Hellobee Boards

Have you tried a white noise sound machine? My kids like them and I think it helps them rest through the normal noises of the house, dogs, us getting ready for bed/work, etc.

Have you tried a pacifier yet? Sometimes that sucking will sooth them right out.

Another trick is a ceiling fan on low. I think looking at that sometimes helps.

Good luck!!

Maybe try Karp? Sounds like when baby became more aware of the world he lost the ability to settle down. It's common! Maybe Karp's 5 S solution? Try searching for a YouTube video? It's faster than reading the book.

Your baby sounds like mine at that age. She didn't have any sleep "props" either, but she couldn't get through a sleep cycle. When you say he has been crying for 2 hours, was it alone or with someone trying to help him sleep? If you meant with someone else there, I would still try a sleep training method because he might just need to learn how to put himself to sleep. We had that problem where it seemed like nothing could get her back to sleep sometimes and one of us would be up with her for hours in the middle of the night. We ended up using Ferber's method (extinction with checks) and it fixed both falling asleep AND transitioning through sleep cycles, and it worked very quickly. She went from waking 8-10 times per night and us having a ton of problems getting her back to sleep each time to waking only 2-3 times per night to nurse and then she'd quickly go back down.

If you have actually tried sleep training and that's what resulted in the 2 hrs crying, I'd go to a sleep consultant at this point. It sounds really dire. Hugs.

@Miss Flamingo: Have you tried having him nap in the swing? That is the thing that ultimately helped my daughter to sleep better during the day. I had a crappy napper for a long time too and pretty much every nap she took at home was in the swing. We also used white noise (the exhaust fan in the bathroom) and it seemed to help.

Good luck! It's horrible when no one is getting any sleep.

I echo @looch: when LO was tiny - we didn't recognize LO's early sleep cues. We saw her yawn and thought it was time to put her down, but we waited too long and she was overtired and fought sleep.

The Sleep Lady's book helped us best identify LO's sleep cues and focus on creating a sleep schedule based on her needs. We stayed home as much as possible to focus on fixing LO's sleep for a week and it helped so much!

Our problem was a little different - she was great sleeping at night, but a horrible napper. She actually did best if she went down for a nap 45 minutes or an hour after waking up (all of the books said LO should be up for much longer before taking a nap, so we weren't looking for the cues)!