Need Advice for Sleeping Thru Night (Both Me and Baby!!!)

I went through this with my little girl.

Firstly, I think your pediatrician might be wrong. Your daughter MIGHT be hungry when she wakes up. My daughter went through a growth spurt around that time. If you try to nurse her, does she drink a good amount? That is your clue that she actually is hungry. At that point, I would ignore your pediatrician's advice and feed her.

Another thing is, a lot of children around this age get so caught up in their newfound abilities (crawling, walking, etc.) that they do not eat enough during the day because they are simply too busy. So then they try to make up for it at night and interrupt your sleep. So simply ensuring that your daughter has the opportunity to eat regular meals and snacks through the day (even if she doesn't seem hungry) may prevent the night wakings, if they are due to hunger. (I'm not saying force feed her, simply sit her down in her high chair with some finger foods or whatever, and allow her the opportunity to eat.)

Now, if your daughter isn't actually hungry when she wakes up, (she breastfeeds, but only for a short time, and doesn't drink much milk), then your problem is a little different. There are a number of ways to resolve this, but the way that worked for my daughter was this:
I would come into her room, make sure nothing was wrong, give her her blankie and pacifier, settle her down, and tell her, "Sleepy time, time for sleep. Mama loves you." And then I would walk out, whether she was crying or not.
5 minutes later, if she was still crying, I would come in and do the same thing.
10 minutes later, if she was still crying, I would come in and do the same thing.
And I would repeat every 5-10 minutes until she fell asleep.

It takes a little patience, but after 2 or 3 nights, my daughter never went longer than 15 minutes. I felt it worked for me because I wasn't "abandoning her" (coming in every 5 minutes to let her know I love her and settle her back down) but I also made it clear she wasn't going to get songs, rocking, and nursing for an hour and a half.

Oh, and I would strongly urge you not to give up nursing just for this reason. I seriously doubt that whatever is making your daughter wake up at night will be solved by you giving her a bottle instead of breastfeeding. I think you can resolve whatever the issue is while still nursing.

Good luck.

Do you think that she may be going through a little growth spurt and maybe she needs a little snack at night before bed to hold her through the night? I don't know if this will work, but it would be worth a try. My ped also said if I thought this was teething to give my son pain releiver before bed and that my help him sleep through the night. Sorry I don't have more advice:) Just hang in there and I know things will get better soon. Good luck.

Sorry....I don't have any advice, but I am having the same problem with my 7 month old and 3 year old! If you get any good tips, please let me know. My 7 month old has never slept through the night on a constant basis...but it was getting to that point, and now for the past month he has been up at least twice a night crying. Sorry to break this to you though, but he is bottle fed, so stopping nursing may not help. Sometimes he wants to eat, other times he doesn't. I have NO IDEA WHAT TO DO!!! Both of my other children slept through the night by 2 months! I guess we can go crazy together!

It could be teething or other developmental step, if so there's not much to do but get through it. I've been going through this since my 10 1/2 mth ol was born. At around 6 mths we cut out the middle of the night feeding but he still waking up for it and then again at 6am to feed. I finally got his 6am feeding pushed back to 7am. Just in the last month or two have I had any full nights of sleep. He still sometimes wakes up between 3-5am though. In fact last night he was up at 5am and it took me 30min. to get him back to sleep. Luckily my 4yr old sleeps like a rock (and always has) so the baby waking doesn't cause me that problem. My baby is not a self soother at all. He finally is getting able to do it for naps but a night waking just doesn't work. When he wakes I had to institute a few strick policies. 1. No nursing- he is not waking because he's hungry 2. No picking him up or rocking him- I had to do this if I want him to ever learn to self soothe. My baby will scream the second I walk away from the crib and can keep it up for at least 3 hrs (I usually cave and pick him up by then so I don't know how long we'd keep going beyond this).So the whole letting him cry for 10 mins then quickly reassure him and leave just doesn't work for me this time like it did for #1. When he cries in the night I go immediately. After checking for poop (usually just by smell) I lay him back down and pat his back for 10 min. Most of the time now that's all it takes. If he still not out I leave and let him cry for 5-10min. Then go back in and repeat. At first and still occasionally we would do this for 2 hrs. Now usually its less than 30, then first or second turn of back patting does the trick. Its not every night any more either but usually still 1-2 times a week. My baby is a very light sleeper and his room is a megaphone for noises outside too. I usually write his wakings off to this and let it go. At first the trains that you can barely hear even in his room were waking him. He seems to have tuned them out not for the most part. Last night I think the cause was big brother. When the baby woke me up I heard the older one's sleep music playing. After I got the baby to sleep I checked on #1 and apparrently he had a smaller bed wetting incident (a recent development) and gotten up to change his clothes.

