9.5 mo multiple night wakings, on my knees - any suggestions?

[grainmum]

DS has a consistent bedtime routine and we're working on self-settling (currently takes about 20 minutes, goes into bed around 7). Last night we had 5 wakings, longest stretch of sleep 3 hours. He's breastfed but doesn't feed overnight any more. He has 2 naps, sometime between 9 and 10 for 45 minutes on a bad day up to 1.5 hours, another sometime between 1 and 2 again variable length

I've reached the stage where I'm struggling to cope and the lack of sleep is affecting my mental health.

Any ideas?

How old is your DS? Have you considered cosleeping?

My 1yo DD wakes every hour when in her cot. Once I go to bed I bring her in with me and she sleeps through.

With my DD, it's not anything to do with how much sleep she's had, that's would be a red herring as far as she was concerned, anyway. It's simply that she wants to be next to me. Personally I believe this is a very strong instinct, but it's just ignored in our culture, largely (but not so in many others).

There are various forms if sleep training and a whole industry dedicated to selling us products and books to help with this. But - for us anyway - the easiest thing to do was go with what my baby wanted and sleep together. I reckon if mothers were more supported in doing this everyone would get more sleep.

Sorry, that's a mini-rant aimed at consumerism really, possibly not useful to you!

FWIW when I had my first baby, we had no plans to cosleep, DP was pretty anti, in fact. But both our babies have made it very clear that's what they need to sleep. I appreciate all babies are different though and not everyone wants to cosleep.

Where's your DP in this? Can you share the night wakings?

I was thinking about co-sleeping again this morning. In the past I haven't found it helps very much unless I let him feed to sleep with me lying on my side, and I find that quite uncomfortable. Might be worth trying again though.

Can't help I'm afraid but marking place as in a similar situation with DS who is 9mo next week. A good night is a few wake ups where I don't need to go in (but still get woken up), a bad night leads to me bringing him in with me. An average night is 2,3 wakes with me going in to give back his comforter.

Co-sleeping helps to a certain extent but if he wakes up before 'get up' time he full on cries and is difficult to settle!

Is it just the age and they'll grow out of it? Fingers crossed!!

My DD went through a terrible period from 4 - 9 months where she woke up constantly. Cosleeping never worked for us. DD always thought it was playtime when she was in bed with us still does at 20 months like this morning. I remember modifying her feeds as I think she was snacking quite a lot, so she was expecting to do the same at night (although I was still feeding her at night then). I do remember switching from lots of little feeds to slightly fewer feeds but she seemed to have longer feeds rather than a quick snack. Consequently she seemed to sleep for longer at night. I know you say you've stopped feeding at night but perhaps one feed at night might mean he sleeps for a longer stretch?

Thanks for the co-sleepong rant. So what when you are co-sleeping half/most the night and still hardly getting any feckin sleep?! Just moved DD2 into own room. She usually has 2-3 hours in own cot then I feed/rock back to sleep for c. Another 2 hours if I'm luckily. After that usually wakes about every hour until I being g her in with me. Recently been trying to persist and put her back in cot but not working. And she still wakes constantly when co-sleeping. In c. 5m I've had a 3 hour stretch of sleep once and thought I'd won the bloody lottery!
Think I need to try CC because I'm going out of my mind, especially with toddler to look after all day.