Need advice. My baby won't sleep.

mommy3b2c

Sun, Jun 26 2016, 9:47 pm

My baby is 9 months kneinahara and has a very difficult time sleeping. I need advice on the following:

1)How to get him to take two decent naps during the day.

2) How to get him to go to sleep at night

Currently, his mornjng and afternoon naps are taken in the stroller. I push him aroung until he falls asleep and then he sleeps for 20-40 minutes. Of course he is still zonked when he wakes up.

For bedtime, I try to nurse him to sleep, but the second I put him down he starts screaming. Tonight it took me an hour nd a half until he stayed sleeping, and he is on my bed instead of his crib. I have tried putting him down and leaving the room, singing, rocking, and everything I can think of. He just screams louder until I give in because I feel like my heart will break. Any ideas or book recommendations would be appreciated. If you want to list step by step instructions to get a baby to sleep, that would be great too.
Thanks!

amother

Burlywood

Sun, Jun 26 2016, 10:22 pm

Healthy sleep habits, happy child by Dr. Marc or mark weissbluth
(Warning: it is a CIO method. Many women on this site cautioned me against CIO but I felt it was right for my son, and my son, now 2 years, is a good sleeper and so much happier because of it.
He cried for 50 heartbreaking minutes the first night, 5 minutes the second night, and not at all on the third night.
I did have to restart after we went away for shabbos or a long weekend, but he caught the hang of it right away.
Again, I felt this is what my son needed because he clearly wasn't hungry, and he was waking up every 2-3 hours and I was becoming a witch.

mommy3b2c

Sun, Jun 26 2016, 10:33 pm

amother wrote:

He was alone for 50 minutes? Or did you go into him?

I feel so worried to let him cry, like he'll feel abandoned or somethjng.

anonymrs

Sun, Jun 26 2016, 10:37 pm

I had a baby that was like this. Literally never slept more than 40 minutes at a time day OR night. It is sooo hard for you, as the mother, to survive like this. I sympathize.

I used the book 'The No-Cry Sleep Solution' by Elizabeth Pantley. It's a very gentle method of training your baby to sleep without needing you to be there for comfort; either nursing or pushing in the stroller. It was very successful for us. It's not a 1-2-3 method that cures babies' sleep disorders in 2 nights. It's a process of weaning them off being dependent on you for their sleep. The book is very much in line with my belief of responding to a baby's cries which is why it worked for us.

mommy3b2c

Sun, Jun 26 2016, 10:50 pm

anonymrs wrote:

This sounds much more my speed. I cant bare for him to cry. It kills me.

amother

Azure

Sun, Jun 26 2016, 10:50 pm

mommy3b2c, I noticed you wrote about your other son that colored on the walls/had impulsiveness. Perhaps there is a genetic factor that you have more high strung children?
It could be the result of a lot of things:
-Using props to get him to sleep [rocking, strollers,] for too long that the habit is ingrained,
-sensory problems
-acid reflux problems
-milk supply problems
or many more things. I like the baby whisperer's method, with a bit of tweaking to address the more human aspects. (a family with a bunch of kids is not conducive to PU/PD where you pick up and put down the baby hundreds of times until they fall asleep)

I had a baby that couldn't sleep more than 40 minutes straight until he was 10 months old! It was a combination of a lot of things: over-feeding (nursing every hour or whenever he cried, he was in the 98 percentile), sensory problems, acid reflux due to over feeding, accidental parenting (using a prop--me--) to get him to fall asleep so he never learned to do it on his own, a very strong will, and a bad babysitter that he hated that caused stress. Not to scare you, but he did not sleep through the night until he was four.

At 6 months I tried weisbluth and it did nothing. He cried for hours and hours for weeks and weeks and it got us literally nowhere. I would sit outside his door and cry myself. at 10 months, out of sheer desperation, I tried ferber and it got him to wake four times a night--usually--instead of 8. at 2 I tried the baby whisperer and it got him to sleep through the night with 1-2 breaks. At 3 we did play therapy and OT--he had a lot of sensory/food issues, and at 4 he slept all the way through.

Hashem has blessed me with two more children that are very good sleepers. Some kids sleep and some kids don't. We do the best we can, and it can be SOOOO challenging, I know!! In my experience it only exacerbates the situation and damages the relationship by setting strict rules, screaming, and letting them cry it out for extended periods.

Try to focus on how much you love your baby and be calm and patient with your expectations. People told me "don't worry, by the time they are 2, all kids sleep through the night." It is not true. But what I say is, don't worry, the worst thing that can happen is you will be tired. Do the best you can and be strong. Don't kill your relationship over it before it's hardly started.