Experienced mothers! when does it generally better!

[wrensmum]

Hi, i've been reading a lot of the threads around sleep... my 9mnth old DD is waking a lot at night now due to cold, teething and separation anxiety. Before all this kicked off she was waking a few times a night and we are still rushing to her side to sooth her back to sleep. What I have gathered from reading and found from my own expereince is theres a point around 4 months where ( no matter how good or well they sleep generally ie; fall asleep in cot, are nursed to sleep etc...) they tend to go downhill! So, Experienced mothers- When does it generally get better, despite sleep training etc.... Lets see if theres a pattern.

For me with both of my children it was between 9 and 10 months that things magically improved. Did one or two nights of sleep training with DC2 but it was bearly necessary.
Hope things get better for you soon.

I think before a year old, things can still be rather unpredictable due to them catching all sorts of bugs and teething. From a year onwards, things get a lot better as the teething tends to ease a bit, they catch fewer bugs as well as the children themselves seem to learn to cope with things better.

I stopped rocking DS1 to sleep from 8/9 months old onwards and he became very easy to put to sleep from then onwards. That must explain why we got preggers with DS2 when DS1 was 10 months old. DS2 is now 4.5 months old and we go with the flow a lot more... And his sleep is pretty good for a little one!

For us sleep was horrendous for first 6 months, bad for 6-12 months then at 13 months it all changed. My ds settled in his cot for naps and slept through for the first time. This coincided with starting nursery 3 days a week - no coincedence I'm sure. Never did sleep training and always fed to sleep until that stopped working at around 11 months

(Actually, I am not sure if DS2's sleep IS better than DS1's or just seems better because we have lesser expectations as we have learned from parenting DS1.)

We definitely had a big improvement at 12mo.

I think you do have to lay the groundwork for good sleep by trying to get your baby to fall asleep on its own, self-settle etc as much as possible before 12m. They were still very unpredictable pre-12m though.

If you suspect your child is teething or ill, don't hold back on the Calpol/Ibuprofen. It is not harmful as long as you stay within the guidelines and it is much better for the baby to be in no pain than for you all to suffer.

I also found less of a link between food and sleep after 12m - they seemed to sleep through even if they'd ate very little whereas before that I thought there was definitely a link.

Ds didn't sleep for long periods of time as a baby. and started to go for longer stretches of time at about 8 months.

Dd has always loved to sleep, and used to woke up to feed twice a night. She went from 8pm to 8 am without waking up at about 8 months.

I think that with both mine being established on solids helped a lot

Solids really helped mine too!