My 11m.o. not falling to sleep being fed anymore, and throwing tantrums. So stressed, please help!

[mammainlove]

My 11m.o. has just started walking/talking etc and generally turning into a toddler. She used to be so placid and relatively easy putting to bed. Recently she's started throwing tantrums, along with repercuinn anxiety, and despite having 2 naps a day, she seems hyper active in the evenings, and she wont fall asleep being breast fed anymore! And when i then pick her up to rock her to sleep, she screams and tries to struggle out of my arms! She does have an evening routine of dimming the lights and reading half an hour before bedtime. This is really stressful for all of us and leaves me drained and often in tears after she does finally drop off. Can anyone advise me what i'm doing wrong, please?

Thank you. I'm not going to let her cry tonight. I will just keep feeding her and lying with her i think xx

Sounds like a good plan- she's still fairly young after all.

Just wanted to join in and say I'm also having problems with getting my 11mo dd to sleep for both naps and bedtime. She was golden before, would settle into cot and just fall asleep without fuss. Now she has learned to stand up in her cot she just seems constantly wanting to be on the go and practising her new skill. I think it's really common at this age as they are reaching the milestone of walking (or already have) and just want to carry on having fun with you.

Doesn't make it any easier though - she will stand up crying hysterically when I try to leave the room, I go in lay her down and then she gets up again frustrated - repeat the process 50 times then she finally gives in to the much needed sleep.

I too was thinking about pushing morning nap to late morn/midday and see if perhaps she just isn't tired for her usual 2 naps anymore. I'm wondering if I'm just stuck in the routine that was working, that I am reluctant to change it!

I have friends who say just leave them to cry because they need to learn that it's time to sleep and by going in you're giving them the attention they want. I just can't leave her to scream though. It's so confusing isn't it?

Sorry for ramble, best of luck to all you sleep deprived mums, I feel your pain!

I'd try and bring that bedtime forward if I were you. I do the laughing, feeding wrestling thing too and whilst I'm there DS can't / won't settle. Have a firm cut off point, I pop DS in his cot and leave the room at eight thirty for ten minutes. He stands up, wails and when I come back he'll fall asleep within minutes. I have no idea why this works and I hate leaving him to cry but it does.

DD (nearly 11mo) sometimes does the same sort of thing of standing up/rolling around all hyperactive until I try and leave the room (which I tend to do when I get fed up of watching her), when she becomes hysterical until I return (I sometimes leave her again for a few minutes once she's calm) and soothe her (I don't tend to pick her up unless she's really really upset as it usually makes it worse because she then expects to be fed - just sit by the cot singing/shushing and stroking her head (running my thumb down her forehead over the bridge of her nose seems to encourage her to close her eyes so sometimes works) or patting her tummy or holding her hand). It just goes on and on with her getting more tired until eventually she responds to the soothing by falling asleep (usually about 45 mins in total).

She doesn't do this every night though and I've noticed that it's when she's very tired but has had a late nap (e.g. she's missed her usual afternoon nap because of a busy day but then falls asleep in the car on the way home) so doesn't somehow "feel" ready for bed despite being knackered.

Btw on the "good" nights it still takes a while for DD to fall asleep and she can't self settle, but at least it's relatively painless and she's relaxed and looks like she's trying to fall asleep rather than marauding around the cot...

Anyway, I hesitate to offer any advice given that DD's such a crap sleeper generally so clearly nothing I do is working anyway, but I wonder if tweaking her nap/bedtimes might be worth a try? I don't know what time your DD naps but my DD seems to need at least 4 hours between waking from her afternoon nap and going to bed (and 2 hours from first waking to first nap, 3 hours from first nap to second which I believe is a classic pattern). Also the No Cry Sleep Solution reckons that babies are primed to fall asleep somewhere around 6.30/7pm so if it's workable perhaps you could experiment with an earlier bedtime?

Apologies for the ramble, think it's a side effect of the sleep deprivation...good luck!

