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@mrskc: i totally agree that baby sleeping habits are luck of the draw. i think each baby gets to sleeping thru the night on their own schedule. sorry you are having such a tough time with getting A to sleep. re: bedtime routine, we do bath (only every other day), pj's, baby facial (lotion and aquaphor), bedtime story, nurse, lullaby and put down. most of the time she is awake and drowsy. naps, on the other hand, are hit or miss with us. 40 mins is the norm, but occasionally we get 1-1.5 hours, she cries sometimes when we put her down. i don't have much advice, but sending over some hugs and telling you to hang in there!

so i decided to give CIO for night weaning a try, per our pedi's advice...she cried for 45 mins starting at 2:30, fell asleep for 10, whined for 5 mins and then fell back asleep until 7:30 this morning. of course DH and i were arguing about it at 3am after he went in there to soothe her, which just made her so MAD and he came back and declared "OK i'm going to feed her!" even though he told me before we went to bed that he was supportive of CIO. and he came up with all these reasons why tonight wasn't a good night for CIO...so we're arguing, arguing and finally she's quiet. i don't know how tonight will go, but last night wasn't as bad as i thought it was going to be. she's cried/whined up to 1.5 hours before, after which i gave in and fed her. she was happy this morning...ravenous, but happy. onto night #2.

@mrskc: yup he's rolled belly to back a bunch of times, during the day. He's very capable of doing it, he just seems to forget how during the night!

@SleepyMonkey: how is it going??

So last night I went to bed at 9pm, thinking LO would at least sleep til 1am so I could get a good chunk of sleep...and of course he wakes up at 11pm screaming! Even when I try to go to bed early, I STILL only get 2 hours in a row! WTF?!

So after almost two months of not great sleep, today I'm having a consultation with a "Baby Whisperer" postnatal advisor.

I went to one of her seminars yesterday and she had some really good info so hopefully she'll be able to help us out! I'm thinking that I probably need to get A into a routine to help her sleep and yesterday the Baby Whisperer mentioned that active babies (like mine) often have different needs and strategies to ensure they get good sleep.

Last night A went down easily at 1915 but grizzled at 2030, woke and nursed at 2145, grizzled again at 2305, woke again at 0015 and didn't go back to sleep until I got into bed with her at 0115. After all that she still woke for her usual "night" feed at 0520 then got up for the day at 0645 - ack!!! And then this morning I popped her in her cot to play while I had a shower and she put herself to sleep - sigh.

I won't talk about what seems to be going on at our house with sleep......sorry some of you are going through it so tough.....I have deffffinitely been there, so totally feel for you.

She had an awful day though today....just awful.

@Tidybee: aw poor C

@Beebug: haha I'm jealous That's all I'll say!

@hilsy85: we went cold turkey!

We are back to using it a little more now, but she still doesn't sleep with it unless I get desperate from 5am onward with either bottle + back to sleep or getting a little later sttn!

@MrsRcCar: With 8 zillion wake ups a night because she was losing it and couldn't get it back in (then) it was so worth cutting it, her sleep became so amazing!!! Then she got sick and that went out the window, lol. Then she got better, we re-trained and now we have sort of given it to her again, but not for sleep, just when needed.....like all day yesterday and today, omg save us.

She must be teething? Something, oh man. Today and yesterday times have been hell. I am sure DH didn't believe how bad yesterday was, he is home today and she is just baaad.

Omg you guys...I am losing it. I bought LO a pair of sunglasses from Amazon (our second pair after losing the first pair last weekend) and I"m pretty sure I threw them in the garbage! I took the garbage out before noticing they were missing, so they're gone for good. This lack of sleep is getting to me...I feel like I"m just on autopilot most of the day. DH told me my Mother's Day gift would be a third pair of the sunglasses

@Beebug: how is C doing?

@MrsRcCar: hope N's naps are better soon!

PS yay new avatar for me!!

@Beebug: @SleepyMonkey: sorry you guys have been struggling with naps!

As you might have seen on the other thread i started, we started sleep training on Friday night...The first night was not bad--20 min of crying to go to sleep and then he woke up at 1am, I did checks at 3, 5, and 7 minutes, and then he slept til 6am! Last night, he went to sleep no problem, woke at 1:30 (I nursed him), and then cried at 3:30 and 4:40 but went back to sleep within 3 minutes. Then he woke up at 5:08 and we did one 5 minute check, but like some of you said, the check seemed to piss him off more so then we just left him and watched on the monitor. He cried on and off (mainly fussing with some cries) for 23 minutes and then went to sleep and slept til 7:15. So not too bad! I hope tonight is even smoother...I'm surprised that it's not harder for me to hear him cry (is that wrong?)--I think because I can see him and know that he's mainly just pissed off/angry, and not hurt or scared.

