Advice needed on baby sleeping habits

[IanMac]

Hi folks,
My girlfriend and I have one child, a boy, aged 15 months. He was born 13 weeks premature, but has recovered fine from that. He is walking, has a few words, is eating solids and drinks water, juice or soy milk. He is off formula completely.

Where the problem is though is in his sleeping patterns, he used to sleep through the night, but after he started teething he stopped sleeping all night.

At the moment, he goes to bed at 9pm, we give him his bottle of soy milk, and he goes to sleep and we take him up to his room. About 1am he will wake up screaming, often his eyes will still be closed, but he will be crying at the top of his lungs and we can only get him back to sleep with another bottle of soy milk. It normally takes up to an hour to get him back to sleep. Most nights this is then repeated around 4.30 or 5am.

This started happening before he was taken off formula, so I don't think it has anything to do with his milk, he has not brought up any new teeth in maybe four months, and I can't feel any under his gums so I don't think that's it.

Any book that we have read seems to advocate controlled crying, but I can't stand the idea of listening to my son scream in what sounds like agony or terror without doing anything.

Thanks,
Ian

Great to hear your ds is thriving! Does he waken when you pick him up? If not he could be having night terrors which are different from nightmares as they don't wake up when they are having one.. From what I've read on night terrors they advise not picking them up but sitting close for reassurance.

How much milk does he take during the night? Is he getting plenty solids during the day? (so you can rule out hunger).

Sometimes they just baffle you!

He does wake up, but not all the time, often it is like he just opens his eyes to check who is there, then he closes them again.

Sometimes he will drink a whole bottle at night, other times he might only drink half of one, he eats at breakfast, lunch and in the evening, generally fed until he stops eating, so I don't think it's hunger related.

We sometimes give him cold Camomile tea to drink, but that does not seem to make a diffrence either.

I think maybe you have to change your routine so that your lo falls asleep in the cot rather than being transferred into after he is asleep. Your lo must feel a bit disconcerted to wake and realise he has moved from the place he fell asleep in the first place.

Do you use the bottle to get him back to sleep? If so, then he has learned that he needs to suck on the bottle to sleep rather than being able to settle himself. I would definitely start by giving him his bedtime bottle and if he falls asleep wake him a little before he goes into the cot so he can go off to sleep by himself - there are several methods you can use when he cries e.g. pick up/put down (where you stay with them while they cry and pick up and comfort them before putting them back in the cot), controlled crying (where you leave them for increasing longer intervals of time and never pick up to comfort), etc

At this age the milk is not a hunger issue, it is a comfort issue.

So last night we tried bringing him up to bed at bed time and leaving him have his bottle there. He can feed himself his bottle, and my other half just sat on the chair in his room so that he could see her. He went to sleep, it took a little longer than usual, but no more than 30 min.

He still woke up twice, but once it was my fault (I dropped my keys when going up to bed =/ and again at about 4.30am but both times he was just given is bottle and one of us stood over him and rubbed his head and made soothing noises and he went to sleep again within 20 minutes (Beats the hell out of the hour it normally takes!)

It could very well be night terrors, as my partners little sister (Who is six) suffers from them.

But here is hoping it will improve as time goes on!