10-month-old wakes up 3-5 times a night

[dennyissmith]

Won’t go back to sleep without breastfeeding.

I’m so tired.

We used to cosleep but now he actually wakes up more when he’s in the bed with us and doesn’t go back to sleep easily. He’s in a crib in the room adjacent to ours.

He has a lovey that he sleeps with. Bedtime routine most nights: dinner, bath, lotion massage (he has eczema), maybe a story if he isn’t already too tired. At this point he’s usually getting pretty upset and wanting to breastfeed, which we do, then bed. Usually I’m laying him down sleepy but awake. Sometimes he rolls over and goes right to sleep, sometimes he grumbles a bit to himself before passing out. I never let him cry it out, but if he’s just grinching I leave him be.

He will not allow his dad to put him to bed or soothe him during night wakings.

Eats three meals a day and two snacks and breastfeeds on demand. I offer a protein-heavy meal at night hoping it will help him sleep longer and not wake up hungry.

How can I get this kid sleeping most of the night through?

I’m just at home right now but will be starting a new job in a couple of months and I don’t want to be this tired.

 

[fatefulslave]

@dennyissmith Same situation and the only thing that worked was sending dad in. Yes, bb put up a HUGE fuss that it was dad and there was no milk but eventually he got over it and now that it's dad doing the wakeups (aka no nursing at night) he doesn't wake up as much. Before when I was nursing throughout the night he would wake up every 45min to 2hrs. Now we wakes up 1x. We started doing this (sending dad in instead) around 1yo and honestly I wish I had done it sooner.

 

[pepsihampster]

@fatefulslave I second this. You may have a rough night or two with baby being mad that only dad is coming in but it’s SO worth it!

 

[dhkrause]

@dennyissmith I could have written this last year. Not sleeping for extended period of times is just brutal.

I don’t have much advice other than to let you know it does get better. For us, it just happened naturally over time and by 15 months my son was sleeping (mostly) through the night. Hang in there

 

[congnh2412]

@dennyissmith I recommend the book Precious Little Sleep (you can get it free from the library) for tips on how to get him night weaned and sleeping through the night. She has lots of techniques so you can choose the one that works best for your family.

 

[tranquility999]

@dennyissmith My son was doing this still after 12 months. I started offering water in a sippy cup. The first couple nights I did give in and breastfeed if he cried too much but I ALWAYS tried to get him to drink water first and waited a few minutes before giving in. Eventually he figured out he needed to drink water before he could get the boob. Then he started falling asleep with just water. Then he determined water wasn't worth waking up for. I keep a non leak sippy next to him when he sleeps so if he is thirsty at night he can wake up and have some.

 

[marktrovit]

@dennyissmith I just revisited my post from 3 months ago with a similar question. Our son is 7 months old now and last night was the first night he went completely without nursing from 7:30pm until 5:30am.

I gradually stretched the period between nursing sessions, starting with 2hrs. If he woke up less than 2hrs after the previous nursing session, I would rock him back to sleep (he needs me to pick him up, walk up and down the room, rock him up and down and make a shhhh sound at the same time). Our son responds rather well to this, but it can take up to 10min of crying. It feels like an eternity, but he‘s being held and tended to the whole time, which works for me.

At some point we reached 3.5hrs, then teething and exhaustion came and we were back to square one.

We restarted halfway cold turkey and I nursed him only at his first post-midnight wakeup. Then yesterday we went all in an my husband did 99% of the soothing.

I assume you have tried rocking as a method of soothing, but it might be worth trying again going all in (walking, rocking, shhhhh-ing) and actually waiting it out for 10min. We‘ve had instances where the crescendo of his crying reached its high at 8min, by 9min he was calm and by 10 he was asleep.

I hope you‘ll find something that works for your child and for you as parents.

 

[missy945]

@dennyissmith We just started sleep training because of this. We started by making sure he was getting plenty of food during the day, and I added an extra nursing session in the evening, between supper and bedtime. If he wakes up, one of us goes in, puts his pacifier in, pats him a bit with a few shushes, and then we leave the room. If he cries for 5 minutes, we repeat. The first night, he cried on and off for 1.5 hours, with periods of 15-20 minutes in there when he soothed himself to sleep. The second night, he slept from 8:30-7:30 without any crying. Third night was more like the first, but we can tell he's getting the hang of it.

In our case, we can tell nighttime nursing was a habit rather than actually needing calories, so we feel comfortable with our process.

 

[eeks]

@dennyissmith That's almost when we night weaned but it's definitely the same reason. Honestly, I just started waiting to go in. If baby grumbled or fussed, I waited 1 minute. If nothing, I went back to sleep. If not, then in I went. Then after a night or two, I bumped it to 3 minutes. Then 5. Just to give baby a chance to settle on their own before. Now I was room sharing so my response time was just seconds before. But it took about a week that she was sleeping through the night.

 

[music_love%E2%99%AA]

@dennyissmith My daughter was EBF and didn't sleep through the night until I weaned at 16 months. I second sending Dad in, which is what I did in order to wean.

 

[mariefromtexas]

@dennyissmith How are his naps? Length and time?

 

[desaran]

@dennyissmith What we did with my first at around 13 months, but I’ve been given the green light to do from 6 months with my second is to only offer water through the night. It took three weeks to transition from nursing every half hour-1.5 hours at night to no wake ups at all. The first few nights it took about 45 minutes to get my first to take the cup of water. If I wasn’t visible it was a bit faster and as time went on the refusal to drink water became shorter. If they wake up now they take a sip of their cup and go straight back to sleep. For the first few years we used a anti leak sippy cup that was cleaned every day. At 4 years old now a normal cup is fine as they are fully potty trained and will wake up if they need to pee during the night.

 

[smjuweni]

@dennyissmith My LO was the same. She started sleeping through the night around one year, when I weaned her completely.

 

[yaron]

@dennyissmith Send the dad in anyway. We started with fixed times: nurse to sleep, then any wakeups before 1am, dad goes in. No compromises -- mom needs to be unavailable. Wakeups after 1am were still do whatever works (i.e. nursing) because nobody was thinking straight at that time of night after years of no sleep. Then, we gradually pushed the dad-only time later and later and LO stopped waking up so much after a while.

 

[leaderturk]

@dennyissmith I've found that, as a basic rule, creating new habits will take about 3-7 days. So be prepared for a very mad baby and very little sleep for a few days until he gets used to carried/bounced/whatever you choose instead of being breastfed.