Hellobee Boards

"Have I broken my baby?" made me laugh.

I've just come to expect that, in the first couple of years, there is no "regular" with sleep. You'll be trucking along with a really great routine for a while, then BAM - teeth/viral rash/regression/JBBMFB. Things will be manageable again soon - just keep telling yourself that "this, too, shall pass." Go with your gut - you're not gonna break your baby.

@ms.janedoe: My LO was never a good sleeper to begin with, but when she started to stand, her sleep got a million times worse. I let it go for 3 weeks thinking (hoping) it would resolve itself and when it didn't, I did CIO again (we'd done it before but it didn't "stick" because she got really sick about a week later).

I have to tell you--CIO is much worse when they are standing! One night, she was violently shaking the crib bars and banging on the wall like a little prison inmate. SIGH. poor girl.

But it worked and her sleep is back to her normal.

Okay, so D's not standing yet and he hasn't been teething since we did CIO, so take this with a grain of salt. So this is what we did/learned, and D sleeps about 11-12 hours straight most nights:

- The first few weeks of training I just let him CIO before 2 am. He had been sleeping until 3 or 4 and waking up to eat, so I knew if he woke up earlier he probably wasn't hungry and just needed to figure it out.

- When we were having consistent wake ups around 3/4am I would feed him, he'd fall back to sleep, and then I'd put him back in the crib. Sometimes we needed a pacifier to get him back to sleep if he woke up on transfer.

- We wait 10 minutes for all wake ups. Even if he's screaming his head off. Several times he's gone back to sleep after 7 minutes.

- Now that he's learned to put himself to sleep he pretty much only ever wakes up because he's hungry. I started to be able to tell on the days he ate less that he'd have a MOTN waking. Two nights ago he had a waking for the first time in like 2 weeks, and it was a night that he fell asleep during his last bottle and only ate half of it. On most days, in order to tank him up as much as possible during the day, we offer him 8oz bottles 5x/day (sometimes he eats only 6 or 7 though) and he gets 3 solids meals a day where he eats at least a whole jar or pouch, sometimes 2.

I know you mentioned H doesn't eat all that much solids. Maybe you need to stagger like I do? It feels like you're feeding the baby ALL DAY, but it's been worth it to get great sleep out of him. His schedule is: 7:15a bottle, 9:30a solids, 10:30a bottle, 12:30a solids, 1:30a bottle, 3:30a bottle, 5:30a solids, 7:00a bottle.

@Anagram: Some nights are better than others given he's not teething. If he's teething, forget about it. Something is going on this week where he wakes up, sits up, and lays back down only to roll around until he finds a comfy spot for a few minutes then rinse and repeat. He'll shriek/yell while doing this, but never cry. No idea what's going on now. His 4 lateral incisors broke through 2 weeks ago so I'm wondering if he's teething again? Maybe? I don't know. We no longer feed MOTN either.

@Alivoo01: yeah, teething is the devil. I think we're on a teething break right now, too. She's holding steady at just her 6 teeth.

@ShootingStar: I agree with many of your recommendations! My lo had been a pretty shitty sleeper for quite awhile and I was tired of getting up constantly. We really started increasing his bottle feedings and he has slept well ever since.

@ms.janedoe: I might recommend trying not giving meds before bed one night. We had been giving our lo meds before bed but he would wake up after about 4-5 hours (likely when the meds wore off) and wouldn't be keen to take more medicine half asleep. So we figured there was a chance that being abruptly woken up with pain might be worse than falling asleep with steady pain.