Sleep training

I recommend Dr. Weisbluth, "Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child," for pretty much any sleep-related issue. Some stuff may seem hardcore - they call him the Sleep Nazi for a reason - but everyone will end up better in the end. Kid in their own bed, you through the night in your own. There's basically no transitory kid behavior - from bottles to pacis to sleeping in their own bed - that can't be fixed with a solid routine. So much of it is, honestly, growing tolerant of screaming, because that is their primary mode of communication at that age. They're not mad, they're not unhappy, they're not uncomfortable, necessarily - they just want your attention because they want milk, or to sleep in your bed, or something else, dammit! And they'll keep doing it until you stop giving them what they want. And then they sleep through the night like angels. It's all about taking the plunge and enduring the cry it out.

(Admittedly, it's hard to listen to them cry it out! I had no trouble sleeping through it, but my wife had to wear earplugs and sleep on the couch for a couple of nights.)

ugh i wish we could do the cry it out thing without having to worry about our neighbors being dicks about it. baby's sleep has gotten totally erratic and weird over the past few weeks, i've ended up sleeping in the armchair in the nursery with her on top of me several nights recently. last night she only woke up once during the night but then woke up for the day at 4:30 this morning. this isn't sustainable but we're not sure what to do about it.

what's the worst your neighbors could do?

I know neighbors that have called child protective services over crying kids!

That shit follows you around, too. Total dick move. It came after various noise complaints, just a totally passive aggressive slap. Eventually our friends had to move. So there's that.

Maybe you could call the landlord and explain the issue and see if s/he will help intercede on your behalf.

I know neighbors that have called child protective services over crying kids!

wow that's insane

n/a do yourself and babby a favor and just take her to your bed. there's plenty of time to sort this all out in a permanent way.

In my experience, or at least those of my friends, co-sleeping is just post-poning the inevitable cry it out. I have friends with 5 and 6 year olds who still end up in their bed. You're tired and frustrated now, but this turbulence will pass. But kids with fleeting attachments to pacis or the big bed or whatever all need to be weaned from their habits. They won't do it on their own, because why should they? It's like folks I know with older (relatively) kids who wake them all the time to be nursed. Who wouldn't want that? They only stop when you turn off the tap.

We relented and opened the floodgates. Now, with them knowing that they can get up and waltz in any night they want, they stay in their own bed most of the time. We've never talked about it that way, but it's how it is now.

The boy called from the crib twice last week and slept the night with us. It's like he's on a 5-off, 2-on schedule. Beeps comes in maybe once a week or two. Their visits are diminishing. I remember too well those nights with her where I'd try to rock her back to sleep with no luck. Now it's like, come on up and if it gets too crowded, I go sleep in her bed, like a little princess.

i have no problem with bringing her to bed with us other than that she only slept in bed with us for the first six-eight months or so and we finally got her to sleep in the crib so i don't want her to revert to only sleeping in bed with us.

the nice thing is we never have problems getting her down at the beginning of the night. we've got a solid routine and once she's had her bottle she passes out pretty quickly. her new schedule for the past few days is sleep from 8 to about midnight, wakes up to be nursed for a little bit, falls back asleep (all this is great) then wakes up for the day at 4:30 a.m. (this is the sucky part).

well yeah we have a non-negotiable start in your own bed and if you wake up in the middle of the night and want to sleep with us then come on in because the princess and i have burned more than our allotment of frustrating 2-5am rocking rule. so yeah the getting them to sleep in the first place is a whole different thing.

sleep from 8 to about midnight, wakes up to be nursed for a little bit, falls back asleep (all this is great)

personally i don't think the nursing at midnight is great. but who the hell knows, every baby is different. we tried this thing for awhile that i think is termed in several places "the dream feed" (...) where at like 11pm you give your six-month-old (or whatever) a bottle while he/she's asleep. the idea being that the extra milk will obviate any hunger pangs in the night and everybody sleeps through. well, he woke up at 2am and 4am like clockwork. and the day - the VERY DAY - that we did not do the "dream feed" he slept through the night. logic!!

we enjoyed a summer of pretty great sleeping (after a few months of terrible sleeping)...now she's doing fine, but is waking up super early, even if she goes to bed later. oh well, not going to stress about it...

