Frequent night wakings - what can be done to help a mobile poor sleeper

Question

I am a sleep deprived mum of a 9 1/2 month old boy. He's otherwise a smiley, healthy and seems to be on the top percentile for both weight and height for his age. So he doesn't seem to be sleep deprived, grumpy and starving or obese.

He is also completely breastfed- fresh from the tap, not through choice but he simply refuses the bottle (which is another issue) but my plan is to wean him in 3-4 months. He also doesn't take the pacifier... he objects to anything artificial in his mouth and we have tried many things (except for starving him until he takes the bottle) and now we have simply given up. He's eating solid alright and basically enjoy eating, he has also cut his day feeds drastically.

Nighttime however is becoming more and more of a nightmare. He was never a good sleeper and I made the rookie mistake of letting him sleep on the breast. I never managed the put him down awake thing that everyone else seems to be able to do. We also co-sleep so that I wouldn't die from all the multiple wakings.

Recently things have gotten from bad to worse. He goes to sleep fairly easily but wakes up every hour up to midnight or 1 am, then he wakes up every 2 hours until he wakes up for the day between 0600 to 0630. He goes to bad between 1830 to 1930 depending on when he wakes up from his last nap but typically he is out by 1900. Then the hourly waking starts.

I have searched the Internet and it seems the sleep association is to blame, as he falls asleep on the breast he needs it to get back to sleep again. He can't connect the sleep cycles himself. These sounds most likely the most plausible reason, but what can I do about it save cry-it-out?? I think he also have a second sleep association- which is being close to me. Sometimes (but rarely) he does get off the breast and wiggles himself to sleep but usually stuck against me.

The reason why I would like to leave CIO until there are no options left are because:

1. He wails and get more upset the longer he cries. He doesn't calm down easily once he starts.

2. He started crawling and few days later crusing and now he can go from furniture to furniture and climb down from the sofa, things actually started to worsen a month ago when he started turning in his sleep and got on all fours at night and started crying but he wasn't mobile until 2 weeks ago.

3. He is teething. His 3 teeth broke through in a week and one more on the way. I started giving him ibuprofen yesterday and he seemed to have slept better; will do it again tonight.

4. His separation anxiety seems to be getting worse. He was always clingy but now he wails when I leave the room and crawls to chase after me. He also clutches to be tightly after every feed.

So with so much going on, I really don't want to make it harder for him.. but at the same time things are getting worse on the home front as dear husband is blaming me for fostering his bad habits, inhibiting his ability to be independent and basically being the reason why he can smooth himself to sleep.

What can I do to improve the situation? Should I wait it out, cry it out?

Answer 1

Well there are a number of things.

Separation anxiety getting worse is normal, developmentally appropriate & something you just have to pass through. The age where you might see more improvement with that is past 18 months. All children have it to some degree, and some are much more than others. I saw no difference in the children that had me back at work at 6 weeks & the one I was home for, in that regard, despite being "used to" me leaving daily. It's a normal healthy part of early childhood. It's hard, but it will pass on it's own.

Frequent waking can be a cycle, but it also is associated with oral ties, lip & tongue as well as things like silent reflux. A child's sleep cycle isn't like an adult, it's actually 45mins, so when a child wakes hourly, chances are they have become fully alert after a single sleep cycle.

I noticed you said you permitted the baby to sleep on the breast. One way to help you is to work on trying to get baby to fall asleep at naps & at the first bed sleep, unlatched. I know it's work. I have been through it. If you are persistent, and just unlatch them while awake & shush, pat, walk, bounce, rock, etc, they will fall asleep. If you can consistently get the baby to finally accept unlatching before sleep, you do generally see them waking you less at night. All babies & children rouse. Adults do as well. It's normal. We roll over, change positions, etc. So you simply are aiming to get the baby to a place where he is more likely to get back to sleep without rousing you to do so. For me, I have always found getting them to unlatch before they dose off, is most helpful there.

And if baby is going through milestones, developmental leaps, growth spurts & teeth, it's also just going to sometimes be stormy. It helps to remind yourself how fast the 9 months has gone. It will help you remember that this will pass faster than it seems too. It feels long in the moment, but then you can't believe it & they are talking & running around & you made it through after all.

