Need Sleep - Cincinnati,OH

Hi S., These are my thoughts I just posted to another mom's question about sleep and I thought it might be helpful for you as well:

I'd like to suggest an idea that you may not have considered but one that IS actually safe and can be very beneficial. Families around the world have been doing it for years with success and well respected baby experts like Dr. Sears and Dr. James McKenna highly recommend it. But often its looked down upon in our society. It works extremely well for our family. What is it? Sleep sharing. Bringing your baby to bed with you at night. She can sleep near you in your bed or you could try a co-sleeper, which is a small crib that attaches to your bed. Its been shown that moms who co-sleep actually get better sleep than moms who don't. You don't have to travel far to get to your baby and you can respond quickly (baby doesn't get so worked up, is more easily calmed). If you are nursing, you can use the side-lying position while co-sleeping and simply go right back to sleep. Your baby may fall back to sleep much more quickly and stay asleep longer with the comfort of knowing you are close by. It doesn't mean you will be sleeping with your child when they are 15. For more information about this look at The Baby Book by Dr. Sears, Chapter 15: Nighttime Parenting: How to Get Your Baby to Sleep. Also check out Dr. James McKenna's website. He runs the Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Lab, has published many good articles and books on this subject and poses the question to us, "Is it safe for our babies to sleep alone?" His website is: http://www.nd.edu/~jmckenn1/lab/index.html
Dr. Sears website is:
http://www.askdrsears.com/html/7/T070300.asp

Best wishes for you and your family!!
A. D.

Try giving her Motrin before bed, it will help her out if its really her teeth. If that doesnt work then she might be having night terrors :(

Is she teething?

No matter what method, there is also just the normal developmental things that occur in a baby, that will tweak their sleep. Sleep methods, do not 'extinguish' these aspects of a growing/changing baby, nor does it extinguish growth-spurts or hunger.

Even if she was sleeping well before, she is not now. Sleep in babies are not finite. Nor static.
Then when hitting milestones and motor skill changes and cognitive changes or 'night terrors', a baby will wake. It's growing-pains. Developmentally.

Teething
Separation Anxiety
Hunger
Ear pain
Night Terrors
Developmental changes
Changing age junctures
Growth-spurts
Noise
Gas
Phases
All these things can wake a baby, and it can also often be more than 1 thing going on at a time.

There are several things that could be going on. If she was sleeping well and then all of a sudden started to not sleep well, then something has changed.

Growth spurt, new emerging skill, separation anxiety (which could attribute to the 30 minutes of crying when you put her down), teething, night terrors are the big ones.

My oldest was ALWAYS disturbed by growth spurts. When she was about 10-11 months old she went through a huge growth spurt and we had about 3 weeks of HORRIBLE sleep. Then, it ended and all went back to normal.

If it's separation anxiety you should notice her being extra fussy during the day if you are not present. Does she start to really cry when you leave the room or leave her with someone else. If so...then I suspect the separation anxiety is pretty high. I would suggest comforting her (picking her up or not picking her up) when she cries in the night to reassure her you are still there.

Night terrors, although I've never experienced them with my kids (yet.. hopefully not!!) ... a good friend of mine did. Her son started when he was about 10 months old. She said she knew it was night terrors because he had a very blank stare in his eyes even though he appeared to be awake. There is really nothing you can do except hold them. Doctors typically advise against trying to wake them up as it can really disorient them and make matters worse. My girlfriend just rocked her son while he screamed and when it was over he was right back to sleep like nothing was wrong.

If she's trying to do something new like stand up ... it could be that she is waking in the middle the night and then getting frustrated she can't do something. If she's already standing, but hasn't figured out how to sit down again (very common) and you go in and she's standing... she's frustrated she can't sit again. I only sat my daughter down once or twice and then just went in and reassured her. She quickly figured it out and was fine.

Lots of things are going on in that first year and it's very common to have sleep disrupted. Hang in there!

That's not terrible.just the 4am part. Well, you could try to adjust her bedtime by 30 min increments. You could run in when you hear her waking up at 4 and try a pacifier before she is too awake. Or see if naps are the problem. Maybe cut back afternoon nap. 7pm seems early for bedtime

I tried the CIO, and the no cry with my DD starting around 6 months... she was sleeping really bad. I started out by instead of feeding her right before putting her down to sleep, I fill her up about an hour beforehand. (I think it helps her stomach to be settled or something...) That helped some... I also started picking her up like RIGHT when she started crying (which I know isn't what you are 'supposed' to do...) so she would fall back to sleep right away. Then I would set her back down as soon as her eyes closed. (she would wake up, so I would just do it over and over until she was just too tired to bother waking up again. lol) As time has passed, I put her down more and more awake. She has gone from waking up 5-7 times a night, and taking 30-60 minutes to fall asleep each time to waking up twice (to nurse) and falling asleep right away. Sometimes she will still have a bad night, especially lately since she's cutting another tooth... but it's gotten sooo much better! (It took me about a month total... she's 9 months old now..)