update: asshole upstairs neighbors moved out. new neighbors moved in but we still weren't sleep training. baby's sleep started getting worse and worse, finally decided to just let her cry for a while. she fell asleep pretty quickly, a couple of nights in a row. but i was stressed the new neighbors would complain about her crying. went upstairs to explain about the crying during sleep training, new neighbor said "oh we hadn't noticed. we're pretty heavy sleepers." so we went into serious sleep training mode over the past week or so. it's been going well, had a couple of nights where she basically slept through the night, and the rest of the time she's at least sleeping for longer chunks before waking up and crying. also she's been sick and teething so i think that caused some of the wake-ups.

dude that is awesome!

we're essentially doing the ferber thing (let her cry for a predetermined amount of time before going in and comforting her briefly, then putting her back down) but jumped straight to the longer time periods before comforting because i think she's old enough to understand what's happening.

also it was funny the first night because after about 5 minutes of screaming and crying, it turned into her just yelling angry gibberish at us, like MOMMY BREEAASSHCKAA LLAAMMAS! KREESCCHAA BAALLA MOMMMY!"

yeah it's been a relief because her sleep was getting so bad - she needed us to comfort her to sleep but was getting too big to be comfortably held so she'd just be tossing and turning.

Congrats on getting better neighbors and better sleep!

i'm starting to think we'll be embarking on some version of CIO next weekend (waiting until after our dr appt on wednesday)

ok, we kinda started this tonight. i'm giving a live action update. i put her down at around 11:20, set the alarm for 3 minutes. she cried hysterically. at 3 minutes i checked on her, didn't pick her up but i told her i loved her and that it's time for sleep. she cried for the next five minutes. i checked in again. ten minutes. checked in again. 8 minutes into the next set of ten, she finally just got quiet. i haven't checked in on her yet -- giving her a few seconds before i creak the door open to look (her mother is on the other side of the room as her so i assume everything is okay) -- but maybe she put herself to sleep? that would be awesome.

she's asleep. thank god.

hopefully it'll just get easier from here on out.

she pretty much slept through the night! a couple times she woke up, cried for a few minutes, but went back to sleep. she woke up at 8! pretty miraculous.

when we went through this I thought it was so strange to learn that sleep patterns are a learned behavior

cool that you guys are having some success with this stuff!
we're in a weird stage w/ our 26 month old where it is just totally unpredictable.
well, it's predictable that she'll go right to sleep, but she might wake up at 4;45am, 6am, 7am, even 8am sometimes. anytime before six, we're trying to go in and explain to her that it's not time to wake up yet. which has worked occasionally and also failed miserably.

this long weekend we're going to try to work on

* getting evie to go to bed and go to sleep without one of us being in there singing songs or holding her hand until she's totally asleep (which can take 45 minutes - an hour); and
* sleeping in her bed all night

any tips for either? i might actually sleep on the floor in her room for a night or two in hopes that she'll be more likely to stay in her bed and get used to being there all night. but i think both are just going to have to involve being tough and dealing with a lot of crying and screaming

dr. ferber imho

yeah i guess. that's what we did when she was a baby.

shes a bit old for that no? i think you at least need them not to be able to get up and walk! I have no advice for you since we still do this with a 6 year old although after reading a book and turning the lights out she does fall asleep in about 5 minutes so its not exactly difficult for us. We have progressed from last year when she insisted we lay in her bed with her. Now we get to sit on her beanbag and look at our ipads or whatever.

This thing helped immensely with her fears of the dark, btw:

http://www.dreamlites.com/Largeimages/rainbowunicorn.png

http://www.dreamlites.com/

Listening to him cry makes me furious. At myself, at him, at the stupid sleep experts. Thank god it finally seems to be working. We used a "chair method" (sitting on a chair next to his crib, every few nights moving the chair closer to the door). We don't have the collective stomach to let him cry in his room by himself so chair method was apparently more "gentle" but would take longer to work. It doesn't feel very gentle, though, to sit and watch him scream for up to 70 minutes every time. Poor wee man. He is 8 months old.

