am I crazy? attachment parenting has led to 19 month-old waking every 2 hours

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I have been responding to nightly cries of co-sleeping dd, now 19 months, since birth, with nursing back to sleep, a la dr. Sears and attachment parenting. Mock me Dr. Ferber and gasp at the dark circles under my eyes. It ends eventually, right? Will dd eventually grow out of it? She nurses... oh 17 times a day.... It strikes me as ridiculous, but I still don't favour any other parenting philosophy than attachment parenting.

Tell me at 2 or 2.5 baby will out grow this!!

Come on fellow fraeks there must be some positives to this road we chose!

Right? surely. One?

I have composed the title 'Damn you Sears and your balrdy loving gentle parenting approach' a thousand few times myself.

what's the alternative though? i am satisfied with my parental drippiness.

if anyone else is in need of more moral support then there is an excellent site here

lots of us there going through the sleeplessness right now.
and as I say, many coming through the other side with toddlers going through the night

How weird...I logged on to see if anyone had a solution to 4mth old waking several times a night and I stumbled upon this. I'm also an avid follower of Dr. Sears from 7am-7pm but I hate him in the early hours! I'm co-sleeping with DS and loving it but I'm not loving the bags under my eyes. I'm struggling to remember the benefits of our chosen form of night parenting...can someone please remind me? I'm totally anti crying it out but there has to be a happy medium for both mother and baby right? Are we letting our babies down by not teaching them a healthy approach to sleeping???

Fellow freakoid here. DS is 2.9 and still co-sleeps after first waking; he has one or two feeds in the night and wakes for the day any time after about 4.30. It's hard and I want to kill people some of the time, but mostly it's fine.

DS started going through the evenings to about 10pm at around 15 months and I started to see the light. Now he can have pretty good nights; it does get better and it does help to know others are doing it too.

The major major benefit to this approach is DS only needs me to get to sleep. Granted it does have to be me, but I can take him camping, on ferries, sleeper trains, any number of hotel rooms, youth hostels, what have you and he will sleep (provided it's relatively dark) whereas I know many people whose child is trained to sleep in bed and will only sleep in their own bed. Thus condemning the mothers to return home as many times in the day as Junior wants naptime and to be much more conservative in holiday choices and days out than I have been. Have had many people remark enviously on DS's ability to go to sleep pretty much silently on me, thus not really interrupting my activities but his needs are still met.

Plus of course my DS is an angelic and talented genius, natch; and it's all down to my parenting

I don't think we're letting our babies down at all.
I did exactly the same with ds1 and he was sleeping through by 6 months.

some babies just don't sleep that well at night. other parents choose to let them cry. we don't,
I think what we are offering our children is the knowledge that when they need us we will be there. wherever, whenever, and eventually they will know this and be safe and secure in that knowledge and they will gradually learn to sleep by themselves. or wake, and know we are there and go back to sleep.

there was a poll on the site I linked to, and out of 153 people only 8 weren't sleeping through by age 2-3.

TIY- by we, do you mean co-sleeping parents? I'm sure that there are very few parents who leave their children to cry wherever they're sleeping.

no, I mean people following an AP style of parenting, regardless of where baby sleeps.
ds2 sleeps in his cot. sometiems ends up in with me, sometimes doesn't.
and by leaving them to cry I mean people who choose to do CC or CIO with their babies

gecko is 17 months, fully co sleeping and feeding on demand through the night

I am shattered but every fibre in my body cannot do and will not do anything other than feeding her and comforting her whenever she wakes so I am plodding on with it

dd2 was the same and she is 3 now and has been going to bed and sleeping all night in her bed for about 8 months now

the difference with her though was that she gave up bf of her own accord when she was 9 months so she just weanted to be in bed with me and would sleep rather than waking up all night to feed

Interested in that poll, thisisyesterday. Am hoping that ds will start sleeping through before he is 3. He did it once on Christmas Eve when he was 1 year old - frightened me to death, I'd had a rare 3 drinks the night before, then fed him, so it really worried me that he wasn't awake till 7.50a.m. the next day! Since then of course I've tried to replicate those exact circumstances, to no avail.

Come on, I need more magical stories of co-sleeping, breastfed toddlers who suddenly sleep through the night to cheer me up, please!

It's good to know we're not alone on the AP and many night waking thing. DS's only eight months old and he won't sleep through the night. Everyone we know in RL says to do CIO or give him formula. We tried both, CIO was the most miserable experience ever and the formula gave me mastitis and neither make him sleep longer. I wish there was some middle way. Co-sleeping means he wakes up every hour or so and the only way to get him to sleep in his cot is to carefully transfer him after being fed to sleep and then being held for ages and even then he still wakes up at least three times. I don't really know what to do except for napping during the day. Stories of magical sleeping through the night would be great.

It's good to know we're not alone on the AP and many night waking thing. DS's only eight months old and he won't sleep through the night. Everyone we know in RL says to do CIO or give him formula. We tried both, CIO was the most miserable experience ever and the formula gave me mastitis and neither make him sleep longer. I wish there was some middle way. Co-sleeping means he wakes up every hour or so and the only way to get him to sleep in his cot is to carefully transfer him after being fed to sleep and then being held for ages and even then he still wakes up at least three times. I don't really know what to do except for napping during the day. Stories of magical sleeping through the night would be great.

Sorry about posting twice, I thought it hadn't worked first time.

