Sleep Training Questions...

Hello N.,

I just want to give you some encouragement! My daughter went thru a phase of not wanting to fall asleep by herself. Let me tell you that you have to stick to what you are doing. Otherwise you will have a newborn that needs your attention and your 1 year old sleeping on your chest! So you are doing the right thing right now by getting him on a schedule. Here are a few things I did to get her in the groove of things.

I have a music and motion box that displays designs on the ceiling and plays classical, lullibies, and nature sounds while it changes displays. Highly recommended. I know it is really hard to listen to the crying but you have to. Change his pants, fill his belly, and set the mood is my theory. I lay my daughter down in the evening at 8:00 every night and she is asleep within 10 mins. The lights and music help make sure he stays laying down. (does not always work, but most of the time it does).

Also try and give him a bath at night with the lotion. Lavender and camamile. I have the bath wash and lotion. There is also a rub that you can put on their chest to sooth them. The best advice I can give is if you do it at night you have to do it at nap too. He will soon know the drill and be able to go right to sleep.

If for some reason he fusses for an hour and wants to sleep in, I would let him but not for two hours. My daughter sometimes could sleep more in the morning but our schedule does not allow it so she takes a cat nap in the morning and then a regular nap between 12-1. I am not sure if I have helped you or not but this works like a charm for us. Yes you have some rough spots at first but it will be better in the future. If you want the name of that projector I got email me and I will look for you. I think it was 20-30 dollars.

Good Luck:)

I had a terrible sleeper...we had to give her sippy cups in bed because she was done with the bottle and would still need something, along with her 10 binkies (I look back now, and cringe)! Then one day, I just stopped giving her those cups, and within a couple days, she stopped needing them, but still needed the binkies. Then, I revisted her bed time. I started keeping her up a little later, and found that just an hour difference was the difference between listening to her scream for an hour, and her not making a singly peep when we put her to bed. I was also pregnant, and knew that I couldn't be tag teamed between both babies being up multiple times at night, and was really much harder on letting her cry it out on those occassions when she still wasn't going down easy. And in the end, it works. And now the new baby is actually sleeping in her room, and there are no issues! (Which is a place I never thought I could actually get to!) And by the way...no bottle or binkie for the baby at bed time! I am not doing that again!

First of all--hang in there, this is a tough thing to deal with, even with the best sleepers! It just takes time and training for them to figure out how to do it on their own. My son was still waking up 2-3 times a night at 12 months, so I know how you feel. I couldn't let him cry at all, so it was really tough for me. And it's so much easier to just get him back to sleep and then go back to sleep yourself. But if you don't solve this now, he will be even worse when he gets older, because he will figure out that he can call out to you, come into your bed, etc., and then it's much harder to reverse. My advice is to ease into it VERY slowly, even more slowly than the Ferber method. Your baby isn't really awake, he's just in the habit of you comforting him when he comes up out of his deep sleep. So every time you go to him in the night, just hold him a little less time and put him down a little bit before he goes back to sleep. It will feel like it's taking forever, but it will get better gradually. I was nursing my son back to sleep, so I had to overcome that obstacle too, and I still managed to do it. Just reduce the amount of time you hold him by 5 seconds, then 10 seconds, then 30 seconds, then a minute, and pretty soon he will start to figure out that you won't pick him up at all, and then pretty soon he'll know that you won't come in at all. There is a book called "The No Cry Sleep Solution" that I followed, and it was very helpful. Also, I would not do this with his naps, because it's a very different thing to put them back to sleep in the middle of the night, than putting them down for a nap or for bed. I would wake him up at the same time every morning to keep him on the same schedule; otherwise you will end up staying up later and your own clock will get off track too. If he wakes up at exact times during the night, you could try getting up a few minutes earlier than that and going to his bed, then comforting him while he's still in bed to see if he doesn't "wake up" at all. Stick with it, and he will get better.I was surprised at how quickly my son adapted, once I got past that first difficult part of putting him down before he was back asleep. Good luck!

I had a really bad sleeper and all i can say is keep doing what your doing and DO NOT STOP! I know it's hard to let them cry it out but it is so worth it. With may daughter it took 2 weeks to get her to stop crying and sleep through the night. They were the worst 2 weeks of my life but now I can lay her down in her crib awake and she falls asleep with out a peep. I had to sleep in the couch with ear plugs in because she cried so loud and for so long (4 hours) if he is sleeping in wake him up so he will be ready for bed at the same time the next night. Make sure you do a bedtime routine every night and it will work just give it time. He needs to learn to fall sleep on his own.

It is called self soothing...and it works. I promise it is harder on you than your child at this point. Stick with what you are doing and you will be much happier very shortly. I just went through this with my 13 month old daughter. My big problem was her FATHER!!! He is soooooo attached to our daughter that he refused to ever let her be upset. Now she is a fit thrower and I have had it. The other three were never allowed to act this way, so I finally put my foot down and things are changing for the better very quickly.

I received the book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" by Dr. Weissman for a shower gift, and I don't know how I would live without it. If you can, check it out from the library, or purchase it. It's wonderful.

Since your son is older, it will be harder to break the habit he is in, but don't give up! The first thing that is important is a solid routine, bedtime at the same time, and stories and songs, or maybe a bath (we only did soap baths twice per week, the other nights were just play baths. Now that my daughter is used to her routine, we don't need baths every night). This routine tells your son it is bedtime, and that way he knows it's time to sleep.

After the routine, the best thing you can do is let him cry it out. My daughter did this when we moved, she was 11 months. I let her cry for three nights, the first she cried for an hour, and the next was for 30 minutes, and the third night she cried about five minutes and was out like a light. After that she slept through the night without a peep, and was much happier during the day. Naps just fell into place, because she knew I wouldn't be coming to get her. She is now 26 months, sleeps from 8:30PM to 8:30AM, and naps for about 3 hours in the afternoon.

It is a very painful experience to let them cry, but I promise it is so worth it. They need their sleep, and the best thing you can do is to help them learn to do that. After a few painful nights, things will start to improve. He just needs to break that habit. Hang in there! You're doing great!