15 months old and above baby: sleep discipline

Question

My 15 months old baby has started to walk and talk. Well, he says dad, mum, water, and some other words.

Usually he wakes up once or twice during night, but sometimes he does 3, 4 or 5 times.

In the other hand, he's feeding well before going to bed.

Either when he wakes up 1-2 or 5 times, he does it saying "mama, mama" or "papa, papa", and it seems like he's not getting the discipline of that everyone needs to rest. We can wake up because he pooped, or because he's afraid because some nightmare, or ok, once or twice because he just want to know we're there.

BTW, my wife and me have a dispute about what to do when it's just that he wakes up many times thinking that it's time to play and enjoy instead of sleeping.

My point is that if he doesn't cry and just says "papa" or "mama" to call us, we should await to see what's going on. Who knows if he would start to sleep again once he realizes that we won't go with him if it's not the wake time.

Or, as our pediatrist said some months ago, babies do a small cry of less than a minute, or they repeat a cry simulation and once they realize that mom or dad won't go they sleep again.

The main problem is that in my case I'm with the pediatrist, but my wife wants to avoid any frustration to our 15 month baby. This is a point of discussion, because I feel that, even when you're a baby, you need a small degree of exposure to frustration, because you need to learn that you can't get what you want when you think that's the moment to get it.

And the second problem is that both my wife and me, and also our baby, don't sleep well. Maybe a small exposure to the frustration so mom and dad won't get to him whenever he says "mom" or "dad" at any hour during night time can be beneficial. And in the long term it can assist our baby on sleeping more hours without waking up many times during bed time!

What do you think?

Answer 1

My twins start sleeping through night on 1y 8mo, while they kept waking up to drink water once per night but then sleep directly.

The steps we followed were:

We reduced their nap during the day to 1 nap per day, for 1.5 hrs maximum.

We made many activities during the day ,whether at home or at the daycare, so they come at night tired and need full rest.

We have the bedtime routine each time and at the same time every night (including bath, dinner, going to bed, cuddling, then the story)

My twin B kept to wake up to nurse until he was weaned at 2 yo.

When one of them wake up energetic and wants to play we kept him in his crib to play but we stay sleeping, and the lights off, so he would fall asleep again after 10-15 min. I (me or his dad not both if he was not screaming or crying) might check on him and say it is time to sleep we will play again in the morning each 5 min.

Hope these steps might help.

Don't forget that each baby is unique and not all babies are alike. Some start sleeping through night at 4 mo (lucky parents), others might stay till 2 yo.

Answer 2

At that age I was breastfeeding my son. He would wake up multiple times a night even though he couldn't have been hungry that many times! It was time to wean him gradually. First we worked on getting him to sleep on his own. Then we worked on eliminating night wakeups.

For the first part, I would put him into his crib, go through the nighttime routine and then leave the room. Of course he cried. After 4-5 minutes I'd go back in to reassure him for 30 seconds but did not pick him up. I left the room. Crying resumed, waited 5 minutes, and repeated the reassuring. After three times, he'd fall asleep. After 3 nights he did not even cry when we put him in initially. It really works that fast, if you're consistent. It may sound cruel but you are teaching your baby a valuable life skill and that's worth everything, in my opinion.

Now that baby knows how to fall asleep, it's time to eliminate wakeups in the middle of the night. I knew that during the day he can go just fine with 3-4 hours between feedings (even though I fed him after 2-3 hours). So I set a time limit of 4 hours. If four hours elapsed since his last feeding, I went and nursed him. If it was less than 4 hours (even 3.5 hours) I did what I used to do for falling asleep at bedtime. Let him cry for up to 5 minutes. After a few nights of this, he was down to waking up just once in the early AM hours.

Just keep in mind that an exclusively breastfed baby may be hungry at night. Although I don't know if you're giving your baby real solids yet. At that age, my son barely ate any real foods and his diet was 85% breastmilk. So I made sure to feed him more often in the day so I knew he got his calories by day.