bedtime

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

yeah i think maybe so! exciting

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.

Let her cry. She's old enough. If you can't really do it, you can do it in a roundabout way. Check the clock for ten minutes, then go in, put her in bed and tell her to go to sleep (or even better, say nothing). Repeat ad nauseam. If you can handle it, do longer. Like first ten minutes, then 15 minutes,.... Or you can also sit with her, not saying anything and just wait till she goes to sleep. Trust me, she only does it, because she's "rewarded" (you give her attention, even if you're angry). :-) I know, it's easier said than done. If all else fails, let her sleep in your bed. I know how it is if you're pregnant.

Oh yeah, you're just back, right? I mean, it's only been a week or so, right? Could very well be the fucked up time zone. Some need a long time to adjust.

She's got until Monday and if she's not cured, she's sleeping in the garage.

Really my only problem w/Megan's sleep right now is that our cat goes into her room at 5am and wakes her up with his yowling, and then she usually can't go back to sleep again. If we close her bedroom door he just starts banging on her door during the night, which is even louder than his crying. This cat drives me crazy.

cosign (xp)

I would tell that cat that she's got until Monday and if she's not cured, she's sleeping in the garage.

Sleep training, Round 142

All week, she's been waking up several times through the night, often not going back down for 2-3 hrs. Makes everyone but her irritable. She just wants to play! Teething, yes, but that's been going for months (no teeth yet, tho). Also, practising her new nearly 7-month-old skills, sitting up, grabbing, rolling around, crawling. The only consolation is that after being up all night, she'll have two 2-hr naps throughout the day, and one shorter one.
Last night, almost on a dare, we bumped her bedtime up an hour. Slept straight through, 10.5 hrs. Too early to tell if this fixes everything or is at least a semi-pattern, but cause for great optimism/rest.

To PP: So the garage?

After two weeks of hardcore-cry-it-out sleep training, my 7-month-old daughter sleeps beautifully through the night after 15 minutes or less or tortured crying. Usually it's more like 5 minutes. Howev, her naps have shrunk down to 30 mins and she has developed a terrible separation anxiety. Anytime we leave her in a room, she freaks out. Makes going to the bathroom awful.
otherwise, two teeth in the last week, and she's pulling herself up into standing position.

nath, the kidd slept peacefully for nearly 12 hours last night.

Granted, it was in our bed with her feet in our face, but at least we weren't arguing about whether Wonder Pets was on.

i've found that if we give the big L solids any time after 5pm it makes going to bed @ 7:30 nearly impossible. fwiw.

wow. i find if we dont feed beeps dinner right before the bedtime routine she wakes up at 4am hungry :(

yeah - you know, i am probably just making that up and it's something else entirely. parenthood is like this giant game of making up stories that help you make sense of things. i bet we're right 50% of the time MAX.

(I know there's a photo quarantine thread, but allow me this one transgression... if you want your kids to sleep on a couple of folded duvets on the floor at their nan's, tell them the story about the princess and the pea... NB, may not work with boys)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2480/3727220813_e09e2753d7.jpg

ha!

We have just started Alice's transition from cot to bed, though being poor we have not actually forked out for a bed yet, just removed one side of the cot (which is very low and still plenty long enough for her). First night - found her in the middle of the carpet at 4am, whimpering a bit but still half-asleep. Last night - found her UNDER the bed at 5.30am. I don't think she's been falling out so much as sliding herself off, but is this normal? Should we have got a proper bed with a guard? Or is she just not ready?

We tried this a while ago, when Beeps was a little over 2, but would find her wandering down the hall not knowing where she was or rattling the gate at the top of the stairs at 1am. "They" say you shouldn't make the move until the kiddo is three because they cant grasp the concept of the imaginary walls of a bed yet. Alice must be close to three though. My friend had pretty much instant success with her almost 3 year old by pushing the bed against a wall and using a guardrail. So maybe making them feel as confined as possible is the trick? Let us know how it goes and what works for you guys because weve got to get Beeps out to make way for kid no2 soonishly.

Alice isn't three until December and maybe she does it find it too confusing, although very much likes the *idea* of a big girl bed...

Update: after the first couple of nights A has been a dream with the bed, in fact the only problem now is stopping her from getting in it while she's still fully dressed! Once she worked out that she could get herself up in the morning she was delighted, and will happily play in her room for half an hour before coming to find us.

Woah Nice! Did you do anything differently or was it just a matter of getting used to it?

We didn't do anything different, just kept bunging her in and hoping for the best! She does have a wall on one side of her which I think has helped.

Howie went into his big bed on Saturday! So far so good, apart from a slight confusion about duvets and the use thereof (cue screams at 1am of "Mummy! Mummmeeeee! I WANT IT ON!!!!!!!!!" as one leg is ever so slightly sticking out from under the duvet). And pillows seem to be for sleeping next to, not on:

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_Q2cuqOo8v8M/SpKMEamSoWI/AAAAAAAAMJc/scOPXA4Kaes/s800/photo.jpg

I'd like one week of uninterrupted sleep. I got two nights of sleep! But last night was just horrendous. I didn't sleep from one till 4. ARGH. When will this stop? I really need my sleep back. :-(

how's it going?

how old are yours again? have they always been trouble at night?

dudes. 5 days of henry sleeping from 10 - 7am. Actually he woke at 5 this morning but he did sleep until 8:30am to make up for it earlier in the week. hes kind of a champ for a 7 week old

Wow you must breed good sleepers!

Sunny, can you come and teach my kids to sleep.

TH, they are 2 and almost four. This night was hellish yet again. First Ophelia woke up for a glass of water. (Not that it matters: I placed a glass next to her bed previously and she just woke up and demanded sth else.) Then Elisabeth woke up several times. She was wide awake: giggling for a good 15 minutes... and then screamfest again. It was two am when I went back to sleep. They woke up at seven. I was so out of it, I nearly ran into a wall. lolz

Ophelia was great until the age of about 2,5. Elisabeth has been a ride in hell since she was born. Actually no, the first three weeks she slept. Then it was hell. lolz but not really

Someone we know recommended this book, but I don't know: http://www.sleepyplanet.com/products/sleepeasy_book.php
The amazon page has endorsements from Greg Kinnear, Ben Stiller and Conan O'Brien! So there's that, haha. We have been incredibly lucky with Sylvie so far -- so much so that I hesitate to even talk about it for fear of jinxing. For the past 2 weeks, she's pretty much been sleeping from 9ish to at least 7am, w/o waking up. She'll make a little noise from time to time, but then falls right back to sleep. She's only 4 months, so teething hasn't even started yet. I expect that'll put an end to these long nights.