the dreaded "sleep thru night" thread

Any advice on helping us with our 6-month olds sleep would be GREATLY
appreciated. We are more than exhausted and at our wits end. She is a
terrible sleeper day and night. She wakes up frequently at night and
it often takes up up to 2 hours to get her back to bed. during the
day, naps are very difficult and she has to be "helped" significantly.
We have been trying a modified ferber approach but due to colds,
constipation issues have given in here and there. Any advice?

She is perfectly healthy otherwise, is brestfed and is on cereals and
vegetables.

Lisa

(Elizabeth Reid) wrote in message . com...
"Stephanie and Tim" wrote in message . ..

One thing that never comes up in the evil cry-it-out debate is the CHILD's
need for sleep. When I was sleeping with my son, we both slept for total
****. I did not really realize that HE was also sleeping for **** until he
started sleeping for longer periods by himself. He became more cheerful
during the day and more able to play. Parents are lambasted for being so
selfish that they have to sleep at the expense of their poor crying child.
But this does not tell the whole picture. It is not much of a stretch to me
that a parent who does not sleep well with others may spawn a like minded
child.

I totally agree. What finally convinced me to do a CIO process with
our son was realizing that it was taking a toll on him not to be
getting sleep. When he was a small infant and waking every two hours
to eat, I was more than willing to trade my sleep for his wellbeing,
and for a long time as he got older that was still how I thought of
it. Then one day after a hellish period at seven months when he
was waking up at 3 and not really going back to sleep, needing to
be bounced/walked/rocked constantly, I took him to the doctor because
he was constantly whining and miserable and I thought he was ill.
The doctor pointed out that according to my description of events,
he wasn't getting any more sleep than I was, and I was miserable,
so why wouldn't he be? We'd gotten ourselves to a place where he
couldn't sleep without my presence, but he also couldn't sleep
(after the first flush of tiredness had been slept off) *with* my
presence. Something had to change.

I read _Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child_ and it made a whole lot
of sense to me. We did the plan in it (we tried a more Ferber-ish
approach initially, but we found that the coming-and-going actually
upset our son more) and it helped enormously. He's still not a
great sleeper and I usually still have to put him down awake and
let him yell for a minute or two, because if I rock him he just
bounces and tries to play - but after a few yells he settles down
to talking to himself and drifts off to sleep on his own, and
wakes happy in the morning.

If the process has taught him that he can't trust me, there's
no sign of it. Yeah, it's probably taught him that I don't always
do what he wants, but he knows that anyway, since I'm the
mean Mommy who won't let him eat mulch or stand up on the
collapsible lawn chairs.

Beth

Any advice on helping us with our 6-month olds sleep would be GREATLY
appreciated. We are more than exhausted and at our wits end. She is a
terrible sleeper day and night. She wakes up frequently at night and
it often takes up up to 2 hours to get her back to bed. during the
day, naps are very difficult and she has to be "helped" significantly.
We have been trying a modified ferber approach but due to colds,
constipation issues have given in here and there. Any advice?

She is perfectly healthy otherwise, is brestfed and is on cereals and
vegetables.

Lisa


Penny Gaines wrote in message ...
wrote in :

Now he's nearly 6 months and his schedule is horribly off. He's cranky
some days, fine other days. Some days it's a 4hr nap, some days it's no
nap. Nights are a mess. He's usually up every 15minutes and pacifcying
himself on my wife and then he finally goes to bed for a few hours. He
wakes up does the nuzzling bit for about 2hrs and then sleeps again for
a few more hours.

I haven't read every post on this thread, but I've got a few thoughts that I
haven't seen elsewhere.

Firstly, *some* 6 month old babies don't always have a daytime nap: it is
very hard for the parents, but it is the way they are wired.

Secondly, I wouldn't let him sleep for 4 hours in the day: I'd wake him up
after a couple of hours, and not let him sleep past a certain time.

Maybe, he isn't tired when you put him to bed: what would happen if you
kept him up a couple of hours later then normal for a few nights, but
with you waking him up at the normal time.

Definately read the Ferber book.