My baby NEVER sleeps!! Any advice, please?

amother

Black

Sun, Jan 05 2020, 1:09 am

amother [ Black ] wrote:

I was in a similar situation. My baby is just under 3 months though, so that’s a big difference.

Anyway, so my baby would only nurse to sleep. Both for naps and at night. I would nurse her to sleep and then put her in her crib but she would usually wake up the second I put her down. Occasionally she would stay down but usually wake up 10 or 15 minutes later. Once in a while she would sleep longer. Unlike your case, she was a little better overnight, but not so much.

So a few nights ago it took about 4 hours to get her to sleep. I started trying to put her to sleep at 8 and she was up until after 1 when I put her in bed with me. But I was done.

So I stopped nursing her to sleep except in the middle of the night. Now I make the room as dark as possible, turn on white noise, and sing hamalach hagoel on repeat. I rock my baby while singing and sometimes I swaddle her. The I put her down in her crib, and then I stroke her between the eyes. She bawls the whole time, but since she’s tired she eventually falls asleep. It takes 15-20 minutes and she’s crying for most of it so it’s very hard for me, but I stay with her until she’s asleep.

She sleep so much better now. Now she occasionally wakes up after 10-15 minutes but normally stays down for a full nap, about 1.5-2 hours. She stays down better at night, although last night she did keep waking up for about 45 minutes. Then she stayed down for many hours though.

I don’t know whether this will help since your baby is older and developmentally at a different stage, but maybe. I was seriously at my wits end and didn’t know what to do but this has worked pretty well for us.

Just want to update you Dolly— when I posted this is had just been a couple days since I stopped nursing her to sleep. Now that it’s been almost a week, she usually goes down in less than 5 minutes. Sometimes she barely fusses and it only takes a minute, which was unheard of before. At most it takes 10 minutes when she’s really fussy.

I really recommend you stop nursing to sleep. I thought it would be much harder than it’s been. My husband and I agree that it’s been life changing— it’s helped our sanity so much, and we have so much more time that used to be spent trying to get her to sleep. Also she’s more well rested and happier.

Even though I know it’s daunting I can’t recommend it more.

I wish you Hatzlacha Dolly!