Am I doing the right thing - CC

[wellsie]

DS is nearly 8mths and the last few nights we have had an awful problem trying to get him to sleep.
From about 5wks he has slept through the night no probs, we've had the ocassional crying at bedtime but nothing like this.
As soon as DH or I walk out of his room at night time he lets out a high pitched scream and then continues to cry for what seems like forever. We go to him every 5, 10, 15mins, etc but this only makes him worse as we still have to leave the room. Tonight I stayed with him until he dropped off, he was in such a state But I have no doubt that he will wake again shortly as has been the case this week and we will start it all over again.
At first I thought he was teething but now I'm not so sure as he goes into his cot really happy, it's only when we leave the room that the crying starts.
What should we do? And how should we do it? He's been a bit of a pain at nap times to.

wellsie, my dd's been doing the same lately, though she's 22 months. She's always been a good sleeper too. I've got a thread about it just a few down from this one 'first time sleep problem in 22 month old' or something like that. I haven't had many replies except from myself but it may be of some help?

For what it's worth I do know that 8-9 months is the peak of separation anxiety time so it may be something to do with his growing awareness of your going off and him being alone. Dd had a slightly dodgy patch at about 7 months. If it's just been a couple of nights I'd give him the benefit of the doubt and be as kind and reassuring and cuddly as you can. But if it starts to go on much longer maybe you could think about cc or some other method, there seem to be so many now.

Thanks twick. He broke my heart tonight. I picked him and he just cuddled into my shoulder, which he never does, and did that sniff, sniff breathing thing that just got me all upset. I very nearly took him into bed with me but I knew that would lead us down a very slippery slope.
He went off to sleep with me stroking him and saying "mummy's here".
I'll see how he goes over the weekend and then I think we might have to do CC.
If we do do CC should I just leave him until he stops or should we go in after a certain time - am really confused.

When dd2 was 8 months she would go in her cot fine and we wouldn't hear a peep for about 10 mins and then she'd start screaming, stop when cuddled and then scream when we left. We gave her the benefit of the doubt, brought her downstairs incase she was teething and needing comfort etc but after 5 nights of this we decided to get a little tough and resorted to quick cuddle until crying stopped and then putting her down (felt like it went on forever) but within 3 nights she was sleeping perfectly again. If in doubt try speaking to your health visitor if you need the reassurance that he is not unwell before you embark on any controlled crying otherwise you might crumble which can send out confusing messages and take even longer to do the trick!! Good luck let me know how you get on

sportyspice, did you do PUPD?

Wellsie, I know, I know, that sob-cry thing is awful, really gets to you, it makes them seem like little frightened creatures.

How does he generally get to sleep at night, i.e. before this problem started? did he go to bed awake and settle himself? If so, then he doesn't have a long term sleep-association problem and you should hopefully find that he will start to settle again, either on his own, or with a bit of help from something like cc.

We only ever did cc once with dd when she was 15 months old. She'd been ill and got a bit addicted to cuddles to sleep and although she was better had 'lost' the ability to fall asleep alone. We tried everything else going before resorting to cc as we'd thought it sounded 'cruel.' As it turns out it was less cruel than most other things we tried and made a difference within days though the first 2-3 were excruciating. We did it the Richard Ferber way, the gentlest version of him, i.e we started going in every 2, 3, 5 mins and gradually increased it. Like your ds, going in always made dd worse as soon as we left but it kind of instilled in her mind that we WERE going to leave rather than if we'd just left her wondering where the hell we were. And yes, to answer this question after another bloody ramble, we did leave her til she eventually went off. First 2 nights took ages. Our worst ever session was at 4.30am - 6.30am but that was the last bad one. We nearly caved at that point but I'm glad we didn't. It worked quickly after that and we all got a proper sleep.

Thanks twick. DS has always had the same routine, bath, bottle, bed. He always goes to bed awake and gets himself to sleep by sucking his thumb so all this crying has come as a bit of a shock.
I think we'll see how it goes tomorrow night and then it might be CC. I love DS so much so when he cries that hard it breaks my heart - a frightened little creature is a good description and as a mummy all you want to do is protect them.

Oh gosh, yes, I really do know. Incidentally, dd was a thumb-sucker and stopped doing it almost overnight at 7 months. It was at that point that she kind of needed to develop a different method of going to sleep. We found that she became attached to a particular toy and started to suck his ear instead of her thumb so we never needed to do anything like cc back then.

I know the crying is awful and I may be deluding myself here but I actually think the crying of a pre-verbal child was 'easier' to bear than what we have now if dd's having trouble sleeping. Imagine a little girly husky voice saying 'hello mummy, where's mummy? mummy's not coming' / 'mummy, don't like it, mummy come please,' etc. I literally sit up here with my head between my knees feeling like the most awful person in the world when she can't sleep. When I go down she asks for endless 'cuddles, big kisses, mummy don't go, don't leave Eva' etc. etc.

AGH!!!!!!!!

Trouble with my dd is that she won't co-sleep. She has never slept next to me since she was about6 weeks old. So I've kind of had no option. I think if she'd been more amenable to co-sleeping I'd have ended up doing that when she has had her various sleep glitches. Like you I can't bear to hear her cry or call for me.