"Jodie" wrote in message
...
I think her problem is putting herself back to sleep
when she has wakeful periods in her sleep cycle, instead of always
depending on nursing to go back to sleep.

You have hit the nail on the head right here. All people have wakeful
periods during sleep. That is never going to go away, so the only
answer is for her to learn to fall back to sleep by herself when they
occur. That means without any kind of eating, drinking, rocking,
walking, patting, etc., etc. I know it's got a bad rap here but the
book by Ferber adresses all your questions exactly. I know you are
worried about keeping your other kids up and that was a concern for me
too. But it turned out not to be a problem and using that method has
saved my life. I'm hardly exaggerating there, because I could well have
caused a car accident with how tired I was before implementing this. I
started it 20 days ago. It took only one night for me to see a very
dramatic improvement. It may take longer for you at 14 months than for
me, doing it at 6 months, but once it works it would be so worth it.
Your other kids will survive a few nights of interrupted sleep. The
book also gave me a much better understanding of the physiology of
normal sleep and that helps me know how to respond appropriately when he
wakes up at night. Now, I do nurse him twice a night still, because I
do believe he still needs that nourishment, but now instead of being up
half the night he goes right back to bed. He is so much better off,
being able to sleep well and getting all the sleep he needs, than he was
before. He immediately started taking much longer naps during the day.
I'm sure he was at least as sleep deprived as I was, based on how much
more he sleeps now. I regard allowing him the opportunity to learn how
to sleep well as meeting one of his most basic physical needs, not
depriving him of emotional needs in any way.
--
Cheryl S.
Mom to Julie, 3, and Jaden, 6 months