My middle son did this. We had a family bed approach and this helped us all get some sleep. When he was older 18 mos, he would wake up at 2-3am and not go back to sleep. Our solution was to go to bed later. When we changed his bedtime to 8:30-9pm he would sleep until 4-5am. The other thing was if he took an afternoon nap it had to be early afternoon. He was a child that did not require a lot of sleep. He could sleep for 6-7 hours and go all day with a 45 min nap at noon. I also learned to adjust my schedule to go to bed soon after he did. Good Luck!

I go to sleep when my DD goes to sleep, that way I'm geting plenty of uninterrupted sleep! It does help that my husband has to be at work at 5 a.m., so he's going to bed at 7ish any way. My 12 y.o. likes to retire early as well. We use a cheap box fan that makes plenty og noise and that drowns out all other sounds, so if DD is crying, no one is disturbed, except me....

My little girl did that and still does unless she is really tired. I just leave her in her bed.... she can't go anywhere and she isn't going to get hurt. That is when I started putting books and play things in there for her with a night light, light enough that she can see but not light enought that she can't sleep. We have a monitor in our room so we can hear and it wakes us up. I just leave her in there, and she learned to play and self sooth when she wakes up. I wake up sometimes in the night too and do what I need to do whether it is going to the bathroom or getting something to drink or it may be that I just get up and turn the tv on or just lay there and then go back to sleep. The little ones do that too. They have to learn to self sooth and if you put things in her bed and then leave her alone, she will learn to take her toys, play with them and go back to sleep on her own.
If you do that in the beginning it is so much easier and it is wonderful when you teach them to do this on their own.

I agree with what many other people have said. My son still nursed or took a bottle up until right before his first birthday (and he was truely hungry at night until then). He NEVER slept through the night until right before he turned 13 months old. I would suggest to check for ear infections. Those can be really painful to babies while sleeping. My son had chronic ear infections, being part of the reason he never slept well until we got his tubes put in.

But even when he didn't have an ear infection, he would wake up in the middle of the night crying (and I mean hard crying...took a good while to soothe him). We decided to move his crib in our room beside of our bed, and it really seemed to help out. I think he felt comfort by knowing we were close by. He's never liked being alone...but definately not at night!

Anyway, even at almost 17 months old, he will still wake up occasionaly, but once he sees that I'm right there, hes fine. I just pull him in bed with me and have a few mins of cuddle time and he calms back down and sleeps til morning.

I'd say she will grow out of it. At 12 months, my son was waking up 3 to 4 times per night everynight, but at 13 months, he was sleeping 10 hours straight 4 or 5 out of 7 nights per week. And even the couple of nights he woke up, as long as I pulled him in bed with me and had a few mins of cuddle time, he feel right back to sleep til morning. Just keeping trying different things (even things some people tell you are bad or wrong, its your baby!!). You'll find something that works for your family!

Oh yeah, and one more thing. Is there any type of noise going in her room all night? For my son we use a regular box fan (he's hot natured anyway) and a sound machine set on "rainstorm" (bought at Walmart). When we started using the "noise makers" it helped a lot as well.

Gack, pediatricians! Great for medical advice, rotten for parenting advice!

