Need Some sleep...help!

Buy and read Dr. Marc Weissbluth's "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child". It's based on over 30 years of infant and child sleep research. Follow the advice given in the book and you'll see changes in about a week. It took us 3 days and I was shocked.

It sounds like she's gotten into the habit of waking up through out the night. Have you tried to let her cry it out? I know lots of mom have had success with it. I, personally, can't do it. It just doesn't work for our daughter. Does she take a pacifier? Try giving her that instead of a bottle. It may just take a little for her to get back on her schedule. Good Luck and Happy Sleeping!

I ABSOLUTLEY AGRRE, BUY THE BOOK HEALTHY SLEEP HABIT HAPPY BABY!!!!!!! It saved our lives. There is so much I can tell you. Read the book, folloe it and your life will chang efor the better, I PROMISE. Go out tomorrow, follow what he says, stick to it, at times it might be hard, but do it and before long your daughter will be sleeping like an angel, you will have an amzing sleep schedule and your family will ALL be well reated. Good luck, I know how you fell, I've been ther, but thanks to that AMAZING book I have a VERY well rested and happy family!

First I suggest you buy the fabulous book "Healthy Sleep Habits, healthy child" by Dr. Marc Weisblut. I thought I had a fussy, colicy baby until I got with his program. Since then my sweetie has been fabulous. Dr. Weisblut suggests that children early on including those at 4 months never be allowed to be awake for more than 2 hours at a time. After an hour to an hour and a half look for signs of tiredness and try to get her to sleep. He has a whole variety of suggestions regarding soothing and getting to sleep.

If the baby is waking for a 2 oz feed, she likely doesn't need anything, she just likes it. Trying to cut out some of those middle of the night feeds would likely help a lot. If you try to stretch them out by letting her fuss a little (some allow longer fuss times - sometimes known as cry it out but some find that hard to do). Then maybe picking her up but not feeding her and trying to get her back to sleep would be my suggestions. At 4 months she ideally should be sleeping through the night (8pm to 6/7am or even 10/11pm to 6/7am) but she likely enjoys the comfort of feeding and your attention.

But the book is full of great advice.

It's a myth that a 4-month old should sleep through the night (5 or more hours). It sucks that doctors still tell parents that they should expect this out of their babies. Yes, you can hope they sleep longer than 2 hours but you can't count on it. Whatever you do, don't fall in to the "solids will change sleep habbits" trap or add cereal to a bottle, her system isn't ready.
I suggest the book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child". Read it with a grain of salt if you don't believe in the cry-it-out crap. But, its a good guide for what you can expect at different ages. I would darken the room with black-out shades for day-time sleep and while I don't believe in cry-it-out, do wait a bit to make sure it's not just the end of a sleep cycle and she can go back down on her own. At 4 months you probably know the difference between "I'm still tired and want to whine a bit" cries and "come get me, I'm hysterical" cries. Wait 10 or 15 minutes (especially in the middle of the night) before going to her.
Also, have your husband go and try to sooth her without food first. Then you offer the breast if she can't sleep. Hold off on his feeding the bottle for a while and see if that helps. You will still have some sleep deprived nights for a while, but 4 months is a growth-spurt time and she may just be hungry.

Good Luck!

I went through the same thing with my own daughter at 3 1/2 months. She was sleeping roughly 10-5, got the cold, and well that was that. It was up to eat every 2-3 hours pretty much every night. Absolutely exhausting. I totally totally empathize with you.

I do not know how you feel about sleep training. I have read every sleep book I could get my hands on: Weissbluth, Ferber, Sears, Karp, Pantley, and several others. I even read one called "Sleep Talk" that basically advocated hypnotic talks while your kids sleep to get them to sleep more/better (yes, I was that desperate). They all have their own sleep philosophies and methods that range from letting the baby cry until sleep occurs (regardless of how long that takes) to letting the baby sleep with you and feed as needed. The Pantley book, "The No-Cry Sleep Solution" had some good suggestions, so I wanted to share it with you. I also just got a new one from the library called "The Lull-A-Baby Sleep Plan." I'm not sure what it proposes, but I wanted to share the title.

Basically there are several factors to consider:
1) how does your daughter fall asleep for the night? Do you put her in the crib and she goes down or do you have to nurse her and/or rock her to sleep? I rocked my daughter to sleep every night for the first 7 months until we realized that she went down faster and easier with my husband. You might try having your husband put her down while you stay quietly away.

2) Could you and your husband trade off night feedings? That way, at least there would be a little more sleep for you two.

3) Where does your daughter sleep? Have you considered cosleeping or do you want her to stay in her own crib/room? Some babies are more soothed with cosleeping and others just get up more because the food is always available.

4) If you and your husband sleep in the same room as your daughter have you considered sleeping somewhere else at least for the start of the night? Have you considered moving her crib into her own room or vice versa? Even then, you might want to stay out of the room for the first part of the night. I would regularly fall asleep on the couch while my husband went up with the baby, and I would just join them for the first feeding and then on. I had heard that babies can smell breastmilk and so I thought that by removing myself, I would at least try to prolong the interval until the first feeding. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't

5) Finally, it sounds like she could need a little more milk at bedtime and elsewhere, so it might be a growth spurt. Also, she might be teething a little early. So you might want to check for signs of teething, and if so give her a little Tylenol. Or try giving her a little more food (but I do know that breastfed babies will only eat what they will eat). Alternately, if you're not averse to it, you could try a little formula at the last awake feed (It's supposed to make babies sleep longer). However, don't listen to anyone who tells you that if you give your daughter solids/cereal, she will sleep more. That has not been shown to work at all.

