17 month old not sleeping

[slammer041973]

HI all

A bit of advice would be helpful.

I'm the father and am quite happy to try and let our baby daughter cry herself to sleep. We did it over Christmas and after a while was sleeping until 4 or 5am and coming into bed which was okay. Since then she had a cough and mother kept getting up more regularly and last night she woke at 10pm, 11pm and cried for a long time around 12pm. Each time one of us (mother on two occassion) would go in and she would get picked up and go to sleep. Because she cried for a long time and wouldn't self soothe mother was convinced there was something wrong with our daughter but i kept telling her if she was ill she wouldn't go back to sleep straight away. She woke again at 4am and mother bought her into bed when we had to wake her at 7am.

i'm convinced that a few nights of pain is worth the gain. But mother is concerned about our 11 year old boy not sleeping and also at her whits end as just wants to comfort her all the time.

We've agreed that we disagree on this but i can't see any other solution. I'm not the one that gets up angrily and in despair. Its the mother. I totally understand this but i always feel as though she thinks its my fault that our daughter cries because i am willing to let her cry.

Any magic solutions? How can we get a happy solution?

It makes me sad that you're happy to let your daughter cry herself to sleep. That's not self soothing - that's falling asleep from sheer exhaustion and she'll wake up unhappy again. You need to help her sleep and learn to self soothe by showing up when she's upset and comforting her - then leaving her to sleep when she's calm and happy. There is no magic solution, she's 17m old.

so what would you suggest please? Going into the room everytime she wakes and soothing her doesn't seem to help as she wakes up every hour or two. I'm after some helpful advice. I understand there is no magic solution just thought we maybe missing something really obvious and i realise there are lots of different opinions on this.

Does she use a dummy or have a bottle at night? It is recommended you let them try to get themselves back to sleep for 10 minutes. If after 10 minutes they don't settle then you should go check on him/her: does she nap in the day?