Anyway, happy mother's day to you all!

@hilsy85: Ummmm amazing!!!!

Is he still sleeping? I wouldn't let him sleep in too late, but would definitely enjoy the cup of coffee

C got a handle on the naps again (sort of) but is doing the weird 10-11pm waking, crying, crying, and crying. She eventually settles again, but we definitely are keeping an eye on her to see if she actually needs us or if she's just being silly.

Hope everyone had a good Mother's Day. I just finished my morning tea, C went down for a nap at 9am!

@hilsy85: Here's hoping! Even if he deviates a bit, knowing it's possible is amazing! I know I kept that in mind and still am a bit in denial to say she sttn's to anyone in real life! I really feel like since she started sttn 3 naps would be better than her two, so I think that's why our naps are sucking, so hopefully we will figure things out here soon.

@hilsy85: annnd she just woke. Yah....3 nap day today for sure. Yuck when she wakes grumpy.

@mrskc: it has been So SO much better. We are down to one wake up a night (I'm happy with that, I didn't want to night wean yet), and he puts himself back to sleep. Have you let him go 15-20 minutes while crying? I ask because like you, we totally thought LO would end up crying for hours and hours...in actuality, the longest he cried was 23 minutes, and that was on and off (cried for 2 minutes, quiet for 5, fussing for 2, etc). So maybe give it a shot! He might surprise you...

Also, I really really recommend reading Ferber's book...I think he discusses super modified techniques in there, and I think he also talks about how to sleep train while LO is co sleeping. Also, don't feel pressured to sleep train if your situation is working for you...I think it's hard to hear that other babies are maybe sleeping longer, in their cribs, etc...but if your situation is working for you guys, then go with it! Although it sounds like maybe it's getting a bit old at this point?

So that being said, last night was terrible...Lo rolled onto his tummy and got annoyed when he woke up in the MOTN. So we were up for an hour rolling him back. But today, he's napped on his tummy for both naps (only took 2 today!) and went to bed on his tummy so maybe he'll be ok with it tonight.

He took 1 2hr 15 min this morning and a 2.5 hour nap at noon! I had to wake him up from that one, we needed to leave the house to run some errands. we'll see how tonight goes...

@mrskc: aw that sounds really rough in your situation I would have done the same thing...I can't take hysterical crying for more than like 2 minutes. I would say if you do modified CIO (with checks at intervals, which is what we did), I would have your Dh do the checks...I feel like when they see/smell/hear us, the babies get more upset when we're not picking them up. It sounds like he's not hungry tho and doesn't need anything, per se, when he cries ? More that he just wants snuggles with you (I'm taking that from the fact that you said he fake cries/complains in the beginning). It's also so tough since he's reverse cycling...hugs!

Does he go back to sleep if you nurse him? Or is it a struggle to get him to sleep even after he nurses? And does he go down easily for naps--he does right? One thing Ferber says is if LOs go to sleep on their own in one situation (i.e. for naps, or at the beginning of the night), then sleep training will be much much easier. I hope things get better soon!

@mrskc: ah gotcha...that was L's problem too. We were rocking him/nursing him to sleep in the MOTN so when he woke during sleep transitions, he couldn't put himself back to sleep. Does he have a lovey? We introduced one and it seems to help!

Another thing is, I read on the babycenter sleep forum (great resource--just google, babycenter teaching your baby and toddler to sleep) that waking every 1.5-3 hours all night is a sign of overtiredness. At first it didn't make sense to me because LO was getting 3 naps a day...but I realized that the frequent night wakings were seriously taking a toll on him, and causing him to be more tired the next day, and creating this cycle. That's what really made me feel serious about sleep training--it wasn't just that I was tired, he was too (even though I didn't realize it at first).

@mrskc: I think some kids are really affected by that stuff and some kids aren't, AJ could definitely be one of those who is really affected by all the stuff he's learning!...at the same time, they'll be going through all these milestones for a while--same with teething, they go through teething til they're like 2! So I feel like there's gotta be some middle ground where we can help them sleep better even when they're feeling frazzled from all the changes they're going through. i wish I had some magic solution for all of us