Friday, April 16, 2010
...I'm tired. Drew woke up twice last night...can anyone give me some advice as to what to do? Is it normal for an almost-five month-old not to be sleeping through the night? We have been giving him cereal in the morning and then again around 6:30 in the evening, he takes a bottle about 30 minutes before he actually falls asleep around 9:30-10:00 (which in my opinion, it too late), sometimes he takes a few more ounces right before he crashes, and then wakes up again around 3:00am and then again around 6:00am! Does this sound right? Are we doing it all wrong or is there a trick? Please, we are up for trying whatever!
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6 comments:
This is about the time that sooo hard for me as a momma of a young baby. We let them cry. It took about 4 nights- but my kids learned to soothe themselves back to sleep. He is old enough for that. Of course, I was not 100% breastfeeding. If you are breastfeeding those babies do wake up once a night for about the 1st year. Right Kate!?! He knows yall will go get him-he is SMART and will do anything for yall to pick him up and love on him. The crying is so hard to ignore but you have to let that go for yalls own sanity-he will not remember any of this! That is what I did and it did work for my kids. About 4 months is when they stop needing food at night (what my doc told me). My mom said she sat at my door and cried bec she knew she could not go get me-but see I don't remember my mom not getting me those nights :-)BTW nothing is wrong with Drew except that he loves yall, yall are just being awesome parents!
Ummm...you might have to toughen up your skin and just let him cry. I doubt he's hungry. It's probably just a habit he's forming and you need to break it. We've done it with both our kids and they are champion sleepers (even Logan who is 3 1/2 months old...he sleeps from 8pm to 7am without a peep). Stacy is going to tell you to not do that because of her mom's traumatic experience, but it's worked great on our kids. It's called the Dr. Ferber method or "crying it out." We started doing it with Logan when he was 7 weeks old and he's been sleeping 11 hours straight for about 6 weeks now. He's not even on solid foods yet.
We do both...we put him to bed awake, let him cry (sometimes as long as 30-40 minutes). If the crying is getting less intense, we continue to leave him. He actually never makes it to the time limit. That only lasted for about a week. Now we just lay him down, awake, with his binky and he lays there quietly until he falls asleep. He hasn't started waking up in the middle of the night *yet* but with Calyn, we just left her. She only would wake up one or two nights in a row before she figured out we weren't coming in for her. Then it was quiet all night. Even now, at three years old, she knows that once the lights are out and the door is shut that it's over for the night. She doesn't lay there hollering for "water!" or "mom!" or "there's a monster!" because she KNOWS we won't be back in:) Those tricks don't work on us. It's HARD but SOOOOOOOOOOOO worth it to teach your kids to sleep. AND, my kids aren't traumatized. They're well adjusted happy people because they get a good night's rest. Now is the time to teach Drew good sleeping habits, because the older he gets, the harder it will be to teach him. They get older and wiser and learn how to "work the system":)
Adi, if there is anything I am learning by #4 it is this: This too shall pass! Please, please, please just try to relax and enjoy. Even in the middle of the night, try to just enjoy. In a few months you won't have a quiet moment at night with hiim. There are so many things you can try but first just try enjoying it. Then you won't feel so stressed and it won't be so hard to get up in the night some. You will survive. I lived for about 2 1/2 years with no sleep. Well...maybe I'm not a good example since I'm nuts now...
No two parents agree on this subject. We do not let our babies cry it out. My husband is a social worker specializing in infant mental health, so that has a big thing to do with it. I was against it before that too though for personal reasons. I won't go on here about it. I do know that pediatricians say not to make babies before the age of six months cry it out. If you want more info. from me, call me. I don't want to start a heated debate:)
Mya did not sleep through the night until about a year old. After that we started to get more though about it. Also, the Ferber method has a little more "method" than just letting them cry it out. We can chat about it :)
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