Thank you sleep deprived mammas. It took 3 hours to get her to sleep last night. About ten feeds, one walk in sling for half an hour. Endless pats, soothing etc. I actually started smoking again to calm down. If she was in a cot i think i would be tempted to leave the room for a few minutes, but she's on a mattress on the floor next to ours so she'd get up and roam around. Beancounting when you say tweak her naps, do you mean drop the afternoon nap, and make the morning nap later? I cant believe how hard this all is. It seems so unfair! We put so much effort into being the best mum all day, and at the end of the day when we deserve a break, put our aching feet up, we have to go through this! I dread evenings now and cry all the time. Yes i'm starting therapy next week.

Yikes that is tough mammainlove.

We temporarily tried the mattress on the floor thing, but like you we were worried about DS getting up and destroying the room.

Would you consider putting her into a cot? DS used to start off in his cot and then come through with us for the latter part of the night.

I do think about it sometimes. It just seems a bit cruel! and i'm not saying it's generally cruel to put babies in cots,it's a personal feeling because we've just always been so close i.e. Sling carried,breastfed, cuddled at night. So to suddenly put her in a bed with sides,away from us makes me feel a bit sad :( but then again, this is all stressful for all of us anyway. Did your dc seem affected by being put in a cot? Thanks for helping x

Sigh** I am in EXACTLY the same position with my 10 1/2 month old baby boy. He used to nurse right to sleep. We have a dedicated bedtime routine (Gentle play, bath, stories, lullaby in dimmed room) at the same time every night (7pm) but he just won't go to sleep now. We just get lots of writing and attempts to stand up and SCREAMING if I leave him. I have been so inconsistent. Some nights out of pure frustration I just let him cry it out. Other nights I lay in bed with him nursing him, rubbing his hair, getting him to relax until he falls asleep. I am at the end of my tether as even when I finally get him to sleep at 7.30 or 8pm he wakes up between 9pm and 10pm like clockwork wanting to be nursed and 3-4 more times during the night before waking up at 5am raring to go.

I HATE the concept of the CIO method but I am so tired I am almost willing to give it a go. It is so nice to know there are other mommas out there in the same boat. I thought it was just me. I'll be sure to follow this string for updates from other mommas.

Yes and we would like more success stories please if any one reads this and got has through this, i.e. child now falling asleep without needing a feed, rocked etc! It is reassuring to know i'm not going thru this alone all the same..

Yes, I know what you mean about the closeness.

I think mine just got to a stage where they actually wanted their own space and slept better for not being disturbed when we went to bed or throughout the night iyswim.

There's a good article about crying here and why some babies actually need to cry to release their tension.

You do sound pretty stressed, I felt the same way too, but I guess you either have to stick with what you're doing and hope things better by themselves, or make a few changes and see if things improve. Only you know your situation though and how you are feeling.

When/how long does she nap at the moment mamma? I know some babies are dropping down to 1 nap at this age but DD still needs 2 and your DD sounds like mine does when she's overtired, so I'm thinking she may still need 2, but perhaps the last one might need to be brought forward a bit (which may mean shortening it or the earlier one), or maybe she needs to nap a bit longer so she's less overtired. They are all so different though that this may be irrelevant to you, it's just what seems to hold true for us!

I wonder if she's frustrated because the nursing always used to send her to sleep and now it doesn't, because she's older, so she keeps trying to nurse and then getting upset because she's getting tireder and tireder (hmm, don't think that's a real word!) and she can't work out how to fall asleep until she just conks out from exhaustion? that's how I feel about my DD sometimes, she seems to really want to fall asleep but can't quite manage it, and being overtired just makes it worse (I stopped feeding her to sleep at about 8.5mo btw, in the hope it would reduce her nightwakings - which it didn't!). I think the idea of some time out in the sling is a good one, it's not overstimulating and should help her to relax and become drowsy so you can try again.

3 hours last night sounds like a nightmare, I hope this evening is better - it is really tough and it is unfair that your evenings are so awful because then you never get a break.

