Make my baby sleep

denalea

She's 8 1/2 months old.  Almost 9.  She still gets up every 2 hours or more...or less...so inconsistent.  She seems SOOOO restless at night (when she does sleep, its on the bed next to me, or in our arms.)  Even being held she still often jerks around and thrashes and arches.  Often she'll fall asleep for a few hours and then be up and want to play for a while (usually at 10pm or later!).  Then restless sleep for the rest of the night.  And she refuses to be put in a crib, pack n play, anything.  (She actually does better for naps on that front...our babysitter has the magic touch.)

She's on meds for reflux.  She has 4  teeth coming in. (Tylenol and Advil don't seem to make a difference.)    She's crawling and pulling up and learning new things all the time.  So, for those reasons I can rationally understand the non-sleeping.  But OMG!  Momma needs to sleep.  More than 3 hours in a row. 

My MIL graciously ::::sarcasm:::: has offered to write us a step by step list of how to put her to bed, and then apparently all of our sleep woes will be solved....At this point I would rather not sleep than to admit that MIL is right...because apparently everything we are doing is wrong.  Wrong wrong wrong.  We've ruined it.  It's our fault she hates sleep.

We tried one night of graduated cry it out, but after a bit she had herself so worked up (screamy!) that it then took 90 minutes to calm down...she fell asleep before then, but was still whimpering and crying in her sleep.  Broke my heart.

So...advice...commiseration...success or failure stories?   Can you give babies ambien?  (joking...sort of...)  I-)

Luckystar2

Have you read Ferber? I can't say enough good things about his book/method. I was against CIO but we were miserable and so was dd. We also dealt with reflux too. We did it around 7 months. She was also nursing every couple hours so I cut back on that at the same time. She was STTN within a week. There were a couple rough nights but quite frankly she wasn't getting great sleep without it so we were willing to keep going. You really have to stick with it per his plan.

Anyways I truly think Ferber helped fix her bad sleeping. Since then her sleeping has been fantastic! It's been almost 7 years and I'm so glad we did it.

Luckystar2

And I had dh be the one to check on dd per Ferber's method. I knew she'd want me and want to nurse so figured I would be easer with dh. On the rough nights I went downstairs so I couldn't hear her crying. It sounds bad but honestly it was a couple nights and she's been a dream sleeper ever since. It was worth it IMHO!

amyjoy18

Ugh that is rough, and it doesn't make it any easier, but we've all been there.I believe 9 months is categorized as a sleep regression period, so as much as I HATE to say this, I'd try to ride it out and get sleep by any means necessary.  And then, to put reflux and teeth on top of it, you're fighting a losing battle. 

DD was a pretty good sleeper, but I do remember that time being particularly bad.

DS on the other hand was just a terrible sleeper overall.  Nothing we did worked. We spent months trying to rock him to sleep then place him ever so carefully in the crib, only to have him wake up.  We even went as far to put a heating pad in his crib to warm it up while he nursed to sleep, then DH would come in and take it out before I tried to put him in it.

We spent the majority of the first year with him in our bed.  Then another year laying on the floor next to his crib with my hand through the slats so he could fall asleep, only to have him wake up as I was performing super stealth ninja moves to get out of the room or when I did escape to have him wake up a few hours later. 

To be perfectly honest and transparent, that child did not start sleeping through the night until he turned 2 and we bought him a big boy bed. And boy was it rough.  There were a lot of arguments between DH and myself (exhaustion induced I'm sure), tears and crazy ideas.  You name it, we probably tried it.  There were a few glorious nights where we caught a full night's sleep--which likely had nothing to do with anything we tried.

I know that probably sounds discouraging, but my point is, you're doing the best you can and there may not be the magic bullet that you're searching for, so sometimes you need a new strategy for your own sanity.  Give yourself a break.  For a time it honestly just worked better for DH and I when we figured out a plan that would allow us each to get the maximum amount of sleep.

Often that included DH going and getting DS when he woke up and bringing him to me to nurse, and then sleeping with him the rest of the night.  If DS was having a late night, one of use would go to bed when DD did and then we'd switch later in the night.  Other times it meant shifting normal household duties (or skipping them all together).

It sounds counter intuitive, but if you're lacking in the sleep department, instead of focuing on getting your dd to sleep more, spend your limited mental resources figuring out how you can get more sleep in spite of her sleeping troubles.

Hang in there!  It's rough.  I very vividly remember seeing friends' facebook posts about how much they were enjoying a particular late night rocking session, because "soon this all would be over" and I wanted to scream, because for me I'd had more than my fair share.