To post here because I'm desperate for help with sleeping (or not) baby!

[Halllllp]

My 8 month old has gone from sleeping pretty well (about 8pm to 6am) to suddenly waking up at 3am and screaming the place down because he wants to get up for the day.

I struggle to just leave him to CIO at all, especially at that time as it wakes the whole house up. I go and shush and then go back to bed when he's quiet again but he'll start again the minute I leave.

He will eventually go back to sleep after about 2 hours of this up and down but only after I've relented and given him milk and cuddled him back to sleep, until about 8 but this battle every night is killing me. Sometimes he'll just be babbling and playing about in his cot for even longer afterwards but will cry again if I leave him to go back to bed.

I'm going back to work soon!

HELP.

[quote Somethingsnappy]@ChameleonKola. Thank you for the links. Yes, I am familiar with most of them. As most parents that safely co-sleep with their babies and have done the research know: statistics around SIDS deaths that occured whilst co-sleeping are all counted in one big melting pot, which includes having fallen asleep with a baby on a sofa or armchair, falling asleep whilst holding baby in their arms, parents who smoke, drink or have taken drugs whilst co-sleeping. Sadly, all these factors hugely raise the risk of SIDS. If parents follow the safe sleep guidelines strictly, co-sleeping is a perfectly safe and evolutionary normal way of doing things. In fact, in many parts of the world, where breastfeeding and co-sleeping are the cultural norm and in whose culture drinking and drug taking is absent, deaths from SIDS whilst co-sleeping are almost non existent.[/quote]
Those things are known risk factors. And the evidence shows that even when those factors aren't present, bed sharing still triples the risk of SIDS as well as introducing the risk of suffocation and strangulation/entrapment.

Many babies have died as a result of bedsharing when all of the 'safe bedsharing' rules are followed. It's cruel and callous to pretend otherwise. You've shown that evidence isn't important to you and that's your choice to make, however if it helps one parent who isn't aware of safe sleep practices and the dangers of bedsharing who may be reading through threads learn then it's worth sharing. This is life or death stuff.

@ChameleonKola

Sleep training. There's a lot you can do, you don't have to just tolerate this.

Ferber method is great and has a lot of evidence behind it. You implement your sleep training method every time baby goes down for a sleep, be that at the start of bedtime, start of a nap, or the middle of the night when they wake. Gives them space to learn how to fall asleep independently. Currently by cuddling him back to sleep in the middle of the night you're reinforcing the expectation that that's how he will fall asleep when he wakes, so of course when he wakes up he cries for and expects that.

It might wake the rest of the house while you're implementing it but it doesn't usually take more than a few days/a week. I recommend joining a sleep training group that's evidence based. Respectful Sleep Training/Learning is a good one. Baby is plenty old enough to learn how to fall asleep independently and learn that night time is for sleeping. It can be difficult to do but in cases where a baby is having really broken sleep or the parents aren't coping or it's affecting everyone's ability to rest/sleep and in turn affecting your energy levels it's often the kindest thing for all.

We sleep trained at six months, our situation was much much more extreme than yours (waking every hour or two all through the night needing to be rocked or fed back to sleep, for pretty much his entire first six months) but within three or four days he'd learned how to fall asleep on his own, he understood that once he went into his cot it was sleep time, and when he woke in the night he'd make a few noises or roll about a bit then go straight back to sleep. Wake up at a decent time rested and happy and smiley.

He's nearly two now and his sleep has been excellent ever since, he runs to get his sleeping bag for bedtime, waves good night, nods off before we've even got the monitor on and he's asleep until 6-7am. Best decision we've ever made as parenting. We teach our children lots of things, how to eat, how to use a toilet, how to walk, how to be kind and empathetic, how to share... we also teach them how to sleep whether we do it with sleep training or not, by the expectations we have of them and the assistance we give them to sleep. Might as well teach them good sleep habits which will set them up for life. Good sleep is so crucial for wellbeing at all ages.

Oh my word… “you don’t have to tolerate this?!” I’m sorry, but “this” is a tiny 8-month old baby. It’s hungry and wants a hug - how could any parent ignore those basic needs. I hate to break it to you, but you didn’t teach your LO to sleep independently, you taught him that nobody would come if he cried. OP, please don’t feel you have to ‘sleep train’ - you have a baby, not a puppy. Just feed and hug and love - that’s what our LO’s need and want

@ChameleonKola, how on earth can the evidence prove that these deaths happened whilst the safe sleep guidelines were being followed?? Of course a parent whose baby had just died whilst bed sharing will not admit that they had been drinking/drug taking (for example). So your 'evidence' is deeply flawed. They cannot possibly know. All we can know is that SIDS is vanishingly rare in countries where safe co-sleeping is inherent to their culture.

DD1 still had a bottle at night until she started walking at 11 months. Quickest way to get her back to sleep (she never allowed cuddling or rocking in arms, only cot jiggling at a push). Having it for that long didn’t become a habit, she just dropped it when she was ready.

(And she barely drank milk all day from weaning so I was pleased to get some calcium in her)