10 Month Old Baby Wont Sleep at Night

When she wakes up, dont attend to her right away. Wait about 15minutes. If she continues to cry go into the bedroom with only very little light and talk to her, rock her, sing to her. You should try to keep the room as dark as possible. If it is dark, perhaps you can get a little night light for her. She may be afraid of the dark. Or maybe she is hungry and you can give her some milk (a little more than usual) before bedtime. Give her a warm bath before bedtime and dim all the lights in the house an hour before you put her to bed. Little things like that worked for me. Hope it gets better. Good luck.

this is pretty normal for infants. what you have to do is focus and listen to her very closely. im of the mind that every mama can figure out what their baby needs instinctively. you can look up things that talk about baby's specific cries each having a meaning, theres a particular sound to a hungry cry, pain cry, fear cry, and misc. but sometimes even if you cant pick it up, focusing in on her and relaxing can sometimes just help you to think of something and figure out whats wrong all just from within yourself.

a few things to make sure you cover the basics; shes not too hot or too cold (check the back of her neck, it will be sweaty when hot and clammy when cold), make sure you offer her some formula/breastmilk (growth spurts require LOTS of food almost every hour or more), pump her legs, massage her stomach in case she has some gas, use baby massage in general for relaxation and calming. also, check to see if shes got tags or something poking her. some kids are just hyper sensitive to tags, and i dont blame them; tags are uncomfortable!! its tricky to remove a tag, but the good news is that a lot of kids clothes these days are made tagless.

try a pacifier if you havent, do not give bottle in bed when shes alone, try a snuggly bear or something, put something of yours in bed with her that has your smell to see if that relaxes her,

she most definatly needs naps so do not forgo those. i would think at her age she still needs 2 naps, so make sure to put her down before shes exhausted; good times are around 10 and again around 2 or 3... something like that. a good first sign of tired that you can watch for is rubbing eyes. those itchy eyes are a great indication of getting tired.

try a sling! the moby wrap is a lifesaver. sometimes babies just go through phases where they just need extra time and touch. it wont last forever, but you wont regret going the extra mile for her..
one thing i do know is that its likely shes not manipulating you. shes trying to express some kind of need. its a guessing game trying to figure out what that is, but dont get the impression that you have to just leave her on her own because thats just going to scare her.

the other thing i can think of is maybe shes got some teething or other pain. try some teething gel or tylenol to see if that calms her. also gas medicine would be a good idea to try also just to see if its some other kind of pain thats bothering her. if shes having trouble with her stool, try making sure shes getting plenty of water during the day so that shes hydrated enough to have nice soft stool.

and when in doubt ask your doctor.

You didn't mention if you know why she wakes up - if she's still nursing, that's common for babies that age to start waking up multiple times a night to nurse. Our son did that from 9 months - 14 months, every two hours - sometimes after only 45 minutes! He wouldn't fall back alseep without nursing. Finally at 14 months I decided to "nightwean" him, and wouldn't let him nurse when he woke up and after 3 days he was used to the new routine and stopped waking up so often. If she's not nursing, or that's not the problem, the thing that I think of is just sleep associations...(that was the issue with nursing for him - he associated falling sleeping with nursing and anytime he stirred even the slightest thought he needed to nurse to fall back asleep because that was the only way he knew how to fall asleep). If you use the same "prop" for her to fall alseep every night then she might not know how to go back to sleep without that, so you need to create new "Sleep associations" so that she's used to falling asleep many different ways and can soothe herself back to sleep when she wakes up at night. Here's a site talking about it and one form of "nightweaning" - http://babyparenting.about.com/od/sleeping/a/nightfeed_2.htm - but there are many different methods so research it a bit b4 making a decision.

Did you try not going to her in the middle of the night? if you can rule out she's not crying for hunger and other things like being wet, etc....maybe she is crying because she knows it will get you to come to her. i know it's hard but at some point you all need to get your sleep and usually a couple times of letting her cry does the trick. It sounds harsh, i know. but as long as you know she is safe and fine, it's okay to let herself cry and fall back asleep on her own. it sounds like a issue of being dependent on you to fall asleep and she needs to learn how to fall asleep on her own.

Read Dr. Sears Night Time Parenting. It saved our lives when our first daughter was little and not a good sleeper. The good news is, it doesn't last!
Hang in there and enjoy this fleeting time with your little one.
J.
PS Askdrsears.com is also a great resource and has all the info.

Aside from the other comments (which I agree with) have you had her ears checked? She may have an ear infection. The pressure is going to be greater at night which will surely wake her up. My son was exactly the same way- turns out he was in pain. Just a thought:)