When will she grow to be a better sleeper?

[KellyandBean]

Sabine is almost 7 months and still is up every 2 hours and sometimes even more often then that. Sometimes i think she is actually hungry and is nursing for food but 70% of the time i think she is just waking between sleep cycles and wanting her boobie. For a week or so there i almost considered CIO but decided it wasn't at all for me and have just decided that there has GOT to be an age when she grows to be a better sleeper. She sleeps ok when she co-sleeps with me (latched the whole time) but we only do that part time. She spends 1/2 of the night in her crib and then when i get tired of getting up (sometimes it is 6 times a night) then i bring her into our bed. I prefer not to co-sleep though and I'm hoping at some point she will sleep better so that i only have to get up 2-3 times a night and can keep her in her room all night as a result. I really want to hear from moms with slightly older babies who had trouble with sleep early on. Will she still be up every 2 hours when she is 2-3 years old? I guess i am just really hoping for a ballpark on what to expect with her. If i need to mentally gear up for this happening for another 3 years then I'd just like some heads up hah. Anyone?

[Nicole730]

DS stopped waking up every 1-3 hours overnight when I got pregnant and my supply dropped. He was 14 months. Otherwise, I am sure it would have gone on forever...

I've heard sending your partner in to help soothe the baby back to sleep can help. I co-slept, so that wasn't an option.

[greenbeanmama]

My son was a terrible sleeper. He would nurse every hour and a half around the clock for the first six months. For a few weeks, he woke up every forty-give minutes all night long. Since my husband didn't want to co-sleep, I gave the crib a valiant effort, but I gave up at five months and said we're co-sleeping because I can't function on this little sleep.

I considered trying to convince him to get back to sleep without nursing many times. At about a year, we discovered he had some digestive issues, which looking back, I feel that he actually did NEED to nurse.

I chose to night-wean him at 25 months, when he started waking every hour to nurse again. It was hard. But it was way easier than trying earlier - he understood me when I said that "nursies went night-night", and I could at least talk to him about it. Night weaning didn't really help him sleep better though. At almost four, he still wakes up at least once a night, needing me to encourage him to go back to sleep (sometimes simply saying, "You just woke up, honey. Go back to sleep.")


My little girlie is 12 months, and she too is addicted to night nursing. She too wakes often to nurse. I've been a little "firmer" with her, just because I'm stinkin' tired - it has been over four years since I've actually had an uninterrupted night's sleep! I've gotten her to the point where I'll nurse her and unlatch her and she'll sometimes roll over and sleep again. The rest of the time she's attached till she's in a dead sleep.

Yes, your little one will eventually sleep. By the time she goes to college, she'll be sleeping through the night, and weaned, and walking, and potty trained, etc. I wouldn't stress about it too much - it's tiring, but looking back the time will seem short!

[LadyCatherine185]

Liam woke every hour or more his whole first year. Around 8-9 months it was the worst-- he was up every 15-30 minutes all night every night. I NEVER thought it would get better. Around 18 months I got pregnant again (he was still waking every 1-2 hours) and my supply started dropping, and night nursing was becoming excruciating so I started nightweaning. We took it slow, but within a month he began only waking 2-3 times a night. Then we moved him to his own bed and had DH handle wakeups. He now STTN from 9-6:30 about 5 nights a week. The nights he does wake up it is only once, and only for a minute or so and is back to sleep with DH's help resettling.

Have you read The No Cry Sleep Solution? That book had some good tips, but Sleepless in America gave me a lot of great advice. For the rough times, we coslept, used white noise, and blackout curtains and that helped us get the most rest we could for the situation. If I had tried to nightwean DS any earlier, I don't think it would have gone well, but since he was ready (very verbal, eating a ton of solids during the day) it went really smoothly.

good luck mama. it DOES get better, I promise!

[heatherr30]

At around 10 months my DD started sleeping for longer stretches--and by that I mean she would often previously wake up every 45 minutes, but after 10 months she would sleep up to 2 hours at a time. Nap time went from 45 min to 2 hours--it was great! And my evenings seemed my own again, when I could count on her to sleep a while before the first waking, so I could pop out for a walk or something without worrying she would be screaming her head off with DH when I got back.

As for getting her to sleep longer than 2 hours... this only happened after we nightweaned at 19 months. Up until then I was still nursing her at night around 6 times. I know some people night wean sooner, but I don't really think it would have been easy, because before 18 months they don't understand time concepts very well (ie "later" "night vs morning" etc), plus up until that time there was a lot of teething/ illness / etc so any night weaning would have been stopped before it really got very far. A week after night weaning she would wake up only once or twice a night and now a year later she often sleeps thru the night (9-10 hours).

But, I would not really recommend night weaning at under 1 year, because bm should be the main source of nutrition until then. The body produces more milk at night, unfortunately, and I always felt that night feeding was necessary to make sure DD got enough BM and my milk supply didn't diminish. Breastfeeding DD was just too important to me at this age to risk messing up the supply/demand balance. With that said, I doubt 6 night nurses are necessary for most moms/LOs, I'm sure there is still room for better sleep even if you night nurse. No Cry Sleep Solution (pp mentioned it too) has some great ideas for getting your DD to go to sleep other ways than nursing. She doesn't advocate denying a child the chance to nurse when they wake up, just suggests that if you can help them learn to get themselves to sleep (ie not fall asleep on the breast) they will wake up less often. The book didn't work great for us--too much illness and teething to be consistent--but it's still worth a read. I would notice slight improvement in sleep and then another stuffy nose would come along and we would be right back to where we started.