Tell me about your 8-ish m/o's bedtime

[vanillacourage]

Thus far we've been letting Megababy conk out with a bottle in our arms, then laid him down. This is no longer working - he wakes up when we lay him down, then needs 5-10 minutes of snuggling to fall back asleep, then he'll wake up again....and we sometimes have to go through this routine 3-5 times for his night feeding, so we're up for 1, sometimes 2 hours in the middle of the night.

I think the time has come for a real bedtime routine and most likely laying him down sleepy but awake and then CIO, because he wigs out when we come into the room for "checks" and then leave again.

What are your kids that age doing? Any thoughts to share on sleep training at this age?

[satama]

We have never really sleep trained either kid. I have a 5 min policy for crying and 10 for fussing. Any more than that I will just go in and rock the baby. We put down sleepy but awake from the beginning though.

We do pjs, then nurse, then cuddle. I put DS down awake or asleep if he conked out nursing. We use a white noise machine set to "ocean" and DS sleeps with the Fisher price seahorse. I turn it on when I put him in bed but he can turn it on himself now too. He also uses a pacifier, so I give him that when I put him down.

If he is not asleep after 5 mins and is crying, someone goes in, replaces pacifier, rubs back, pats butt. If a couple of rounds of that don't work then he gets rocked. Most of the time he goes to sleep on his own without us going back in.

[jr009j]

DD is about to turn 9 months. We do bath (every other night), pjs, nurse, into sleep sack, read a couple of books, lights off and sound machine on, rock for a few minutes and then into the crib awake. DD usually cries until we're out of the room and then rolls over and goes to sleep or plays with her pacifer for a few minutes and then goes to sleep. Depending on her napping for the day, she goes down between 6 and 7 (lately it's been 6 as she isn't napping at all at daycare).

We did CIO with no checks around 7.5 months. Before we had rocked her all the way down to sleep, but she started waking up in the middle of the night and refusing to go back to sleep unless we were holding her. I think she cried on and off for 45 minutes the first night (we could see her stop and look at the door to see if we were coming to get her), 15 minutes the second night, and less than 30 seconds the third night. Now she never cries more than 5 minutes when she goes down.

We are still working on the middle of the night wakeups. She hasn't eaten in the middle of the night since around 4 months. As she's been overtired when she goes down (again, she's not napping at all at daycare), she wakes up more frequently. We check on the monitor and if it looks like she's just crying because she woke up, we just let her cry. She typically falls back asleep within 10 minutes.

We had tried the checks before and found that neither of us had the willpower to not pick her up. DH didn't have the willpower not to rock her all the way to sleep, which was made worse by the fact that she would fight him and not fall back asleep until I was rocking her.
A

[vanillacourage]

I have let him fuss for up to 45 minutes (note: not scream - fuss) before with no signs of giving up. I am sort of screwed in that he's now pulling up and cruising around the crib - wish I'd done this a few weeks ago when he had no choice but to stay "glued" to the mattress. :/