Help! What would you do? 8/9mo

[Iloveautumn]

Basically ds2 wakes every hour or two pretty much every night and we are reaching the end of our tethers. It's gone on for 5 months now....

He is ff and only feeds once, maybe twice in the night, the rest of the time he wakes up and just wants to be picked up til he goes back to sleep.

He's in our room in a bed-side cot so he is never left on his own. But if I don't pick him up he just cries.

we can't do controlled crying where you leave him in his own room because we don't have another spare room. (I'm not sure I could do that anyway.)

Does anyone have any suggestions? This is really getting so hard, I have not had more than two hours sleep in a row for so long.

how fast does he go back to sleep after the cuddle?

we did a sort of gradual withdrawal with dd - it was very slow but it didn't traumatise her (or us!)

Started off as you did, cuddling her back to sleep every time.

Then we picked her up and cuddled her till she stopped crying but put her down awake and stroked / patted / shushed / sang to her till she fell asleep (but picked her up if she started crying again).

Once she'd got the hang of this (took weeks iirc [hazy]) we tried not picking her up but cuddling her over the edge of the cot, then stroking/singing once she laid down.

Then no cuddles just stroking/singing

and these days we can say 'back to sleep dd, night night' and she lies herself down

it did take ages though, she's 2 now and sleeps through maybe five nights a week...

I agree with Mrs Badger, sounds like a good plan.

Also I hesitate to suggest maybe a dummy? I know some people think they are straight from satan's bottom but I have found them life savers.

My DS is 6 months and he wakes a lot in the night too, but since he has got the hang of the dummy I just pop it in and he drifts back off.

I know I will have to take the consequences when he is older and I am trying to get him off it but for now the extra sleep is sooo worth it

Hi - thank you for replying!!!

Gradual withdrawal does sound like a good idea. This morning at about 5am I couldn't take it anymore and just let him cry (didn't want to admit that in my first post...) and he cried for about 40mins before I gave up and picked him up whereupon he stopped crying immediately...

So, doing what you suggest Mrsbadger does sound like it might work better than cold turkey.... Sounds like it took ages though? Still, it's not like we're getting a lot of sleep anyway.

Ceeunit - he has a dummy but it is hit and miss whether it settles him or not, he is not particularly dependent on it at night, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Thanks for your replies

Just realised I didn't reply to the first question. Usually he goes back to sleep immediately with a cuddle, but if I put him down he wakes up again.... and so on. I usually resort to lying down cuddling him but then an hour later he's awake again and |I have to sit up, cuddle him back to sleep again....

yes it was slow, and it wasn't always a lot of fun, but like you said, anything will be better than where you are now.

DH and I did do shifts on the really bad nights - if I'd been up with her for more than an hour then I would wake DH to take over and vice versa.

Personally I made peace with it by telling myself I was building a happy / secure / confident dd who knows that if ever she calls us in the night, however old she is, we will come to her, unlike babies who are left to cry and cry with no-one coming...
Sounds smug and judgey but it got me through the nasty patches, and she is indeed a happy confident child now...