won't sleep for long until I get to bed

[geekymummy]

sigh partly a vent, partly to get advice...

My DD is almost 9 months old. Once upon a time, when she was9 weeks old, she slept through the night, usually from about 8.30/9.00pm until 5.30am. When she hit 4- months this went completely out of the window, especially when her first two teeth came through.

Now we cosleep and when I'm in bed she sleeps from 10.30pm right through to 7 or 8am. Wonderful. Only thing is, when I set her down to sleep about 7/7.30, she will wake up crying every 30-45mins until I get to bed. This is starting to get on my nerves...She's not hungry, she gets dinner about 5/5.30 and is breastfed to sleep.

Last night she slept from 7.15 to 8.15. After that she just wanted to chat and play until 11pm! I'm leery of controlled crying because I think that this is just a developmental phase, learning to stand, babble, etc but am trying not to second guess my parenting...

Anyone else gone through similar?

by the way, anyone have an idea how long 9 month olds are supposed to nap?

Hi Geekymummy - I wanted to bump this because my 6.5 month old does exactly the same thing. She co-sleeps with us and basically from getting put down sometime between 6-7pm she then wakes up crying every 40-45 mins until we come to bed. It started off as waking once or twice then settling for the night until 4amish for a feed. Last night it was every 30 mins from 6-11pm. Now she seems to be getting herself so worked up that I have to breastfeed her to calm her down. Nothing else works.

Hope someone can swing by with some advice

I'll swing by and lurk in case someone has the answer .. it's feckin' annoying!

My dd is 9 months and sleeps 6.30pm-6.30am grin

My first dd was not like this at all and was the same as you describe above. I co-slept and this was great - BUT only when I was in the bed. I would take her to bed at 8pm, settle her and leave. She would then wake every half hour until I was in bed. It was frustrating and in the end I used to just got to bed with her at 8pm. I think that she could not settle into a deep sleep unless I was with her. This was what she was used to and so if I was not in the bed then she would not go into a deep sleep.

Also, her sleep patterns during the day were all over the place. Some days she would hardly sleep and this I think was also a factor in her not settling well at night.

I have done things drastically different this time around and there is a huge difference. I did not co-sleep with dd2 and she was in her own room at 8 weeks. Her sleep patterns during the day have always been pretty much the same. She sleeps 9-9.30am, 12-2pm (and sometimes 4.15-4.30)

I found the key second time round was to establish a good day time (and night time) routine and stick to it. It is tiring in the first few weeks of trying to introduce it but it is worth it.

I had an exhausting time first time with dd1 and experience taught me to try a different approach this time. With dd1 there was no consistency (my fault) I let her do what she wanted and was led by her. Becauase she was my first I really did not have a clue and so no two days were ever the same. In hindsight I now realise that she did not ever know the difference between day and night! She also learned that she could only get into a deep sleep when I was there with her! I do accept that for a lot of people co-sleeping is successful. It's just that for me it didn't seem to work - and at the age of 8 she still is a poor sleeper! It has taken years to finally get her into her own bed.

Anyway, do not want to put any of you off co-sleeping!!! Just thought I would share my experiences of it....x

that should be!!!

Thanks for your input Karen999! I've only been cosleeping since the past 3 months when things were getting hairy - teething, learning to roll over, and so on.

I don't think in this instance that cosleeping is the problem here... In my family cosleeping is pretty much the norm and for instance my nephew was a great sleeper as a baby, though his mum didn't have any kind of a routine, much less than myself... we've had a bedtime routine since DD was 3 weeks old? Maybe this is just how she sleeps for now?

cinnamontam and ChubbyStuckForAFestiveNameBurd - glad to see I'm not alone

The funny thing is that I was out Saturday night and left my mum and DH to settle DD and she slept fine!

Yes, we co-slept, too, and dw found herself in exactly the same situation
which was not tragic at the beginning (when she was so tired she
gladly went to bed at 7pm with lo) but after a few months
she was getting desperate for some time to herself in the evenings.

In those days I didn't know about Dr. Jay Gordon's shush-pat method,
which sounds pretty good and might work for you.
I have linked to the current thread about it, look in the op for the actual page.

Blimey - I have this problem too!
Been in 6 x this evening, he will only resettle with a quick breast feed.
Will lurk here too

thanks DaddyJoseph!

Will update with any progress

Geekymummy, I could have written your post! Ds started doing this at 9 months. The only difference is that it was/is easy for me to get him back to sleep by patting him. But it was very annoying so we tried to get him back sleeping in his own cot. All this meant was that he then woke up every 40 minutes all night! After a few nights I got this down to every two hours but after two weeks I was so exhausted that I tried controlled crying. It was too traumatic and I gave up after one night. So ds ended up back in bed with us and I learned to live with it. Not much hope there, I'm afraid.

The only thing that has stopped the waking (and this was at 16 months) is that ds has, unfortunately, stopped falling asleep on the breast. So now dh has been trying to put him to sleep, which takes ages, and is even more annoying then the 40 min trips. but once ds is asleep he stays asleep.