1 year and a half in - sleep is impossible

@bondo Have you tried cry it out sleep training ? Just started with our 4 month old bc we hit the 4m regression, slept through the night with a few wake ups but soothed herself back down. If they’re getting enough calories during the day and not sick they are waking up for the comfort and soothing but need to learn to soothe themselves back on their own. I couldn’t take it much longer so we ripped the band aid on sleep training. Similar story with our oldest. Now both getting about 10-12hrs. Can’t imagine going almost 2 years of this. Recommend you look into sleep training asap
 
@bondo Try to let them cry it out if you can. It’s rough on you but typically my spouse and I would monitor the crying, if it wasn’t like a nasty full body cry of pain we had to steel ourselves and wait. Sure enough after a long while the kid would wear down and accept the situation. It got progressively better and now if he’s crying in bed something, to him, has gone wrong.
 
@bondo Brother, you have to figure out the WHY your girl is waking up constantly. In my wife's case, it was because she was constantly hungry because breastfeeding was not providing enough nutrients. Try this:

Make 4 bottles of formula. The ones with the slow-release nipples. Pop one into her mouth at bedtime (yes, they can drink a bottle without choking while dozing off). Then periodically in the night, pop another in. Your little girl will sleep the night through, drinking her bottles.

Oh, and it helps if you don't let her nap much during the day, so she's more tired at night.

This worked for my now-toddler, who slept through the night before she was a year old (we discovered the hunger issue at 6 months - before then, she didn't sleep for crap each night).
 
@bondo We’ve had similar problems.
1st thing - has your girl had her iron level checked ? Our son was anemic and it was messing his sleep up terribly. This possibility is increased if the mom has had a history of anemia. This may not be your issue, but we spoke to our pediatrician 5 times about the sleep thing and she always had some version of “it’s normal” and on our 6th visit, she was out for the day, and her replacement said “hey have you had his iron checked ?”
Me: “sure haven’t why would we do that ?”
Her: “ oh well low iron is a very common cause of sleep disturbance in infants “
F*+[sup]ing[/sup] great. Thanks pediatrician, we’ve been begging you to help us explain why our kid is writhing in apparent agony at night for months, and you haven’t offered any explanations, other than “it’s teething” or “it’s sleep regression” or 3 other normal things….
Anyhow our son was in the lowest 5% of iron Ferritin in his blood. Huge consequences for this, but the fix was simple , iron supplements until his iron came to normal , now he gets enough iron in the solids he eats… not perfect sleep by any means , but he was way better within 10 days of starting the iron supplement.

Hope this helps. The same pediatrician also stated that the co sleeping can keep the baby from developing their own coping mechanisms when they wake, but there’s obviously mixed schools of thought on this

Best of luck
 
@bondo Currently going through the same thing. First kid is 13 months old and has been a terrible sleeper since day one. We were averaging 15 wakes per night for the first 6-8 months followed by about 6 wakes per night up until about a month ago. Now we have a wake around 3am and they wont go back down without sleeping on someone. We have tried less aggressive sleep training, sleep therapists, baby massages, and diet changes. The list goes on. Just keep battling through, thats what I am doing at the moment. I also think, I am shaping this kids life, what happens each day can have an impact on them forever, so this might be a small part of your life, it will have a huge impact on their whole life. Thats how I frame it anyway and sometimes works for me.
 
@bondo Hey Dude, sorry you going through a tough time. My wife and I have let our bodies go in a big way partly due to our son, being tired and a bit of laziness thrown in. I have no real advice for you as we were terrible at sleep training and our son slept badly until he was 2. What changed for us is we dropped breast feeding and then during a really hote spell a few months ago brought him back in to our bed as we only have one AC unit in the house and the heat was too much. We then bought him a big boy bed and he loves the new bed. He almost religiously wakes up around 1am though and comes in to sleep with us until like 6am. So we get from 7pmish to 1am to have our fun, finish chores and get some decent sleep.
 
@bondo Sorry man, you're in the fucking trenches right now and I know everyone says it gets better and it doesn't really help at all right now, but honestly it does and you'll be playing mario kart with your kid and getting your actual evenings back to yourself.
 
@bondo My Dude, Sorry to hear that -I can't imagine how hard it is. I'm told my bro in law didnt sleep through properly until he was 5, I can't imagine the patience needed for that.
 
@bondo Our first didn’t sleep through the night until 14mo. It was absolute hell. I was so tired I didn’t form memories often when my wife would ask me questions about things I did earlier in the day.

Sleep train. Do it. People who have positive things to say about this period didn’t have difficult children; it’s about as simple as that.
 
@bondo Around the year mark I mostly got fed up with catering to her waking now. now I just leave her in the crib to cry until she passes back out. sometimes it takes an hour or more. sometimes I just turn off the monitor and go back to sleep and when I wake up, she's sleeping again. In fairness, their crib is about the safest place they can be assuming they can't climb out of it. and sleep sacks go a long ways to keeping them contained to in the crib.
 
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