noses when teething although no doctor will admit the correlation

the official line is they get sick because their fingers are in their mouths all the time when their teeth hurt

My first pediatrician said it was bollox. Hey, whatevs, dude. Who cares about runny noses, it's all about SCREAMING in the middle of the night (and day) with no solution at all. Well, for Elisabeth. But then she pretty much did that anyway, day and night.

TH, you can never know. Ophelia pretty much slept through teething. They both were early: around 4 months but it can just as well start at 12 months. Wait until they get the molars. Honestly, I felt for Elisabeth. Imagine the pain and not understanding why. I read how it feels and me, I'd probably wanted to tear my mum's head off for creating me. Actually now I think about it, Elisabeth had that look in her eyes. heheh.

We've noticed that when Elisabeth is crying (short bursts), she actually has her eyes closed so maybe sleeps through it?

I just came on here to brag that TWICE yesterday we put Alice down awake and she fell asleep herself after only ~5 minutes of crying but now I'm feeling like I shouldn't brag because so many troubles (teething! mysterious 4/5 month grumpiness!) are just around the corner.

this is after a week of "sleep training," mind

Teething! All our hard work establishing routines and bedtimes and FUN BABY TIME dashed! Still no pearls, but O THE DROOL!
Dismantled and remantled crib in baby room about three weeks ago. Took a while, but as of the last three nights, I'm the only one bothered by it. She reliably sleeps solid from 8:30 p.m. to 6 a.m. give or take either way.
This morning, she pointed at me and said "Da-da!" and I was so proud and then she pointed at the window and said the same thing, and likewise to EVERYTHING else in our house.

pls help w/ strategies to skip middle-of-the-night feedings

going crazy here--it seemed like we were getting better, moving forward, had it down to bedtime 7/7:30, a feed at maybe 10:30pm, then 3am, then up at 7. Now she's back to waking and wanting a feed every 3 hours MAX.

What age is she?

The thing I learned (the hard way) with Howie is that infant sleep is not a linear progression of longer and longer times between wakings (except for the lucky few). Can be affected by teething, health, learning to roll/crawl/walk/whatever, heat, phases of the moon...

The other thing I learned is that everything is just a phase and will pass...

She's four months and a bit. Yeah, we seem to be learning over and over again how much/quickly she changes. And I know that there are/will be many 'steps backward' on the way to maturity. But nine feeds per twenty-four hours is a bit o_O

four months is a bad time, bad bad time. I would burst into tears just walking in the park because I was so tired and worn down by night feeds. It did pass. You just have to work out what's important to you and figure out from that what you need to do - put up with the extra feeds or do something else to try and change it.

Are you co-sleeping? Would make the night feeds less of an issue (presuming that she's still breastfed, wouldn't help with bottles!)

FWIW I don't think nine feeds in 24 hours for a 4 month old is over the top at all.

Nine feeds a day at that age seems pretty normal to me tbh. If you think about how many times you have a drink, snack or meal every day I bet it adds up to more than nine.

I am personally not a fan of trying to cut night feeds with such a young baby, but you can try to change your routine so you're better rested. I found co-sleeping made the night feeds a lot easier to deal with. Also for a few nights you could go to bed when she does, to catch up on some of the sleep deficit.

(Says she who is still up at 11.30pm when the baby will be awake in an hour or so for his first nighttime feed, then every 2 or so hours after that!)

I am personally not a fan of trying to cut night feeds with such a young baby

^^Should clarify this, of course I don't blame anyone for trying to get their baby to sleep as long as possible at night! What I mean is I'm not a fan of anything involving leaving the baby to cry at this age. I tend to assume that if they want feeding then they are hungry. But of course you could try cuddling/patting or giving a dummy first. (NB this never worked for us!)

See-saw sleeping patterns ahoy! Have had two consecutive full night (8 p.m. to 5/6 a.m.) sleeps, after two weeks of a return to frequent wakings. We got so used to her sleeping the night through that when she started waking every TWO hours (pretty sure it's teething) it really knocked us on our asses.
Have kinda-sorta come to terms that this is just how it's going to be for the next forever years.

Maybe superfluous advice, but have you raised the bed? Sleeping flat can be painful when they teethe. Also, they have ointments (?) you can rub on the gum. And if they are screaming for a very long period, it's not a bad idea to give a mild painkiller.

Yes, we've got teething gel, and sometimes give her paracetamol, if we think she's got bad teething pain. It's less that she's fussy or cranky (though of course she can be those things enough), and more (I think) that she's gotten into bad habits. I realize that this is par for the course for these months, but it's so frustrating to know that she *can* go five-six hours between feeds at night (she's done it! she didn't starve!) but that she just won't.

All of this would be a lot easier to manage, for K, if she wasn't trying to finish a lot of (academic) work at the moment. So she really needs her evenings, after the baby goes down, for work (so she can't, say, catch up on sleep from 8-11pm), and she needs a fresh brain as well. Which is pretty much impossible on 5-6 hours of interrupted sleep a night.

wow everything was fine and now... yowling for 45 mins before sleeping, every night - i feel like we've stepped back in time three months!

(he is about 6.5 months old)

Has he started teething? That can really interfere w/sleep.

once he actually gets to sleep he's out like a light, is why i think it's poss not teething. but whaddo i know.

we have the opposite problem - crashing at bedtime and waking up two hours later not wanting to go back to sleep until 6am. no idea how to fix this.

<Guesses>

Tracer: separation anxiety? Going to bed too early or too late?

SS: Erm, got me stumped there. Does she still have a nap in the day?

Archie only woke once for a feed last night! However, attempts to transition Howie to a duvet and bed have proven disastrous, so we have gone back to sleeping bag and cot. Really have no clue how him in a bed is going to work.

She naps for two hours in the day time. Shes become really clingy lately. Needs one of us with her all the time including when she wakes up in the night. Its kind of killing us.

We tried to get beeps to sleep in a bed too but it didnt work out. I later read that kids under 3 dont have the cognitive ability to understand the imaginary confines of a bed and they subsequently freak out when you put them in one.

well now he woke up three hours after going to sleep. something is definitely up.

TEETH

Same here. Ophelia never went for co-sleeping. Elisabeth still is a very fussy sleeper. But y'know you have to adapt. Be flexible. I do realize I was (and still am) very quick to run if she cries. The other day I went to the attic after I put her to bed for her afternoon nap. She cried. I decided to just go up for a minute. She stopped after two minutes. lol

I'm not a big fan of co-sleeping as I tend to roll over. I know many say that a mom will wake up if she rolls on top of her child, but I woke up once or twice with her lower body under mine. I worry way too much. But she's older now and I see less danger in doing it. :-) But I did co-sleep (when necessary, when she wanted).