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How to stop the night wakings?
On Mar 12, 5:25*pm, Sarah Vaughan wrote:
Thoughts: 1. Is it possible to get her to bed any earlier than you're already doing? *If she's already really tired when she gets in, that may mean that by the time she gets to sleep she's worked up enough that she's more likely to wake in the night. *Sometimes an earlier bedtime can help.. We often don't get home til close to 6pm. By the time we're done eating it's close to 7pm. Not much we can change there, unfortunately.That's been the schedule for the past year, and for awhile was fine. I think now it's problematic because she's getting so little sleep at night. She wasn't acting tired (no rubbing eyes for example, but after multiple 6pm meltdowns, I figured it was tiredness) I have tried just putting her down as soon as we get home for a 'nap' then feeding her afterwards, but it doesn't work. She has no interest in that. 2. Will she take a pacifier rather than your nipple to suck on? *Helped a great deal with my son. hahahahaha! No. No pacifier. I tried many times. I've even tried sneaking it in in place of my nipple. She's too smart for that ;-) The look on her face when you give her a pacifier is priceless. 3. Do you nurse her to sleep at bedtime? Yes, although when I'm away (which doesn't happen often but lately has been ~ 2-3x per month), DH puts her to bed. *I agree with Beth that it may be worth tackling this issue first and getting her to complete the final steps of falling asleep without nursing (i.e. nurse her until nearly asleep, unlatch, comfort her in other ways but stand firm on not offering the breast again before she goes to sleep). *Spending a week or two getting her used to going to sleep without nursing may well mean that when you do tackle the night wakings you have more luck with them because she's already used to getting to sleep without nursing. *(The advantage of this is that you can work on her getting-to-sleep skills in the evening rather than in the middle of the night when all you want to do is to get back to sleep. *However, you may prefer just to get it all over with in one go.) *If you do work on the bedtime falling-to-sleep first, then at 4 a.m. just nurse her straight away or whatever you normally do to get her to sleep - if she either gets nursed straight away or has to go to sleep without nursing then she'll figure it out pretty quickly, but if she sometimes has to go to sleep without nursing but sometimes gets the breast if she cries long enough then that gives her an incentive to keep crying for longer as she has reason to think it might work (see 6 below). I think we'll go this route for awhile. I am concerned about her lack of food - nights when she doesn't eat much I always worry she'll wake because she's starving, so think that nursing her will help that, but it doesn't.... 4. If she's waking at a specific time each night, there is a technique you can use called the wake-to-sleep technique or scheduled awakening. Basically, you set your alarm, go into your room between 15 and 60 minutes before the time when you expect her to wake (so, between 3 and 3.45 a.m), wake her partway up, and settle her again. *This can readjust the sleep cycle and thus eliminate the habitual waking. *Tracy Hogg gives the most complete description of this that I've got in 'The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems', and advises that if the child is still waking up at the usual time after three nights of trying this, you might as well drop it, but if they seem to be stopping their usual waking then continue with the scheduled awakening for six nights before stopping. *This has been found to be as effective as CIO techniques, but it's a pain to implement. Well, she's in 'our' room - although I've been sleeping in another room lately. She's in bed with DH. I still wake up automatically about 3:45 knowing she'll wake up (I do this even when I'm away, it's so annoying!). I guess i'd be afraid to try this...the idea is to wake her a bit before she really wakes up? For so long I always got to her immediately on the first peep and could usually settle her back down. But now I've avoided going to her because she wants to nurse, and then she just nurses non-stop and doesn't fall asleep. I think this would require my DH waking up before her and doing it and I don't think he's up to the task, honestly. He has taken over the night wakings for the most part (not that it helps my sleep much, but the idea was it helped DD to sleep), but I don't think I could convince him to wake up before her. 5. If you do use CIO, bear in mind that just because you won't *nurse* her doesn't mean that you can't comfort her in other ways while she gets used to going to sleep without nursing. *Thus, it may help to stay with her and cuddle her until she falls asleep. I've tried doing this a lot - just rocking her or cuddling rather than nursing. It usually calms her and that's when I'm sure she's not waking for hunger. Other times she goes straight for the boobs and nothing will distract her. Problem has been though that though it calms her, it doesn't put her to sleep. 6. Don't try this unless you're prepared to see it through. *The pattern of letting her cry for 30 minutes and then nursing her just makes it harder for you next time, because now she knows that if she holds out for long enough she'll get nursed. *When I tried eliminating nursing to sleep for my son's bedtime, I read that it can take over an hour in some cases, so I braced myself for it to take that long. *In the end, it took 47 minutes the first night and was much easier thereafter. *Keep a note of how long it takes each time, so that you can see improvement happening. Yeah, that's why we haven't really tried it yet...earlier on my DH was more keen to try it and I wasn't. Now I'm ready and he says it's cruel...that said I have let her CIO a few times for sleeping (when DH wasn't home), if she just refused to fall asleep after an hour or more of me with her. One time it took an hour, but the few other times it was only a few minutes. We haven't done it consistently though - hadn't really needed to for bedtime. We tried once for the 4am wakeup and gave in. Thanks for the suggestions, it gives me something to work with. I know I'm supposed to accept all this and be grateful she still wants to be with me, but one can only function on little sleep for so long.... |
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