What are we doing wrong?!? :banghead:

[alumina]

:banghead:I have a 8 1/2 month old DD who will not go to sleep at a normal bedtime and wakes at night. For example--tonight. She fell asleep on DH's shoulder around 8pm, (diaper was changed before she fell asleep), we took her upstairs, put her in sleep sack, gave her 7oz breastmilk (I EP) and she fell asleep. Put her in crib (sleeps in own room the past 3 weeks) all is good. 9:30pm--she wakes up crying. Maybe it's gas (she is the gassest baby there could possibily be). Go to her & hold her. Farts/burps and now she is WIDE AWAKE. We will try to put her down at 11-11:30pm, which is the time we end up putting her down anymore. And then it takes a HOUR AT LEAST to put her to bed since she gets gassy or fussy, or just doesn't want to sleep. Anytime I try to put her to bed at the approperiate time, she treats it like a nap and doesn't want to go back to sleep. Then, of course, she wakes up at 4am, crying, gassy. We take her to bed with us in hopes of getting her back to sleep quickly--she is now wide awake & hungry. Feed her 4oz and NOW she goes back to sleep. This has been our life for the last 10 days (I think--all the nights run together). She then may wake up at 8am or may sleep in until 10:30am (she usually has a morning nap from breakfast time (8:30am) to 10:30-11:15am. Afternoon nap is usually between 2-3pm for 90 minutes.

What are we doing wrong? She won't go to bed for the night at a decent hour. I can accept the night wakings (I'm going to cut out dairy and see if that helps) because there is a genuine problem that wakes her, not she wants to play or misses us. It worries me that she treats going to bed before 11pm as a nap. She doesn't always fall asleep in the evening, but every time I put her to bed at a decent hour (before 10pm), she treats it like a nap. It's getting really old and I'm starting to feel stressed out when it is time to put her to bed (whether at 8 or at 11pm) because I anticipate a battle to get her to sleep and then up again in a few hours. I'm going crazy!!!! :banghead: Any advice/suggestions?

[SnuggleBuggles]

Nothing but commiseration here. My ds2 was on, what I called, a 10-14 day cycle. He would have 10-14 days of horrible sleep followed by 10-14 of good! Once I figured out that it was just going to one day get better with no changes I stopped stressing as much. I just rode it out. In the 9-18m window there are so, so many possible sleep disruptors. You have the physical ones like learning to crawl, sit, stand, walk. You have emotional ones like separation anxiety. Then throw in illness, teething and growth spurts and you just have a hot mess of sleep messer uppers!

A lot of the really bad nights dh and I shared soothing duty. Many times it ended with me just bringing ds to bed till he was asleep then taking him back to his crib. I guess I just did whatever I could to get some sleep and that involved nursing a bunch and co-sleeping. Some motrin thrown in if I suspected teething.

GL!!!! It is so hard. I think this sleep deprivation is almost worse than the nb phase because their needs were simpler, more consistent and you hadn't just gotten used to better sleep!

Beth

[wellyes]

Oh, BTDT. My DD was about that age and the exact same situation (especially the 'any sleeping before 11 pm is a nap' thing) when we went to Ferber. Within 2-3 weeks she was a 7 pm-7 am baby. It sucked to go through it but it made a world of difference. Getting enough sleep at night made her have a more standardized nap routine during the day. And everyone in the family, including her, was a heck of a lot happier.

[truly scrumptious]

Oh, BTDT. My DD was about that age and the exact same situation (especially the 'any sleeping before 11 pm is a nap' thing) when we went to Ferber. Within 2-3 weeks she was a 7 pm-7 am baby. It sucked to go through it but it made a world of difference. Getting enough sleep at night made her have a more standardized nap routine during the day. And everyone in the family, including her, was a heck of a lot happier.

