Please give some sggestions to try to grt my 13mth old sleeping through!

[CharleeSawMummyKissingSanta]

DS2 used to sleep through the night.

SInce being in hospital with DS1 he has not. He is 13 months and still wakes every 2 hrs for a bottle, i am going through 4 pints of minlk a day just on him! He won't drink water, juice or anything else.

Anyone got any sugesstions before i crumple into a heap of tiredness!

Appaling spelling/grammer due to tiredness!

Pleeeeeeaaaasssseee help!!!!!!!!!!!!

My 13m ds2 has a feed-to-sleep association, so can wake more than every hour when it's bad. The best thing we have found to do is to get dh to go to him. At least for part of the night.

He needs to go to sleep in his cot, ie not on the boob, in order for this to work. We also stick rigidly to the same routine in putting him to bed. Then every time he wakes dh goes to him, rather than me. If I go he expects a boob. We usually start this on a Thursday night, so that dh has only one sleep-deprived day at work, and generally by Sunday night ds2 is waking only once or twice a night. Sounds awful - but a big improvement on 8-10 times a night!

We do let him cry, but we don't leave him alone. We don't take him out of the cot unless absolutely necessary, but kiss and stroke him and say the same go to sleep words before laying him back down in the cot. Then we sit or lie down on the other bed in his room and ignore him. We return to him after 30 secs to repeat, then after 1min, then 2mins etc. It's rare to take more than 45minsto settle him, and that's on the first night only. Subesquent nights take less and less time. The routine helps because he knows he is going to bed and knows what to do, even if at first he doesn't want to do it.

So far we haven't gone beyond one waking. And every time we get there he gets a cold or teeths or some such and backslides. But we live in hope.

HTH.

Forgot to say that we don't make him go from 8 wakings to noghting in one night. We don't make him go more than 4h between feeds, as we find he then stretches the interval himslef, if we are consistent and he doesn't become poorly.

Daytime naps are also important. If he can nap in his cot he is more likely to go down easily at night. Otherwise napping in the car or buggy are second best. No naps at all adn I can't stop him from falling asleep on the boob at bedtime, and we know we're in for a bad night. Both from overtiredness and from having fallen asleep on the boob.

hi - have no experience with older bubs as ds is only 13 weeks but all i can say is the baby whisperer has been a godsend and has superb techniques around resettling bubs. otherwise my initial thoughts are the following.

• when he is waking every 2 hours, are you feeding him? i would suggest that you stop and try to resettle him whilst still in his cot. May take a while and be a battle - but not sure how else he will learn that there is no point to waking every 2 hours. since he used to sleep through the night - I assume he has the skills to resettle himself and he has just got out of sync. may require you retraining him (so to speak) to go back to his old habits.

- how much is he eating during the day if he is genuinely hungry? can you increase his daytime food intake? - has anything happened to throw his sleeping through off?

Thanks for your replys.

He's not breastfed anymore so unfortunatley he associates dp and i with milk.

He eats a good amount in the day im pretty sure the night time milk is a comfort thing rather than an actual hunger.

He has dinner than bath then bottle then bed everynight.
We did get very lazy in the hospital and let him drink his bottle in his cot to get himself off to sleep but i have stopped doing that now and he has a bottle thengoes to bed and falls asleep by himself.

He knows how to ask for a bottle so when he wakes up he screams the place down saying 'nonny' which is what his brother calls a bottle so he has associated it to mean bottle to. hE DOES HAVE 2 NAPS IN THE DAY FAIRLY LONG BUT IF I DON;T PUT HIM DOWN HE IS SO GRUMPY AND MISRABLE HE JUST CRIES!

hi - my only advice is to withhold the milk if you dont think it is hunger. soothe him and sit with him (initially) so he knows he isnt alone - and let him cry. it may be tough, but based on what i have read - it may be the only way of breaking the habit.

sorry i cannot be more help.

Yes, it's tougher if he associates both of you with feeding.

Have you tried watering down his nighttime bottles? The theory is that if he only gets water at night, he doesn't bother waking for it. This has worked for others, though not for us (perhaps because he is breastfed? I don't know.) I'm not convinced, personally, because if the problem is that he doesn't know how to settle himself, how will he go back to sleep? But, like I said, it has worked for others.

The No Cry Sleep Solution has many good suggestions, but I suspect you're already doing most of the things suggested in it. Certainly worth a read in the library to see whether you want to buy it. Ditto The Baby Whisperer.

I'm not clear which ds was in hospital. If it was this one, is he fully fit now? If it was the other, could this one be having a flare-up of separation anxiety as a result? Though, TBH, whichever the case, I don't think you ought to stress him too much in tryign to change the situation. I know how tough this is for you because I am living it too! IMO I don't think you'll be able to change it without some crying, but, if you can bear it, letting him cry with you in the room (so that he is not abandoned) will, I'm sure, help. Tell him 'No nonny, lie down and go to sleep now'.