More sleep questions!

[corgimom]

Thank you all for sharing your advice and experience with sleep training! DD is falling asleep much better on her own with most nights taking no time to no more than 10 minutes with next to no crying!

Apologies, it gets a bit loooong and rambling from here on but TLDR: How do I night wean/get DD to STTN or at least only have 1 motn wake-up?

Middle of the nights still SUCK. DD wakes up 1-3x per night and will not go back to sleep on her own. She will usually only go back to sleep after eating.
DD just turned 9 months and I talked to her pedi about this/night weaning and she said normally she'd recommend night weaning because she likes to see babies sleeping through the night but DD is small - just over 13lbs. Her pedi is fine with her weight because she's always gaining but expressed concern that maybe she might really need to eat during motn. Then she said but there is the possibility that trying to night wean her may force her to eat more during the day and eliminate night wake-ups.

I'm tired and I don't know what to do. We've started upping her solids intake, per her pedi, and she's doing well with that but her sleep still sucks. She usually only gets one good nap at daycare but she naps better on the weekends and we still sometimes have this problem, so I'm not sure if its nap related.
She probably just needs to be weaned, right? The pedi recommended maybe trying to get down to one feeding a night and I'd be totally okay with that! But after a few nights of 3 wake-ups, I'm exhausted. They are short wake-ups, thankfully, but they add up!

So, help! How do we stop motn wake-ups/night wean?
We've tried letting her cio at wake-ups but she can go on and on and eventually we cave after 45-60 minutes. Do we really just need to wait it out longer? And not to ramble on but she has sttn but it was MONTHS ago. And few nights ago she had some 6 hour stretches so it seems like its possible but I don't know how to get the right combination of things to happen to make sleep better for her!

Thanks for reading my novel and for all the continued help!

[joy]

Well, I hesitate to say that because she’s nine months that she should sleep through the night. Mine wasn’t ready until 16 months. She eventually stopped wanting food around 12 months, but she struggled with waking up in the middle of the night and going back to sleep on her own. It’s a different skill and I had to be patient (and oh so tired) while she figured it out. She was at a solid 1 wake up a night from 12-16 months, though.

The one thing that did help for my own kid was naps. If daytime sleep is good then nighttime sleep tends to be better.

Many advocate just letting them cry overnight until they figure it out. That’s certainly an option, too. Mine could also go for upwards of an hour and did get so hysterical that she’d be close to throwing up. I nixed that idea - my heart couldn’t handle it.

[icedcoffee]

We did CIO to reduce the number of feedings. Once we got it down to 1 feeding MOTN he naturally just dropped them all. The awesome part was he started eating more during the day and he'd eat quicker in general. Like he was eating with purpose.

[hamster]

I slowly dropped the number of oz in the bottle, or based on time.

So, if he woke up before midnight, too bad so sad. No milk for you. If he woke up after midnight, I would drop from 4 oz to 3 oz, then to 2, then to 1, then no milk before 2 am. I got him to one feeding this way, and thankfully he dropped the last one on his own. Those first couple dropped bottles were brutal. I consoled though, not CIO alone in that case.

Times are hypothetical. I had a pretty elaborate log so I knew exactly when he'd wake up so I could make a plan pre MOTN.

[pooh8402]

Feb 19, 2019 9:31:55 GMT -5 joy said:

Well, I hesitate to say that because she’s nine months that she should sleep through the night. Mine wasn’t ready until 16 months. She eventually stopped wanting food around 12 months, but she struggled with waking up in the middle of the night and going back to sleep on her own. It’s a different skill and I had to be patient (and oh so tired) while she figured it out. She was at a solid 1 wake up a night from 12-16 months, though.

This was E1. He didnt STTN until 15 months. He was teething constantly, and was usually near the bottom of the weight charts, so I was hesitant to completely remove a source of comfort and calories before he was ready. At 9 months, it is still appropriate for your baby to wake up 1 or 2 times.

And fwiw, the definition of STTN actually is 6 hours, not 10+ like we would all like.

[mccallister84]

After two babies who did drastically different things sleep wise I really think this is just baby dependent. My oldest was down to one wake up by 7 weeks and going 12 hours at 3.5 months. She clung right to her 35 percentile curve - so was not a giant baby by any means. My second is 8 months and 85 percentile for weight and is still up once a night and sometimes twice. If she wakes up earl Tish we can sometimes have her fuss it out and she’ll go back to sleep but last night she was not having it and I had to nurse her twice. Both girls have napped well since 6 months (earlier for my youngest). Clearly it’s not a matter of solids since DD1 slept through the night before we started solids and DD2 is now on 3 meals of day of table food and nothing has changed. So basically just here to commiserate.