You are probably waking each other up. And the 17 feeds a day is because the little one is exhausted and cranky. I think most children can manage better sleep by 19 months. How you go about creating that situation is up to you. I won't advise anything but I would suggest that deviating from Dr Sears is compatible with being a loving mother. Good luck.

nkf- I'm not sure about most children sleeping better than that at 19 months. From asking around it seems that a lot of breastfed toddlers still wake in the night. Really common among the Mums I know, but that doesn't help at 4 in the morning!
I think it's hard to tell what is 'normal' in terms of breastfeeding, how many times a day, because so very few children that age are still breastfed on demand. It can feel odd when you are the only one, once you get in a group with other bfing toddlers, you can quickly see the difference!

Yes but 17 times a day seems a lot. And believe me, I'm no stranger to breastfeeding toddlers.

I stopped bf at 21months when constant feeding all day left me and my dd cross and angry with each other.

I had this sudden realisation that by stuffing the breast at her everytime she was feeling down/sad/upset/grumpy/ i was stopping her develeoping any other way of helping herself.

I had though up until then I was doing the "right" thing but actually looking back I was doing the "easiest" thing for me!

I had become blind to the idea that it was on occasion my job to give her a bit of a developmental "push" as actually feeding her was just so easy.

So I also think that 17 times a day is a lot.

yes, I co-sleep with baby

thanks everybody for your messages!!

17 times a day? isn't parenting about finding the best approach for a child? one size does not fit all. So no need to feel guilty and spend these precious years worrying and half asleep!! change tactics, there'sno need to feel guilty about wanting an easier life

Hmm. All very interesting. I like all the AP ideas, but at some point I was sooo tired (and my back hurt) that I had to make a change. Especially since DS is not drinking but using me as a dummy (nothing wrong with it in principle, but it just affected my sleep too much). So I refuse now to feed from 12am to 5am. Much to my surprise he normally self-settles after a short verbal exchange "all is fine". I think he actually didn't necessarily want to feed. Just my experience.

Too lazy to rewrite everything, but we co-sleep (bedside cot butts up to my mattress) with DD2, almost 11 months:

"Ok, this was my desperate post on 20th June:

"I had DD 1 month early, and she has/had reflux. She slept through the night from 3 weeks old, up to 14 hrs, which was amazing. Then she started to wake for feeds. At 4.5 months she suddenly got scared of her crib, and wouldn't be put in it at all. She came in bed with us. At 8 months we bought a bedside cot, which has helped.

She won't go to bed in the evening. If I do try, she will only BF to sleep, then I have to slip away. She wakes within 30-40 minutes. If I try and settle her, she will only settle by feeding again, then the process is repeated.

She will feed to sleep on me in the lounge, and stirs regularly to 'plug herself in'.

When I go to bed, I feed her to sleep, and her night wakings are getting worse and worse. Between 11pm when I go to bed, and 7am, she wakes 4-8 times. Each time she will only settle with a feed.

In the day she will go for a nap if fed to sleep, and it lasts anywhere from 20mins to 1.5 hours. Sometimes she will wake after 20 mins, but then fall asleep on me feeding straight after.

The 16 hour day followed by waking every 1-2 hours in the night is slowly draining me of life! I can't imagine it is doing much for Jasmine, either. She wakes up distraught sometimes. She can be very fractious with others, because she is tired and wants my breast for comfort!

Please help! I did have a stab at PU/PD and easy when she was 8 months, but obviously did something wrong."

Since then, I had no improvement until last week. 7 nights ago I decided that after I was sure she was not hungry i.e. had already fed alot that night, I would say no to a BF, but give a big big cuddle. I made sure that my duvet was over my breasts. She wasn't keen on that idea, but everytime she tried to nestle in I said "Oh, thankyou, a lovely cuddle.

Then 2 nights later, I stopped feeding her in the night altogether. She feeds until 8-9pm, as she still won't go down in the evening (YET), but then when she falls asleep on me, I don't feed her again that night. Even when she wakes before taking her up to bed.

She accepted it really well, and last night even accepted a simple rub on the back at 02.30 rather than a big cuddle.

My hope is that she will gradually need less and less input to settle.
"

Last few nights, she has settled with a light pat.

Last night, she went to bed with us at 11, and slept through until 06.30!!

child one alept through mostly from 19 months.

Child two is nearly two and hasn't yet but has not got all teeth through. Child one had the lot about 18 months.

I do impose a no nightfeeds rule after using the no sun up no milk rule.

CHild two hasn't got to that yet but is partly nightweaned until after about 3am.

Three nights of being a bit cross with me at midnight (yes exactly every night ) and she started sleeping through till about 3ish.

Obv ill or major upset aside it isn't a blanket (lol) policy.

Even Dr sears says if it isn't working for you change it. He metions waking up to hear a tennis game of milk, no, milk no, milk, no before removing the child and settling him/her down and leaving his wife to sleep.

I have no idea how often dd2 nurses I find not paying attention really useful.

I do know she nurses far less if we are out and about or if in the house I am not sitting down. I don't always say yes either it depends.

Sorry I have just read that back and it all seems quite random really.

Do what you want to do, being denied here and there will not damage her .

I have been through this and they do learn to sleep, yes, but it is hard
I found breastfeeding a toddler on demand quite overwhelming sometimes! does help with tantrums and so on IMO

ds now 5 and does sleep through (mostly), in his own bed, does not bf any longer
you really think sometimes it will last forever, I know
you may wish to try some tactics to wean from the constant feeding, if you feel burnt out? or just making a conscious decision to go with it can sometimes help - not battling against it

Meant to add, dd2 has always started the night in her own bed/cot since about 8 months I think.

We also own a superking size which means we aren't too cramped.

Someone probably on here once pointed out to me that children are much bendier than adults so make sure you are comfy, your dd can fit round you.