Will he sleep though on his own or do I have to DO something??

[GivenToFly]

DS is 2.1. He slept through from 6 weeks until weaning, and since then has just basically f*cked about randomly.

He currently goes to bed about 6pm (he doesnt nap so he goes down early). He falls asleep in about 3 minutes, then can stay asleep til 3am, when he comes in to my bed, or he can wake up up to about 6 times in the evening, peaking at about 11pm when I have to go to bed and take him in with me. As soon as he is in my bed with me he sleeps the rest of the night fine.

My problem is with the fact that because he sometimes sleeps for like 8 hours before crying for me, he can clearly self settle and doesn't NEED me to go up. So the nights when he wakes up loads it just annoys me! Do I need to actively make him sleep all night or will he just grow out of waking up? I don't mind (well, I do, but I have to deal with it) if he carries on like this for 6 months or so, as long as I know he WILL sleep though soon enough. But if he won't, and I need to be mean and shut him in his room etc, I'd rather do it sooner than later!

Oh I feel for you!! My son is now 3.5 and was a great sleeper from 4 months until 9 months old.....then started waking randomly like yours. He didn't sleep through again reliably until his sister was born 6 months ago. Sorry that probably isn't very helpful!! Anyway we did find I'm afraid that leaving him to cry used to work in the short term - we would get up to him once to check he wasn't sick/wet/thirsty then be very firm and say "that's it, time to go back to sleep now" and not go back to him. It was awful (I wore earplugs) and we had to put the stairgate across his room but it did used to work for a few weeks at a time. Then an illness or holiday or something would disrupt him. I was always v jealous of my friend whose son would swan off to bed at 7pm and not make a noise for 12 hours (15 hours at weekends!) Good luck!

Lol thanks!

I don't think leaving DS to cry would work. I tried it when he was a little younger, but he is one of those that can literally cry for seven hours, and he does it every night with no improvement. Im not sure what other options there are though. Maybe wait til he is older and explain Im not coming back upstairs?

He could very well grow out of it, our DD did,

I'm currently sleep training dd with increasing success, she is 16mo. I sit in her bedroom on the floor if she cries so she can see me but I don't interact apart from to lay her down if she's been standing, screaming for a while. It seems to be helping. I'm not "rewarding" her crying by giving her attention and cuddles but I'm not leaving her alone, so she doesn't scream until she's sick because she's worried no one is there.

She's waking less often and falling asleep quicker generally, although she did scream from 0530 to 0715 the other morning and then slept in until 1030!

Oh, I already do that HappyCamel. I have to stay in the room while he falls asleep, but I just read a book. Stilll stuck on random wakings though!

What did you do when he was in the womb?

I'm assuming it worked?

Babies don't need help with biological functions.

Put bed back a bit,(even just half an hour) good late supper of porridge/banana/weetabix with a good glug of milk.

If he's going 8 hours then waking probably his blood sugars dropping,enough for him to wake up. The stodgy food will give him the complex carbs he needs to avoid that.