Your little one may or may not be hungry. Growth spurts happen every few months and, once they get mobile, baby is too busy during the day to be taking in all the calories she really ought to.

BUT even if that's not what it is... so what? They forget that nursing is not all about nourishment. It's also soothing and comfort and a booster against viruses and infections and a mild analgesic (like giving her tylenol - only there's no chance of harmful side effects or overdosing). The list goes on. But a biggie in this sitch is that nursing is an all-natural sleep-inducer. It's the quintessential "glass of warm milk". Rocking, walking, and what-all may help, too, but it makes no sense to refuse to use the one trump card in your deck, so to speak.

It hurts NOTHING to nurse the baby. If it works, go to sleep. If it doesn't, oh well, do what you would have done anyway.

(I write all that thinking, easier said than done when baby's in the next room. Her waking may still wake the 4 yr old in the time it takes to get to her. So consider moving her crib into your room until she's sleeping through the night without help. Which for my first was closer to two-yrs-old than one-yr-old. <Gasp, that's so old!> Not really. It's actually perfectly normal, but our culture likes to pretend that all babies sleep soundly 12 hrs straight at 8-12 wks. Which is a world of bogus. Sorry, getting off soap box now.)

One of my children nursed in the middle of the night until he was almost 18 months old. He was hungry. He is 18 years old now and he will still wake up some nights and get a glass of milk or something to eat in the middle of the night. He is 6' tall and weighs 215 pounds and he is still hungry. I always nursed my babies in bed with me. When they fell asleep I would nudge my husband and have him put the baby back in his bed.

Get the book "The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems." There's a lot of step-by-step info in it about handling various sleep issues. She talks about accidental parenting - how we train our kids to rely on props (like rocking, bouncing, nursing) to get back to sleep at night, and how to help babies get past them. If your baby is waking at the same time every night, it's become a pattern that you CAN break. (Especially since at her age, she shouldn't be getting up because of hunger). Our son was a terrible sleeper, and couldn't fall asleep on his own. I'd nurse him till he was out, then just about die trying to get him into his crib without waking him up. Then he'd wake up at 5 in the morning for the day. We did the "sleep training" recomended in the book for the falling asleep part, and then I did her technique called Wake To Sleep for early waking stuff. With that, you go in to your baby about 45 minutes before she usually wakes up, then jostle her a little bit - just enough to bring her out of her deep sleep and into a light sleep. But you have to be careful not to completely wake her up. Then she'll settle back into a deeper sleep again. This sort of resets her sleep clock, and after a few nights of this, her body will adjust to the new schedule. It absolutely worked for us. (I can't remember exactly how long before she usually wakes to go in to her. The book will tell you exactly what to do.) Anyway, this book was a lifesaver for us. Our son sleeps from 7 p.m. to about 7 a.m. and naps very consistently now. He doesn't need rocking or nursing to settle into sleep. After six months of pure torture for us (and him, since he was exhausted and couldn't fall asleep on his own), we finally got it all figured out. If you're willing to get the book, and then stick with the plan in it, I'm sure it would help you, too.

Does she seem like she's in pain when she's waking up, or does she simply want to nurse? If she seems to be hurting, then it probably is teething. Have you tried a big dinner and some infants motrin right before bed each evening? Maybe that would help her to be more full and comfortable. As for your 4yr old, I would just sit him down and explain that his baby sister is waking up in the night just like he did when he was a baby and that there is no need for him to feel worried at all. =0) Maybe right when the baby wakes up and you're on your way to her room, you could peek into his room and say, "I'm very sorry sister is waking you up, but everything is ok...mommy will handle it and I want you to be a big boy and try to go back to sleep....I'll come give you kisses when I get sister back down, ok?"..........Maybe he just needs you to peek in and re-assure him when the nightly wake up happens. I know it's so hard, but it will pass and everyone will sleep again. It doesn't seem like it right now, but it will. The older everyone gets, the easier it all gets! =0)