I know this must be my fault - but why is it happening?/ co-sleeping question

[skewiff]

DD is 9 months old. I co-sleep with her and some nights we both sleep fine. But we have about 2 nights a week that are terrible. This is not every week, but it just works out on average about that.

She has done this since birth, but for some reason its annoying me more now (DS, by the way is 5, and also co slept with me and I had exactly the same with him)

Its now 4 in the morning and DD has been sucking and using me like a dummy for the last hour and a half. I can't sleep at all and she's not really sleeping either. I've given her teething granules,as I think that's why she's doing it - but they just woke her properly up and then she was climbing all over the bed.

My question is: why do co-sleeping babies do this sporadically? When she sleeps well, she really sleeps well.

Am I daft to co-sleep? Is it just creating problems? If I had a child that I had 'trained' to sleep in a cot would the child sleep beautifully through every single night?

Luckily I am not working so can normally cope with little sleep, but being awake since 3am and knowing that I probably won't get back to sleep again now seems like madness!! Plus I have something important to do tomorrow and then an important meeting at school on Friday for DS and I won't be able to catch up on sleep in the day before then.

Have you tried Elizabeth Pantley's 'No cry sleep solutions'? She has some good tips on getting a better nights sleep when co-sleeping.

its not that co-sleeping babies do this sporadically, its that ALL babies do this from time to time (or all the time, depending on your particular model of baby )

they all go through developmental changes that make their brain/body go a bit haywire for a bit, then settle down again (for a while) until the next developmental stage...

at least you don't have to get up out of your nice warm bed, go into another room and try to settle her in a cot.

just be glad that she goes sleep well most of the time

(oh and human beings can get by with much less sleep than you'd ever think possible so just try and catch up tomorrow night)

I would add, it's not even all babies, it's all children and maybe just everyone. We all have those restless nights. Sometimes my 3 decide to donut on the same night and I basically don't get any sleep (they are 9, 4 and 4 months). I don't routinely cosleep but do bring baby onto bed when the night is really bad.

As a parent you will have these nights sometimes, unless it's an every night problem I don't think you can do much (an every night problem indicates a bad habit).

Sorry, I think you just have to ride it out and catch up when you can. Hang in there!

I don't know about this being a particular problem to co-sleeping, but sounds as if your LO needs to learn to self-settle. Does she wake and nod back off when she naps during the day? I'm not suggesting any CC - I don't like the idea myself - but I do give DS the chance to nod back off when he wakes in the night, rather than dashing in straight away, and often he now goes back to sleep after some mild fussing and talking to himself. Obviously this is easier for me as he is sleeping in his own room, but you could maybe try it during daytime naps? Good luck!

It was about the age your LO is at now that I decided enough was enough and I did a bit of sleep training - not controlled crying, but just making sure I stayed with her and comforted her off to sleep in her cot. I did this by sitting back down and ignoring her when she stood up and screamed and then gently stroking her back and shushing when she flopped back down. She soon learned that she only got Mummy's attention when she was horizontal, and would subsequently drop off quickly enough.

We didn't intend to co-sleep in the beginning, but ended up doing it for ease. Since she's been in her cot (and to be fair, a lot of that was to do with stopping breastfeeding at 10 months) we've all had a better night's sleep. There are times when she wakes and ends up back in bed with us, but after half an hour of tossing and turning, I think we all irritate each other so she really is grateful to go back in her own room.

I'd say if you still enjoy co-sleeping, then carry on and OK, you have to put up with the odd restless night (but then again don't we all!), otherwise a little bit of sleep training doesn't have to be horrendous. I was absolutely dreading it and I'm so pleasantly surprised that we've done it so quickly and with minimal fuss. I really feel DD got to the point where she wanted a little bit of independence - and this is coming from a previous suck-on-Mummy-all-night co-sleeper!

DS used to do this when he was hungry and milk wasn't cutting it any more. He was so used to milk filling him up when he was hungry he would be half asleep feeding, feeding, feeding, not awake enough to realise it wasn't working and sit up and demand food but just hungry enough to not drop off, either.

I used to keep rice cakes or plain bread-and-butter sandwiches in the bedroom and give them to him, not ideal, but he went back to sleep then.

You could also try making sure she has a really filling dinner, carbs and protein, and giving a snack before bed of something like porridge, cereal or banana.

It's only a problem with co-sleeping, BTW, in that it's coming up because you co-sleep and she's in that lighter sleeping stage which enables her to wake up, you might well have found if she was in her own room that she'd wake up, feed, and then be awake because the milk hadn't satisfied her but she'd woken up fully then.

It's not one of these inevitable-with-co-sleeping things. For me I like co sleeping because it is literally a quick roll over, latch on, both go back to sleep kind of thing. If it isn't working like that then something else is affecting it.