Help 6 month old sleep a bit longer

amother

Wed, Mar 12 2014, 9:37 am

I have a 6 month old, exclusively breastfed for now (starting solids after Purim). We live in a two bedroom, older child sleeps in own room, baby is with us. I know that's part of the problem, we are moving in June to a bigger place where baby will have own room, but until then, there is no choice but stay in ours. I'd really rather not stick it out with the status quo until then if we can do something now. Basically, I get one four hour stretch, and then a few 2 hour stretches till morning. What can I do to change those few 2s into one 4 or possibly 5 hour stretch? I don't expect sleeping through any time soon, but I don't think it's unreasonable at this stage to go from 4-5 wakings to 1-2. I know that his being in our room is a definite complicating factor though...

LittleRed

Wed, Mar 12 2014, 10:47 pm

That sounds rough, you can definitely get a 6 month old to sleep a longer stretch. I always feel like teaching a baby to sleep well from an early age is the best thing I can do for myself and the rest of the family. My 6 month old sleeps about 11-12 hours at night now and I started working towards that goal since not long after he was born. The two books that I followed were "12 hours by 12 weeks" and "the sleep lady's good night, sleep tight". The first one is very short but a strict program that I didn't follow exactly but had a lot of good points and the second is all about sleep for babies, toddlers and older kids. The main ideas are getting the baby to eat more during the day and learn to sooth themselves back to sleep during normal night awakenings. I used these methods with a lot of success and it's pretty manageable. I'm happy to help as much as I can but don't have time for a much more detailed post. Feel free to pm me if you want to hear more about what I did with my babies

http://www.amazon.com/Twelve-H.....49593

http://www.amazon.com/Sleep-Lady®%C2%92s-Good-Night-Tight/dp/1593155581/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394678572&sr=1-1&keywords=sleep+lady

MMCH

Wed, Mar 12 2014, 11:03 pm

in my experience, the longer my babies slept in my room, the more they fussed and woke up from us
my 2nd baby was nursed. and was a terrible sleep till I moved her out.
I also am in a 2 bedroom, I put the baby in the hall way in the middle of the night. she just would wake up from us, so instead of waking up 2x to eat at 6 months, she would wake up 4x bc shed fuss, and I would just nurse her for lack of better things to do...

I suggest hallway
or if ur older child is a deep sleeper, try putting her in their with a noise machine.
alot of times babies wake up in the middle night, cry but are able to fuss and ketch and go back to sleep. and we rush in and nurse bc were half asleep.

amother

Wed, Mar 12 2014, 11:06 pm

I could have written your post. exact same situation. dh and I slept in the living room for a week while we let our 6 month old cry it out. he's now pretty reliable for a 9-10 hour stretch. it was rough, but I just kept telling myself that once he learns how to sleep, he'll be way better off.