I did a kind of Pick-up/Put-down thing when ds was 8 months old and standing up in his cot. Basically everytime he stood up I laid him back down - if he reached his arms up to me I picked up and gave him a cuddle, then laid him back down.

The first night took a LONG time - an hour maybe? With lots of screaming. But eventually he stopped standing back up and I just sat with him with my hand on his back til he fell properly asleep.

I think the key with whatever method you use is to stay calm and be consistent - and don't give in, as it's just confusing and means the preceding upset was for nothing!

Hi Mama - I hope tonight is a bit better for you.

I have had a couple of stressful days/nights, my DD was up from 4 - 5.15am SCREAMING. So tiered now!

But I have to confess that I am persevering with leaving her in the cot to cry it out a bit :(. Never thought I would do it but I go back to work soon and there is no way I can function with little sleep in my job.

I have to say we are having a little bit of success, she crys now for 6 minutes then goes to sleep. I have decided to keep to not taking her out of the cot but I leave her to cry for about 5 - 10 minutes and then go in and stroke her hair shssing.

With regards to your LO, 10pm to me seems really late, have you thought about moving her bed time and putting the same routine in place every night, don't budge from it. Again I have always been a bit sceptical about strict routines but when it comes to bedtime I have realised that it is important.

Only suggestions as I know that what you do might be right for you so do not want to seem to be critical!

Sorry just read all the other posts and realise that other pp have suggested to change bed time! So ignore my suggestion as well.

So here is another piece of advice that I do when my DD is at her worst. I visualise that across the country there are many, many other mums/dads going through the exact same thing at the exact time. It makes me feel a little less lonely and reminds me that I am not a bad mummy but this is 'normal' for babies.

Thank you. What you all said really makes sense. Beancounting she naps 3 hours after she gets up for about an hour/hour+half and same 4 hours or so after that. I think you're spot on about her getting frustrated about not being able to sleep by nursing, she really wants to bless her and cries,rubs her eyes between one breast and the other, then gets overtired and hyper. She goes to sleep so easily in the sling and loves it. I'm just concerned it'll be harder to get her to sleep any other way if we keep resulting to this...

You're spot on Rita and others who mentioned consistency.

I was faffing around trying a bit of leaving to cry, followed by cuddles and falling asleep on the sofa for a while. I realised afterwards that this was actually being unfair and confusing on DS. He didn't know what the heck was going on.

Leaving them to cry is hard because we associate crying with pain and upset. Once I had learnt to hear his crying in a different way ie. that of annoyance and anger at being left, I could cope with it.

The short term 'pain' was worth the long term gain.

Just got to crack the 5am wake up now and we'll be sorted

DS is in his cot instead of our bed, hes screaming like hes going to be sick. I hate hearing it but Im getting married in 2 weeks, I dont want to be knackered on my big day.

Now we've started we cant stop, as others have said it'll confuse him.

No one said you have to train babies to sleep, I never imagined being a mum would mean feeling SO bad about leaving your baby to cry.

desperate - I hope your DS fell asleep? There is nothing worse than having to listen to them scream, my DD screams and starts coughing it breaks my heart.

Congrats on your wedding and I hope you have a wonderful day.

DesperateHousewife21- it's a horrible feeling isn't it.

I used to set myself little tasks to do that would take roughly 20 mins or so and then go and check on him and reassure him. So for eg., I would prepare supper, then check on him, then eat it, then check again and so on.

How old is he btw?

No hes still awake and crying, thats nearly 2 hours now.

Hes 11 months next week.

Oh DH21! It's just horrible hearing them cry.
DS' are the same age and we seem to have the same non sleeping baby problem!
We really need to sleep train DS, I keep putting it off :(
Really hope he falls asleep soon.
Congratulations on your wedding, hope you have a fantastic day!

Sorry our DS'

thank you prolific! Ds is still crying and its been 2 and a half hours. I think he's going for a record.

Yikes DesperateHousewife21 that's really tough.

Surely he must be tired by now?

Hope he sleeps soon.