So The separation anxiety is normal stuff & expect that it will intensify going forward: http://www.parenting.com/article/separation-anxiety-age-by-age

If you have ever been told your baby has a tie or suspected it, you may want to have that relooked at. http://www.drghaheri.com/blog/2014/2/20/a-babys-weight-gain-is-not-the-only-marker-of-successful-breastfeeding

You might want to check into getting the "wonder weeks" app. It pretty accurately will tell you when to developmentally expect certain behaviors. It's not 100% but will give you a better idea of when your baby is most apt to being crabbier, wake more, etc. This blog sort of explains about the book & app. http://www.weebeedreaming.com/my-blog/wonder-weeks-and-sleep

And if you are interested, there is a sleep consultant that doesn't do CIO that I have heard rave reviews on & I know her through a mom group, and she has given me very sound input. I know there is a section on nap help on her site that is free. http://childrenssleepconsultant.com/

And mostly, hang in there. I found that least few months before they hit a year hard. There are a lot of things at play. It's a tough age. It's wonderful in a lot of ways too, but the developmentally things happening, growth spurts, teeth, they combine to also challenge you at a time when you have hoped this whole thing was going to start getting easier. It will. It then just gets harder in new ways though. But sleep will get better & with more sleep, then all of life seems more manageable. And be nice to yourself whenever you can. Take long baths or just a 15 minute walk alone, or any other way you can squeeze in some breathing space. That too helps to make it more manageable & something I insist that I do for myself every single day. The only time I don't might be during illness. I will walk out even if the baby is screaming about it, because I always put them with someone loving & kind & just take that time to clear my head & have 15 minutes to be alone with my thoughts & listen to the wind.

Answer 2

At this stage, you may want to start by deliberately putting him down in his own room a few minutes early, and gradually increasing the time he is left alone there. Use a timer so you don't"give in early. Once he has developed the trust that being on his own is not a permanent thing, he will start to fall asleep naturally (especially if you make it a point to tire him late in the day and do something relaxing just before bedtime.

Studies are fairly definitive that kids sleep better when they are not disturbed by the much noisier adults around them. Most "poor sleepers" in a cosleeping situation are actually being woken first by adult noises, then in turn they wake the parent. Take away the adult noises and suddenly they become good sleepers, to the relief of the sleep deprived mother.

(Edit) it is also important that he learns that he can't simply get attention every time by crying. You may end up buying a pair of earplugs and letting him cry it out, then going in to him after he stops crying.

Answer 3

This might be an odd perspective to hear, but my first thought when I hear about this situation is to worry about the baby's teeth.

I used to work in a pediatric dental office, and the most difficult situations we had to deal with were young kids who were frequent night-nursers. They would usually come in somewhere between 1 year and 18 months with their front baby teeth so rotten that they all had to be pulled out, which is a much bigger deal with a kid that young than it is for older kids for two reasons: 1) the older kids can usually deal with getting their teeth pulled in the dental office, while the babies have to have general anesthesia at the hospital in order to be still enough and not freaked out, and 2) the baby teeth hold the space for the adult teeth to grow in to, and without them (especially for a long period of time) the likelihood of needing braces goes way up. I would strongly recommend wiping baby's gums and new teeth with a soft damp washcloth right after his bed time feeding, and then not nursing until he wakes up in the morning unless you absolutely have to.

As far as whether it's ok to let him cry it out, I'll tell you what my pediatrician told us (which by the way was VERY hard for me to stick to- I wanted to go to my son so badly, and was sure there would be some kind of abandonment issue from me leaving him to cry): she said that once baby is over 10lbs, he should be just fine overnight without additional feeding, and that at 6 months baby had gotten enough of a sense of security from sleeping with mom that it was safe to let him cry it out. And she said "it will be much harder for you than it will be for him." She said he might cry the whole night the first night, but that the second night he'd probably only cry for an hour or two, and the third night maybe 15 minutes. And that was basically exactly how it went.

My experience? It was HORRIBLE for me. But it was great for my son's sleep cycle in the long run: he's basically been sleeping through the night ever since then (with the exception of bad dreams sometimes), AND he has had a perfectly regular nap schedule (2-5pm every day) until the last two months when he's started sometimes skipping naps - he is now 3. Also, no abandonment issues. He's perfectly confident being left with other family or friends or babysitters, or at daycares or schools, because he knows I'll always come back. I would say the only downside to CIO is that you have to endure listening to your child scream for a couple of nights. Of course, you don't want to do it TOO early, but I think you would be safe at this point :)

I forgot to add that the pediatrician recommended that if baby was screaming for too long (I don't remember the exact length of time) that it was fine to go into the room and remind the baby that I was there, talk calmly to him, and remind him it was time to sleep - but not to pick him up! Or if I absolutely had to pick him up, to put him back down in his own bed and go back to my room afterwards (but she strongly recommended against picking him up - it was more just a remind-baby-that-mom-is-still-there thing).