What Do You Do When a 10 Month Old Wakes up Crying

Does the baby continue to cry when held? Our little guy will wake up in the night (most likely due to teething or growing pains) and if he won't stop, we will bring him into bed with us - right to sleep he goes! I am a huge fan of doing what needs to be done in order for the family to get some sleep, especially if everyone has to work the next day!

Just remember, or tell her to remember, they won't be crying at night or sleeping in bed with us for much longer. We really will miss it, if we can see past the exhaustion right now!

Also, I would tell her to do a bottle as an absolute last resort.

That age is when my son started having night terrors. You don't say how the child is acting, except that she's screaming. With a night terror your child's eyes are open and they look like they are awake, but they aren't. Trying to force a bottle or even talking to her and trying to comfort her can actually make it worse. They usually last somewhere between a few minutes and 30-ish minutes and then the child suddenly stops screaming and goes right back to sleeping normally. I'm not sure at what age nightmares begin, so it could be that as well and she just can't articulate what's wrong at 10 months. If it's a nightmare she should be relatively easily comforted by rocking or something, if it's a night terror she might want to talk to her pediatrician. My son only had a few of them and they stopped pretty quickly, so I don't have any good advice on how to deal with them.

With our oldest we tried different things and found if we brought him into bed with us he usually went right back to sleep. With our youngest we didn't even try anything else, we just bring him into bed with us and everyone goes back to sleep.

Co-sleeping works. It's one of the easiest things in the world to do. I'd have to admit that sometimes my son wakes me up when he's in our bed, but I still get a much better sleep than I would if I were up for an hour or more trying to figure out how to get him back to sleep.

At that age, usually they just need to feel Mommy or Daddy's presence and to feel loved and secure. And remember, it doesn't last forever, but the benefits of them feeling safe do last forever.

That is so hard because you just don't know what is going in there little heads. My husband and I concluded that our LO (11mo) is probably having bad dreams when he wakes up crying like his heart is just broken to bits. (The last time was probably about one month ago.)

I hold him and just "love him up" real good. I hate for him to cry like that, but I guess he needs to get it out--like we all do sometimes--so I just hug him in a way that he knows (even if he's still asleep) that I have him and walk around. I'm still nursing, so I offer him a nipple periodically until he takes it. Sometimes it's during a night when I have to get up in another hour or so. That goes with the territory. Maybe your cousin can walk with her to another part of the house so that everyone isn't disturbed.

Wow, my son is only 2 but it's already hard to remember that far back! lol
I think at that age you are supposed to avoid giving them a bottle in the middle of the night. That's like teaching them that they can expect to get a "midnight snack" whenever they want.
I'm pretty sure when my son cried in the middle of the night at that age we would go in and pat his back and put lullabies on really softly and that would do the trick.
Good luck to your cousin!

At that age - I responded to my son the first cry of the night with a diaper change and possibly a bottle (although he should be very close to not needing one at night anymore) Lay him back down and out the door I went. She needs to ignore it (assuming medically, everything is okay.) After a few days, baby will stop waking up so often because he will learn night time is for sleeping. It's the best way. Maybe she needs to sleep on the couch for those first few days so that she is not so bothered by the crying being right next to her. He WILL go back to sleep - he is not going to cry for hours and hours.

Second thought - what is his bed time and how does he nap during the day? Babies who go to bed too late or don't nap well get quickly overtired and this makes sleeping through the night much harder for them. If my son goes to bed too late even one night - that night he will wake up crying a few times. He should be in bed by 7 ish and taking 2 naps of about 1-1.5 hours each at his age.

Any chance the little one might have an ear infection? My daughter was like that...no other real symptoms except for waking up (usually around 1 am) crying. It wasn't every night either, just periodically. Turns out she had "mild" infections..mostly just fluid in her ears. Laying down for a long time just made it hurt enough to wake her up in pain.

It also helped for us to just keep a soothing CD playing all night long in her room. Helped her learn to self-soothe.

Is there any way your cousin can sleep elsewhere? Your DD might be screaming longer than she would otherwise because your cousin is right there, within her sight. Baby might want attention, and want help going back to sleep, and won't commit to doing it on her own if there is an adult right in front of her eyes.

Cry it out is difficult, but it works. It may take as long as 7-10 days, but once baby learns to self soothe, everyone will have long, uninterupted nights of sleep.

We used the Dr. Ferber sleep training method, it worked for us.

Good luck to you and yours,
F. B.