Hellobee Boards

I said 3 years but my 4 y/o still sometimes wakes up to pee. I think until close to 3 she was still waking up to pee and for other reasons because I remember being nervous for 2 kids waking up when her sister was born when she was 2.5.

20 month old usually wakes up 1-2 times crying. A lot of times I give into her requests to read a story but more recently we’ve been putting the hard stop on it and letting her cry. The challenge is I can’t sleep through her crying (sometimes I’ll go sleep in the basement). It seems like we’ll have a good 2 weeks and then she’ll wake up a bunch of times (like last night). It’s better when my husband goes in and finds her pacifier for her vs me. She’s kind of all over the place. She was a bad sleeper from the start so I just started going to bed really early so i could give myself a good span of time over which I might get in an actual 7 hours of sleep. These days I’m usually in bed by 9-9:30, but it was 8:30 at the latest when she was little.

In short, I’m still up an average of 2 times per night and my kids are 20 months and 4 I’m always tired. I also get up at 5:15 most days to run, and can’t sleep in on weekends (kids get up around 6-6:30 and it’s easier if I exercise before they’re up). If I get a solid 6 hours uninterrupted in a row I feel like superwoman.

Night weaning made a big difference for us. We had a sleep-eat association and once we broke it things were better. I don’t consider 5am a nighttime feed, and we would still do those with both our girls.

What sorts of table foods are you giving him? My kids were off purees by 10 months and eating all regular food. They were definitely sleeping better at that point but IDK if it was because they were eating more or because they were older. Maybe try more whole grain, protein-rich meals and full-fat dairy (yogurt, cheese, cottage cheese) to help fill him up (of course half your food should be fruit and veg, but if he’s eating “kid foods” like regular waffles or white pasta the switch could help). While they make a nice range of purees with grains and proteins now, if you’re mostly doing fruit and veg blends that’s not necessarily enough.

@ajsmommy we had to sleep train at 17 months unfortunately I didn't want to sleep train and didn't want to do CIO. My son had a lot of medical issues as a baby that really didn't get better until he was 14+ months old (severe reflux, food allergies, etc) and like you, I did not feel like I could let him CIO. His growth also fell off his curve at 9 month and he was still nursing a lot at night.

Starting around 13-14 months he STTN spontaneously like 1 night a week, so I thought "okay, we are making progress!"

Unfortunately it all went downhill from there. About 15-16 months, his sleep fell apart. It would take 2-3 hours to get him to fall asleep and stay asleep at night, which meant it would take me from like 6:30-9pm to get him to bed. THEN, he would wake up about midnight or 1am and be awake until 4 or 5 am. EVERY NIGHT. This was like the lowest point of my life. Maybe worse than when he was a newborn. I cried all the time. I almost quit my job because I could not function with such little, broken sleep. I almost got in several car accidents. I had to drive to and from work with the windows down and AC blasting to stay awake. My son was a WRECK all the time because he was exhausted.

So... we sleep trained out of necessity, because it was literally killing us. It wasn't easy, but it worked QUICKLY and amazingly well. We did Ferber-style (with checks). He cried off and on but began STTN almost immediately once he "learned" how to fall asleep on his own (that only took like 3 or 4 days). Now he is 2y4m and he STTN almost 12 hours every night unless he's really sick.

I have to say, as much as I was anti-CIO, anti-sleep training, it saved us and I won't hesitate to do it again. I feel your pain. I was so depressed, miserable, and exhausted.

We sleep trained at 13m with my son - it was getting worse and we were both miserable. The night training went pretty quickly - nap training took longer but it kept him a decent sleeper for a long time (issues started back up around 2.5 but now are improving again).

@Ajsmommy: It might be that he’s getting too much milk overnight so he’s not having much during the day. But really he should be done with bottles all together around a year anyway so not sure how that plays into things.

One thing you could try is to do less in the night time bottles. Can drop like an ounce every couple/few days. This will help you figure out if he is hungry or comfort feeding. And it will also hopefully try to shift more ounces to daytime/waking hours. 3-4oz per bottle seems really really small for his age. But I guess you did say he’s a small baby. My son was on 6/7oz per bottle around that age. How often does he take a bottle during the day?

I think by 18 months it was like 50/50 if we would have a night wake up or not. I think shortly after the second birthday we were more consistent with STTN. Last night all three kids were up.....

I'm still sort of in the thick of it but DD, now 2 weeks out from being one, is starting to sleep through a bit more often. She's also really low in percentiles and though she nurses a lot, I'm not sure how much she takes in during the day. She's really inconsistent with solids. Honestly, I've found it does make a difference in her sleep when she eats more before bed. We have started trying to make her dinner the most filling meal we possibly can and something she will definitely eat, and we save the trying new foods stuff for other times of day. So her dinner is often oatmeal with almond milk, peanut butter, chunks of banana, and chia seeds. Nights she doesn't eat well she's almost guaranteed to wake up.

We did do a little CIO to go from 2 wake ups to 1 wake up because the first one really seemed to be more out of habit than hunger. I set a time limit in my head, where if she woke before 4 am I'd let her CIO. Anything after and if she was awake for 15+ mins I'd feed her.

Like I said we are still working on it but hopefully you turn the corner soon! I'm high sleep needs as well, so I get it.

16 months when I weaned her. She's been pretty consistent since then.

Not sure if this is really late because he did off and on (like I think there was a month he did?) but not consistent until I think it was 20 months? Mostly we were at one wake up just to be held for months at the end.

My other one I sleep trained at 16 months. But she sttn off and on from a young age.