:yeahthat:

At about 8 months, DS started waking at night and wanting us to come to him. I think developmentally that is when they start to realize the whole cause-effect thing of "If I call, they'll come."
I also agree that making sure she gets enough sleep at night is key. Once we instituted an early bedtime things really improved. He still woke to nurse but they were short wakings, and he was half asleep through them. We also instituted a rule that we wouldn't pick him up from his crib unless he needed to be fed or changed. So we would go in and soothe him while he was still in the crib and leave. He's scream, we'd go back in and repeat. Once he got the message that we weren't going to pick him up, he went to sleep pretty quickly. If we had to feed or change him, we'd do it quickly, with no talking, hardly any lights on, etc.
I would recommend starting her at an earlier bedtime (DS was sleeping from 5:30 p.m. - 7 a.m. at that age, with two 10-minute nursing wakings in between) and a nice soothing bedtime routine. We haven't tried the Ferber method, but we did let him cry for a few minutes sometimes when we knew he didn't need anything.
:hug: I hope you all get some uninterrupted sleep soon.

[Katigre]

I was going to ask about cutting out dairy...I know on the days that I ate dairy when DD was under a year old, it was a guarantee that she would wake up a lot that night. I would give it two weeks of no dairy and see if she's sleeping deeper and more regularly.

[okinawama]

I would try and really focus on having a 12/13 hour day and 11/12 hr night. If you put her down at 8pm, I would treat everything before 7am as a night waking, so keep her in her room the entire time, keep it nice and quiet.....and hopefully she gets the idea. also, if she sleeps until 10:30am, then I wouldn't expect her to go down again until 10:30 pm (again 12ish hr day, 12ish hr night), and then you're in a late morning late night cycle. I would definitely be waking her before then or else you're in for a late bedtime.
Have you tried giving her gas drops before putting her down for the night? Good luck with the cutting out dairy. Maybe that will be the fix!! I know it helped us.

[TwinFoxes]

I would treat everything before 7am as a night waking, so keep her in her room the entire time, keep it nice and quiet

:yeahthat: I couldn't tell from your post if you stay in her room with her when she wakes up? I think it was in "Happiest Baby on the Block" that they say to make the adults seem like the most boring things ever when the baby wakes up. You don't want her thinking she's missing out on something. So we would keep the lights off, not take either of them out to watch TV or surf the web, just sit there with her. I'm not saying we never took them into our bed, but we would try to get them to sleep in their own room first. Of course at that age I was still nursing, so it was easier to get them back to sleep with my "secret weapons".

Also, we have always had a routine. We change them, and then sing the "Sleepy" song that I made up. This is another tip we read somewhere, that having a song helps set the mood. It's the goofiest song "Sleepy, sleepy, it's time to go to sleep". But now, they just toddle off to their rooms when they here it. :) I really think having a routine, and especially the song really signals to them, OK it's bedtime. We've been doing it for as long as I can remember. After sleepy song, it's kisses, story time, lamp off, carousel on (it's a cute Disney music box Grandma gave them that lights up for about 2 minutes and plays a lullaby). We even do this routine when we are traveling (except the music box). I really think having a routine helps them out. We have a routine for nap time too (same song, faster pace with "nap time nap time" instead of "Sleepy sleepy"...I missed my calling as a songwriter, clearly!) The girls are really good sleepers. They have little bouts of sleeplessness, but we stick to our routine, and they eventually come out of it. :) Good Luck!!

[ahrimie]

If she fell asleep in your arms around 8pm then I'd say, she needed to be put to bed earlier--probably around 7pm. You can start doing a routine with her but at 8 months, our routine was super quick (5 min??). I used phrases and short songs to signal sleep time more than books or anything else at that age. We still use the phrases and DD knows (and now protests).

Like pp said, anything before 7am is just night waking. Weissbluth says to wake babies up at 7am but I'm just not a morning person so I let DD wake ME up :P Usually, it's closer to 8-9am range. But she loves to sleep so that's not a good comparison.

[LMPC]

This is truly only my most humble of opinions.....I would try some of the behavioral things to help your DC get to sleep that PP's have mentioned *before* trying to cut dairy out of your diet. My DD was super gassy, but now sleeps through the poots and burps (of course it sends DH and me into laughing hysterics when we hear it over the monitor :ROTFLMAO: ).

I think the most important aspect of anything you decide is to pick a strategy and stick with it for a while...don't do one thing one night and something else the next. Maybe try backing up her bedtime by 15 minutes each night...until you get to around 7pm (or a time she naturally seems sleepy). And maybe decide to leave her in her crib for the night (as another PP mentioned). I'm not saying this is what you *should* do....only giving an example of a strategy that you might try.

GL!