Hi All! I have received so much help from you and appreciate it so much! Here's my new problem - my son is 10 1/2 months old. He has always been a good sleeper, but a few weeks back he had his first ear infections. UGH! So we've tried to get him back on his schedule but he is fighting it! He generally goes down for a morning nap alright, but he is fighting the afternoon one - screaming and crying for up to 1/2 hour. The only way to get him to calm down is to get him out of bed, otherwise, trying to soothe without picking him up just makes him scream harder. He's never taken a pacifier and I don't want to start one now, so he's on his own with that. Well, to top it off, he's started doing this at night now. He'll wake up around 3:30-4:30 am and SCREAM - it's not a frantic scream, it's the scream that says, "Mommy, come nurse me back to sleep or else!" At this point, I can either nurse him back to sleep or hold a screaming baby (or dad holds the screaming baby), or leave him in his room to cry himself back to sleep. We live on the bottom floor of an apartment building, so I hate to let him scream and wake up the neighbors (who have a small child right above his bedroom) but I don't want him in the habit of nursing himself back to sleep. Please help - what can I do?
Dana Obleman is a baby sleep expert. Try looking her up, she has great information and techniques to get your baby sleeping right. I think she's on Facebook and you can look her ____@____.com, or just google her. Hope she can help. Good luck!
Patience Bleskan has really great information on sleep especially for nursing mom's. www.patiencebleskan.com or call her ###-###-####
The only thing I can think of is maybe he is ready to drop the afternoon or morning nap. My daughter dropped her second nap around 10 months or so.
If he is getting too much sleep during the day it could be why he is getting up at night. As far as nursing him back to sleep, my doc says don't do it, just let them cry it out. He will only do it for 5-7 days then it will be over. So your neighbors will not have to endure much. I was never able to have my kids cry it out so I did the nursing thing and never had a problem.
Good luck! I always wondered why they called it sleeping like a baby. = )
I have a book that helped me so much with sleep issues. "Good Night Sleep Tight" by Kim West the sleep lady. This book continues to help me, sleep issues from birth to 5 years old. I love it so much because she is so educated and experienced, she give great advice and then says you do what feels right to you. I agree that it would not be wise to nurse back to sleep that would only prolong the problem. This books helped me so much to know that sleeping is a trained skill, and that we can learn to be our childs couch, not do it for them, or leave them alone to do it, but a healthy balance of teaching them how to do it on there own, while knowing that you are responsive to there needs. Good Luck
