Nearly 10 months old and started to wake for 4 hours in the middle of the night, help!

[Scaredycat3000]

My DS is experimenting with new extremes of sleep deprivation . I have always fed him to sleep, he used to sleep though at 4 months ish, then he started waking once or twice between 12 and 8, I was coping fine and feeling a little smug .
Then at 7 months he started teething, then he was a bit ill, then a bit more ill, then away for Christmas, then some more teething, then away again. Life has been calm for a few weeks but his night sleep has now terrible.
Currently we do bath, book, boobie to sleep on the bed, then into his cot in our room. The to sleep part can take 5 min or an hour. He then might sleep for an hour or for 3/4 hours, then feed to sleep, he now wakes every 90min after that. We now end up co-sleeping when I give in putting back in his cot. He would sometimes stay awake for 2 hours at a time, but this last week he has started waking for 4 hours at a time and thats the part I can't cope with. His daytime naps where alright, but are becoming harder. I'm running on empty, DS is not happy anymore Any ideas? I urgently need to sort the 4hour wakings, was walking him in the snow at 5:30am this morning.

Oh my God how are you managing? The only good thing is as it couldn't really get any worse so you may as well chuck out all the old bad habits at once. I would stop feeding him to sleep, move him out of your room and start again from sctatch, there will be tears his and yours, it will only last a few nights, create a new routine bath, boobie, book/wind and then bed (his bed). If you know he is eating and drinking enough during the day don't re-introduce night feeding he has just got used to the comfort now. Being out of your room he is less likely to wake. When he does don't respond straight away or offer water which he will not really want
It's post Christmas cold turkey time for DS!
Good Luck Be Strong He Is

I have just stopped feeding/cuddling DS to sleep - my goodness I feel better now! And I seem to have incidentally got rid of his night feed at the same time!

I put him to sleep and left him 5 minutes, went in a patted him, then 10, then 15, then every 15 mins until he stopped crying. Took about 1 hour 10 first night, 1 hour second night and 0 mins third night! With the night feed I did the same, feed then back in cot.

I think (having done it) it really was best. hes happier and so am I.

Scaredy You are not alone, my 13mo is torturing me like this too, sounds very familiar. Mine slept through from 11w to 16 then stopped. Have had two or three 'good' nights since then.

I also feed to sleep and we normally have 1 x 2hr awake spell, around 2-4 or 3 til 5 mostly. Plus waking after every sleep cycle 90% of the time.

I am miserable. He is tired but has 2 naps so catches up. He eats like a horse but we have also had weeks of illness plus teething.

I have no cure - I have asked the HV for help and they are going to help me with a sleep programme. I am back at work too, plus have a nearly 3 yr old so no chnace for me to nap, I am really sick of looking and feeling like shit!

Some things I considered - getting DH to go and settle him for a few nights to break the habit - no good for me as DH is a) a grumpy sod in the night and just gets cross with the offending child and b) works nights so rarely here to help.

Or - Some kind of controlled crying where I just keep laying him down til he gives up. I am rubbish at this and it made him very irate last time I tried.

But loads of sympathy, he was better at sleeping when he was tiny.

Whenever my LO's have gone through periods of illness or bad teething I have had to retrain them after. As they've started to do the same.

If you try to adjust his daytime naps so they're not too long or too many (maybe you're doing this already?). Maybe a 10.30am and 3pm only? And then start the bedtime routine earlier so that by the time the settling is done, it's not too late, maybe it will all help.

I think you may need to cut nighttime feeds down to an 11pm and 3am ish or something similar and only offer cool boiled water at other times and some form of sleep training. I used the baby whisperer method. It takes 3 days and a lot of patience and persistence, which is very hard when you're tired, as let's face it you want the quickest way to get them back to sleep...

If you think you can handle it, give it all a go.

A book I find very helpful is this one as well.

Eitherway good luck lovely x