this long weekend we're going to try to work on

* getting evie to go to bed and go to sleep without one of us being in there singing songs or holding her hand until she's totally asleep (which can take 45 minutes - an hour); and
* sleeping in her bed all night

lol

as usual we made some progress on this and then we went on vacation and it all went out the window. she still comes in and gets in our bed every night and i don't know what to do about it. i wouldn't care except i'm not getting any good sleep bc i'm a light sleeper and she likes to be awkwardly pressed against me or kick me in the head or scrape me with her toenails. i end up on the couch every single night.

learn to sleep already

ha is that addressed to her or to me

that is addressed to my 7-mo old son

been doing the cry-it-out/Ferber thing for a few days, it's sort of working (altho not as quickly as it did with my daughter)

I gotta say nothing is funnier than my son glaring at me while angrily sucking on a pacifier

i wouldn't care except i'm not getting any good sleep bc i'm a light sleeper and she likes to be awkwardly pressed against me or kick me in the head or scrape me with her toenails. i end up on the couch every single night.

IANAP but I wonder if flipping this around would make her want to sleep in her own bed, i.e. figure out a way to make sleeping in your bed a really uncomfortable experience for her so that she just voluntarily goes to her own bed

it's really just a matter of making myself get up and put her back in her bed every time but that's hard when you're tired and drifting in and out of sleep and know that it's just going to lead to crying and yelling. at that moment it's a hell of a lot easier just to go sleep on the couch.

i moved to the couch and now they both end up on the couch with me. wtf?

you're just too snuggly I guess

I GUESS

justine, the only flaw in your suggestion is that little kids dont get uncomfortable. They can sleep in the craziest positons with people talking loudly over the top of them and they dont move

for example, trying to wake up H they other morning pp and I were having a whole conversation over him and then pp was clapping his hands and poking him and all WAKE UP and the response was continued, even snoozy snores

yes evie will occasionally try to sleep on the couch with me, which is worse. usually i get up and go back to bed and leave her on the couch and then lay awake worrying that she will sleep-pee on the couch.

so J's sleep is pretty terrible. he's almost 12 months now. like waking up every 1-2 hours, usually to nurse. his sleep has always been pretty bad, but there have been brief intervals of great sleep that make us think he's changing, but then he'll be teething or sick or in a growth spurt or its too hot or cold in the room and everything falls apart. as all you guys know, there's like 100 reasons you could come up with on the spot for an given fussy night, so it's hard to pinpoint what exactly is going on. it also doesn't always correlate to what kind of day he had, like if the napping was good, ate some good solid foods, had a lot of stimulation, etc. sometimes that stuff correlates to a good night's sleep, but not always.

newborn days were hell for sleep (obviously), but it was awesome from months 2-3, when he sometimes had 6-hour stretches and had maybe 2-3 brief wake-ups. at 4 months, shit fell apart pretty much and the longest stretches we'd get were 2-3 hours. it's been pretty much like that since then -- between 7pm bedtime and 6am wake-up for the day, he'll be up every 2-3 hours typically, sometimes every 1-2 hours on a really bad night.

there have been some good nights starting around 8 months, where he'd wake up maybe twice throughout the night. but every time we get a week like that, something happens and it all goes to shit - a cold, teething, who knows.

so bottom-line is we don't know what to do. we're trying to think of ways to really cut down the nursing during the night, but like i said, even a good solid foods day doesn't always equate to a good night's sleep. neither of us are really predisposed towards the "cry it out" method, and we have good evidence of J's crying stamina in other situations that we don't think it would be very successful. J's cried for 45 minutes to an hour straight in car rides, even when totally exhausted, burning out his throat and sounding like he's gonna vomit, so we're not keen to try that.

in my experience, you'll ultimately have to do some kind of "cry it out" method, unfortunately. there are gentler variations, like the ferber method - they take longer and are more of a pain, but they are gentler. i think you'll find that it will suck really bad for a night or two, but you'll start seeing positive changes pretty quickly.

Marcos, nip it in the bud. Do Ferber. It's not even really healthy for your baby to be waking up every 1-2 hours at 12 months, and it's probably making it harder for you to be good parents too.

And you have to make some rules for yourselves about the "exceptions" cuz right now it sounds like you have exceptions for everything (teething, growth spurt, bad day, etc.). I've been there buddy, but it ain't good. Sleep training is partly also about training yourselves, imo.