How to stop the night wakings?

On Mar 12, 4:06*pm, (Beth Kevles) wrote:
Hi --

With our kids, we approached things as follows, and had both kids pretty
much sleeping through before age 2:

First, deal with falling asleep at night:
* * * *Feed well so the child falls asleep feeling full
* * * *Never nurse all the way to sleep
* * * *Consistent sleeping place (crib -- I could never sleep through
* * * *the night snuffles when in the same room)

We have a few issues here - her eating habits are hit and miss these
days. Some nights she gobbles up a storm. Other nights it's a few
bites and NOTHING we do can make her eat more. I figured that was
associated with her sleep issues, but actually last night she ate a
ton and slept very poorly.

The nursing to sleep is an issue. How does one stop this? When I don't
nurse her to sleep, she just cries and cries. That said, when I'm not
here, DH is able to get her to sleep. But if she knows I'm in the
house, she won't stop til she has me.

Our consistent sleep place is our bed, and that's what I'd like to
change to the crib, but the crib is in our room. SO it's like teasing
her - we're there but she can't lay on top of us.


Next, deal with morning:
* * * Blackout shades in bedroom
* * * Never feed right on waking. *Instead, do morning routine first
* * * (diaper, dress both of us)
* * * Go to kitchen to eat and nurse

We do all this already, morning is usually not a problem.


Finally, deal with night wakings:
* * * * *Never feed at night

We haven't been consistent here. No feeding at night was working for
awhile, but DH gave in a few times (and ok, I gave in a few times too
and now we're screwed....)

* * * * *Be boring at night -- no talking, just "shhh, shhh"

This has been a consistent thing we've done.

* * * * *Keep child in crib when he wakes, do not remove to my bed

Well, since she's always co-slept, the whole transition to crib will
be an issue.

* * * * *Let child cry if it doesn't last more than minutes

We have tried this, I think we lasted 30 minutes which was too long
for everyone.

* * * * *Consider pain reliever (tylenol, etc) if you suspect teething
* * * * *pain causing the wakings

Tried that a few times, but as I've said elsewhere, pain relievers
seem to do nothing for her.


The theory is that waking is caused partly by habits that can be
changed. *Ie, a child is used to eating right away on waking, so learns
to waken when mildly hungry. *But by age two (or earlier) the child
should be able to sleep through a certain amount of hunger.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's a habit. That was why my leaving the room
helped. But ever since she had croup (over Thanksgiving) her sleep
pattern got all thrown off and has never recovered. Didn't help that
we travelled soon after that, then I was in hospital for emergency
surgery, and then ill...so everything was off for a good 6 weeks.
We've been trying to get back on track for the past 6 weeks and it's
not working!

Sleeping through the night is GLORIOUS. *The kids are 10 and 12 now,
which means we have the opposite problem: getting them out of bed in the
morning.

We already decided that when we get to that stage, we're going to bang
pots in her room as payback ;-)

Thanks for the suggestions. We'll try them out.