help for a 1st time mum with sleep

[older1sttimer]

my DS is nearly 10 months, crawling standing etc. he's recently waking up and stands up in cot or crawls around. He's never really been able to fall asleep by himself, and it's got worse now; wakes up after a couple of hours, screaming the place down. we've tried the controlled crying but he cries for ages and then stays standing or kneeling. never drops off to sleep. we will be moving him in the next month into his own room (building work nearly finished).

any tips most welcome.

Sorry no advice (my DS only 2 months), but a bump and hope someone with more experience comes along soon.

Poor you. I think his own room will make a big difference. It's practically impossible for them to learn to put themselves to sleep unless they're alone and also really hard to do controlled crying from the same room. Hang in there.

Sounds like the (horrible) 9 months sleep regression to me, I'm in the same boat (DS is now 10 months). In fact, I posted in Sleep about it... DS is also very hard to settle since he's learned how to pull himself up. I decided to just ride it out. I hate CC and I much prefer having him in my bed for half the night. The way I look at it, it's not his fault, he's not doing it to annoy me (although I do get very annoyed sometimes!) and with all the physical and mental stuff happening at this age, he is just too wired to settle.

Not much help, I know, I hope being in his own room will help. If he never self settled, can you try gradual withdrawal? Sympathies, I hope the regression will be over soon.

We have a similar thing with our 13mo dd at the moment and didn't want to do cc so have come up with our own method of teaching her to self-settle which I think might be similar to gradual withdrawal.

Basically we stand by her cot and every time she even starts to sit up we lay her back down, keeping our hand on her back for a while if needed. She soon starts to lie down for longer periods and so we move to her bedroom door instead, still going to lay her back down every time she starts to pull herself up. When she is happy to lie down for longer periods with us standing at her door, we then stand around the corner, again going in to lay her back down every time we hear her pulling herself up. Then we eventually start closing her bedroom door and she soon goes to sleep.

We have been doing this method on-and-off for the past couple of weeks as sometimes she is quite happy to go straight to sleep

It does require quite a lot of persistence but in my opinion seems a better option than the angst of cc. And it does seem to be working; a couple of weeks ago she wouldn't go to sleep unless she was being cuddled by one of us

Hope that helps,

Elle x

Does he have a comfort toy that he only has at bedtime? Lullaby music that he associates with bedtime ? Both have helped with us albeit DD is a bit older @16 mos but we've been doing this for a while. We've started getting her to put dolly to sleep before she does. Does seem to help and I talk up bedtime at least an hour before too.

Are you sure it's not hunger? If lots more active may need more calories?

It may be related to his new mobility as I think their brains know they've learned something and just want to practice! If it's this then it may only last 2/3 weeks...

thanks for all the tips. think i will give it a go -ellesabe. i do have a taggies thing which i will wear next to me and see if my smell helps him settle.
my current way is to just take him into bed when he wakes up in the night.

Roll on the new bedroom and hopefully we can move on then