[corgimom]

Wow, thanks so much for the reassurance that we're not screwing ourselves later by not "fixing" this now! I'ts honestly such a relief, hah! It seems like everywhere I turn people are talking about how their babies are sleeping through the night by x months (all younger than DD) and I'm like

My girl eats every time she wakes and she's healthy and strong (btw, how is she already trying to stand on her own, I'm not ready for that!?) but she's a tiny one so I feel so so so bad about leaving her cry in the motn when I know if I just go in and nurse her she'll be back asleep in 10-15 minutes and then we'll all be back sleeping. Honestly, it's just seemed easier than all of us being awake listening to her cry? But I've been starting to feel like maybe I was taking the easy way out and if I let it be hard for awhile (like bedtime was while sleep training) it would be all better later?
I'm sure it doesn't help that the lack of sleep is upping my anxiety, lol!

Naps during the weekend are pretty okay (not a hard and fast schedule but we watch her cues and she gets in 2-3 good chunks) but daycare naps are so inconsistent.

[joy]

You’re doing fine, corgimom!! I was also very nervous that I was doing something wrong. So many people just told me to turn off the monitor and I was uncomfortable abbout that for her. A different kid it may work great! The coughing and near puking didn’t make me feel great about it. So, I persevered. She did figure it out!

[loira]

Our DD was quite small as well. She would go to sleep on her own at 9 months but was still up at least 1-2 times a night. We always fed her because she just genuinely seemed to need it. She would go back to sleep by herself just fine after a bottle, so it seemed easier at the time. We figured we'd done the hard part by teaching her to self soothe. She eventually dropped to just once a night, then sleeping through at about 15 months. I can't remember what she weighed at 15 months but it was probably around 18-20lbs.

[shauni27]

I hired a sleep trainer for this very reason right around 8 months and he started sleeping through the night (12 hours) at that time. But we had already weaned him at that point and I knew he was getting enough food.

To wean, I just reduced the amount of milk in his bottles at night. I would reduce by an ounce every couple of days. I knew he was not hungry because he would have tons of ounces during the day, plus purees, little foods, etc. I finally just went in and would rock him without the bottle to comfort him and that seemed to work. From there, we were able to sleep train knowing we were not withholding food.

I hope you get a break soon! Can you reduce the feedings so that his first wake up you just cuddle him back to sleep, second wake up you feed him, third you rock him again. Then once he gets used to that you could reduce the amount of milk you are giving him until you are just rocking him. At that point you can start sleep training.

[lacey]

You've already gotten good advice about reducing nursing time or bottle size. Are you EBF? Is your husband doing any of the MOTN wake ups? If not, give him a pumped bottle or a bottle of formula and tell him the wake-up before x o'clock are his.

If you are formula feeding try alternating nights with your husband. Even sleeping in different rooms with the person who is "on" having the monitor and the person who is "off" having some white noise and a closed door. The 2-3 wake ups will be infinitely easier to handle if the night before you are actually getting a full night's rest.

[luckystar2]

We did Ferber and the book has some info on reducing/eliminating night feedings as well.

Basically it was stretching out the time in between feedings. So if dd woke up before the feeding time, I’d have dh go in (not me since I was bfing) and do the Ferber checks. If it was after the feeding time I would go in and feed her. After just a couple days she started stretching the time out even more on her own. In less than a week she was STTN. I could definitely tell her feeding pattern changed. She started tanking up at her before bedtime feeding rather than before when she was just lazily nursing before bed. So I don’t feel like she was getting any less...she was just getting it at a more appropriate time.

We went from like 3 middle of the night feedings to STTN in less than a week. She was around 7.5 months.

[corgimom]

Feb 19, 2019 11:13:20 GMT -5 lacey said:

You've already gotten good advice about reducing nursing time or bottle size. Are you EBF? Is your husband doing any of the MOTN wake ups? If not, give him a pumped bottle or a bottle of formula and tell him the wake-up before x o'clock are his.

If you are formula feeding try alternating nights with your husband. Even sleeping in different rooms with the person who is "on" having the monitor and the person who is "off" having some white noise and a closed door. The 2-3 wake ups will be infinitely easier to handle if the night before you are actually getting a full night's rest.

Yup, I breastfeed at home.
I have, admittedly, really let DH off pretty easy on motn wake-ups recently. He used to get up and change her and rock her but she always refused a bottle for him motn (Not sure why, she's fine during the day, even if I'm home?) so he'd bring her back to me to nurse. Recently I just get up and nurse her each time because... I don't know, it just feels sort of easier? She calms very quick and easy for me and not so much for DH so she gets worked up, he feels crappy and I end up awake anyway.
We talked this morning and I told him that I need him back to doing every other wake-up and we've got to figure it out because mama is too tired. Good man that he is, is on board, lol.