10 month old sleep. I'm desperate.

[Banana82]

My little boy is 10.5 months now and I'm at the end of my tether. I'm so tired from lack of sleep it's affecting everything.

He's never been a good sleeper. I could count the number of times he's slept more than 5 hours straight on one hand.

He's now waking constantly in the night. Won't stop crying unless I cuddle him. Then he snuggles in and instantly asleep. I then sit in the chair with him til he's in a deep sleep snd transfer back. I then get about 20 mins sleep and he's awake crying again and the cycle repeats.

He's never settled himself in his cot. His naps during the day are on me which I know is adding to the problem. But I put him in his cot for a nap and he screams so much that it's unbearable.

Something needs to change. I'm back at work in 4 weeks and not sure how I'm going to cope. My son will be in nursery 3 days a week so he's going to have to sleep without me then and i just have images of him there screaming for hours as he's tired and I'm not there for him to fall asleep on.

All advice welcome! Although please don't suggest I leave him to cry it out as not sure I can handle that.

There are lots of posters with brilliant suggestions for alternatives to crying it out but I would urge you to seriously consider it.

My theory (FWIW) is that it's sometimes more cruel to let your baby be tired all the time than to spend a few nights teaching them to sleep well. For lots of people, CIO only takes a few hours (over the course of a few nights) before the problem is solved for good. Compared with months of intermittent short spurts of crying, it doesn't seem so bad.

Forgive me if my post is unhelpful, but I really think CIO (or controlled crying, if you prefer) is written off too soon as an option when it really does work brilliantly for lots of children. and I've never heard anyone say their child's behaviour changed because of CIO attempts, so don't believe in theories that suggest CIO causes emotional damage.

Thanks for the reply Minitant.

Is the premise of CIO that when I hear him wake in the night to ignore it? Don't go into him? And eventually he'll fall asleep? I just have visions of him wailing and wailing as he's used to having me as a comfort then it's no longer there.

We did CC at 6months but our child had been a self settler beforehand, it took less than an hour for one night.
We did normal bed time routine, put him down to bed (with a few toys in the cot, you could try introducing a blankie - maybe an old top of yours that smells of you) and then returned after 2min, resettle, then return after 4min and resettle, then keep doubling the time between returning.

For naps we would have him in the pram and go for a walk to get him too sleep at first he would wake when the pram stopped but rocking it sent him back to sleep. Then gradually we reduced the length of the walks and rocked more until we could just rock him to sleep in the pram, and then over time could just put him in the pram for naps.

I wouldn't worry too much about nursery though they seem to have some magic fix to make kids sleep, ours still naps fine in nursery yet has dropped his naps at home.

Thanks Purple.

That's how I used to get him to sleep in the day. By rocking him to sleep in the pram. But got so fed up of dragging the pram out the car every morning and into the house I persevered with having him nap on me. Trading one bad habit for another though I guess.

Now his older maybe you could get an umbrella stroller and keep itin the house. After a while we didnt need to rock him just laid him in the pram and he slept. Although the point of that for us is so he could nap outside.

But should I not be getting him used to the cot? Rather than him just napping in a pram?

I did one nap a day in the pram and others in the cot gradually dropping the cot naps. It meant i had somewhere i knew he would sleep when we were out or on holiday. Ment we werent tied to thd hpuse for naptimes. Also good to be able to put him in the garden when there are other kids where you are staying.