Help. 15 Months Old, Breastfed and still waking in the night - I NEED MY SLEEP

[wackyjackie]

Hi

I'm new to Mums net and completely baffled by all the abbreviations (GF? - I'm assuming is an expert on sleep) - what's DD, DS ??????????? Anyone with a cheatsheet to the abbreviations?

Anyway, does ANYONE out there have any sensible advice on how to stop my extremely vocal 15 month old waking in the night?

She wakes, I feed, she goes back to sleep - I know I need to break the habit, but I do not have the energy to put up with the incessant crying (which I know will happen as she is extremely willful).

It happened with my first child to, and he was well over 2 before he slept through. Why do I have babies who hate sleeping?

Any good advice will be much appreciated.

Gf is Gina Ford
DD is Dead Daughter... guess what DS is then !
DH is the husband and DP the partner,
SIL is Sister in law... guess the rest of the familiy MIL, FIL, BIL

IYKWIM : If you know what I mean
BTW : By the way
LOL : Laugh out loud

and so on and so on

If you go under "getting started" which is here

you will get more info.

I think you'll hear some authors mentioned here... in your case they will suggest Ferber... I haven't read it but I suspect it would be useful for you

hello!
dd: dear daughter
ds; dear son
dh / p: dear husband / partner
mil: mother in law ec.

I could try answering your question, but my ds is only 6mnths and a routine baby. There are plenty of other mums with a lot more experience and wisdom whom I'm sure will be able to help, though. They're a nice bunch here

Oops I meant DeaRRRRRR not dead !

You are not the only one with a bad sleeper, ds is a few months being two and still wakes up at least once most nights. He was up at 3 this morning as he is teething some biggies and so am knackered this morning.

See thats how tired I am I still think its morning.

I'm another with bad sleepers - at 13 months I've just managed to get the 2nd one down to only one feed - at about 3am. The first one was still feeding every hour at this stage - so I'm getting better with practice - maybe by number 4 I'll get it sorted out
I did find the Feber book useful - although I used it more for ideas - making them go longer between feeds, shortening each feed, teach them to settle without feeding - and managed to avoid too much controlled crying. My best method was to send dh in instead of me - at least they realised a feed wasn't on offer. I was also out until about 11 pm the first time I did this - so I didn't have to hear the crying and end up going in. You will probably have to put up with some crying but it wasn't as bad as I expected. Hope you get more sleep soon - on bad nights I still seem to spend more time up than asleep.

Hi wackyjackie, I went thru this with dd at around 9 or 10 months. I was told by my HV that she was NOT hungry and did not "need" the feed thru the night, it was more a comfort thing as well as a habit of course. We did the controlled comforting type thing (do a search - there is a recent thread on this) and it only took two nights to break the habit. Those two nights were sheer hell of course but it was worth it! Of course then I had to try to learn not to wake up thru the night myself, since I was so used to it I found it had become a habit for me too!!!

It is tough, but YOU CAN DO IT! I know it is soooo much easier at the time to just put them on the boob and they will go back to sleep, which means you can too, but you have to put a stop to it at some point...it will benefit both of you if you can both sleep thru. So clench your teeth, buy some earplugs, warn the neighbours and let her go without! She really doesn't need it, she just wants it, and she won't suffer from a few nights of crying for it (you will remember it, but she won't!) Good luck, hope you can give it a try.

Good luck, Wackyjackie,

I had the same problem with my d.s., now 8 months old, who was waking up approx 3 times every night for a feed. I had loads of advice and suggestions from fellow 'Mumsnetters' and last night, after 2 weeks of C.C, my baby slept through the night for the 1st time.

It wasn't as quick as I had thought and 2 weeks of crying baby WAS hard but so worth it. He is now beginning to take proper naps through the day too. Looking back, we didn't really have any kind of routine, but now I have imposed one, my d.s. actually seems much happier.

Having said that, he is now screaming in his cot because of teeth!!

Best of luck xx