6) Have you tried putting her to bed earlier? That worked a few times for us.

7) Does her diaper really need changing during the night? You might try a heavier diaper (or an overnight one) to avoid changing her, which might make her wake more.

8) Finally, how easygoing is your daughter? If she is easygoing, sleep training will definitely be easier than if she is somewhat more wired.

As you can probably tell, I have tried just about everything. My own daughter (now 18 moths old) was/is very stubborn. Well, determined. She has always refused all bottles, pacifiers, and all pumped breastmilk. She also resisted all methods of cry-it-out, so I abandoned the method. I am a grad student, so I was able to be with her, but it is still exhausting. After her cold my daughter refused her crib. We ended up buying a cosleeper but basically she slept in bed with us for several months because it just got too darn exhausting to have to get up and feed her every 3 hours. I would just turn over, feed her, and go back to sleep. However, I really didn't like doing it (I like my space!), so we have been steadily working my daughter back into her own crib. However, it has not been a short or easy process. For the last several months my daughter has gone down in her crib and sleeps there for about 8 hours until she wakes for a short feed and then sleeps for another 4 hours. We have also recently moved her out of our room. Soon, soon, we hope to have her sleeping for 10-12 straight hours.

I am sorry this is so long, but I have been there. Seriously, I really really empathize with you. Hang in there, follow your gut, and do what works for you and your family.

Hope you sleep better soon!

We tried following Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child and it didn't work for us. My husband and I couldn't handle listening to my daughter scream. I did some research and found that there is a Harvard study that says that there is a link between cry it out and fear and anxiety problems in later life. Even Ferber now says maybe 45 minutes is too long to let a baby cry. So I am not trying to start an argument here, but do some research before following Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child. Here are links to a couple of articles: http://www.ambybabyblog.com/?p=73, http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Health/story?id=1317690, http://mommacommune.com/com/index.php?option=com_content&...

We have done some moderate cry it out on my daughter at night now that she is over a year old. It is very obvious to us when she is crying because she is tired and trying to fall back asleep (this never lasts more than a couple minutes) and when she is crying because she needs us, is scared, etc. They are distinctively different cries. Sometimes when she is goign back to sleep by herself she will cry a little for a minute or less, then be quiet for five minutes or so, then cry a little, then be quiet and repeat this a few times. The first couple nights it was like that. Now normally she whimpers a little for less than a minute and then goes back to sleep.

Maybe your daughter still doesn't feel well or is having trouble breathing. I know this is also controversial, but sometimes if my daughter has a cold and is not sleeping well, I will bring her in with us in the middle of the night. We all need to sleep and she just sleeps a lot better with us when she is not feeling well. We always put her to sleep initially in her crib, but if it is 3 am and we all have to get up at 6, I let her sleep with us so we can all get that last 3 hours of sleep. That is always the worse time for my daughter if she is not sleeping well.

Anyway, good luck with your decision. In the end you will have to do what you think is best for your family.

D.

In the book the Baby Whisperer, she suggests setting YOUR alarm clock to go off just before baby would usually wake up. So, if she's waking up at 1230, set your alarm for 1220 and go wake her up gently and then rock her back to sleepiness and put her back to bed. Usually the "break in the habit" causes the baby to get knocked off their schedule and they'll sleep more.

But, also...she's not getting to bed early enough. Start moving her bedtime up a bit...babies at this age should be getting around 14-16 hours a sleep a day (between nighttime and naps). The more sleep they get, the more they sleep.

I did like the Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child book, but we did not let our daughter CIO (we just couldn't do it). Elizabeth Pantley's No Cry Sleep Solution did not work for us, but she has some really good suggestions. And the "Floppy Sleep Game" was good, as well.

Good luck!!

N.,

I have an almost 3 month old and I'm wondering if your daughter just isn't full enough to get through the night at this point? I'm feeding Ryan only breastmilk, 75% from the bottle and I nurse him once in awhile. Anyway, at about 3 months, he eats 5 ounces at each feeding during the day. A typical day for him is:

4:00 AM - 5oz or nursing on both sides (about 5 oz)
7:00 AM - 5oz
9:30 AM - 4-5oz
12:30PM - 4-5oz
3:00PM - 4oz
6:00PM - 5oz
7:30PM - BATH TIME (he loves the bath and it relaxes him)
8:30PM - nurse both sides and bedtime until we start again at 4AM

As you can see, he is a CHOMPER during the day and eats at least every 3 hours. But, at night he's filled up with milk right before he goes to bed and sleeps through the night. He's been doing this since about 8 weeks.

Could your daughter be in a growth spurt?

What level nipple are you using on the bottle? If you are on level one, maybe switch to level 2 where it comes out faster so she will get more milk before she falls back asleep while feeding.

Just some ideas.

Good luck.

T.

I know many, many parents and everyone at sometime adopts some form of letting their child "cry it out" - it is very rarely ever taken to the extreme of allowing more than 20 minutes-30 minutes... frankly mst of us just can't listen to our little ones go on that. But I would a) encourage her to eat up... a full tummy means longer sleeps and b) maybe try to let her fuss for 10 miutes, then go in an comfort for 10... keep that up and she'll fall asleep... and will learn that she can sooth herself back to sleep and that there is really nothing for her to be crying out for (unless there is a dirty diaper, which is why the coming back in thing is a good addition. : ) ) It may take a little while, and I know its hard... most of us have been there at least once in our parenting lives... so don't hesitate to talk to a momma friend and vent!!! : ) This too shall pass.