9 month old wont sleep more than 40 minutes at a time

[jessakins]

Our 9 month old DS wakes up at every brief awakening period he gets to and needs to be parented back to sleep each time. This is getting to be frustrating for me now mainly because I am going back to work part time next week. While I am working 3 days a week, my husband and my mother are going to take turns caring for our son and they feel frustrated too that he wont sleep longer. At night he wakes 5-10 times. At nap times I try to get him back to sleep for 2- 40 minute stretches but that is hit or miss.

We also have the stereotypical Mother-in-law YELLING in our ears to let him cry and we should not have to be putting him to bed at all, let alone this much......UG. My husband actually said the other day, maybe we should try letting him cry. Then I cried and said his mother has brain washed him!!! We will never do that.

Our son was born 5 weeks early and was hospitalized for his first two months of life. He is totally healthy now. Since he has been home he has co-slept with us. We used an arms reach co-sleeper but he was mainly in bed with me. In the past 3 weeks we have been transitioning him to his crib for naps and to start his nightly sleeping. He ends up in bed with us between 12 and 3 am usually (or whenever I am too tired to get him back to sleep out of bed!) WE decided we wanted him to start his night in his crib because he was really starting to disrupt my sleep being right next to me. It is a lot of work getting out of bed at each waking and getting him back to sleep, but my husband has been helping a little with this and I have been sleeping better in between his wakings while he is in his crib.

I have read Elizabeth Pantley's No Cry Sleep Solution and came up with a plan of trying to teach him slowly how to be less dependent on me putting him to sleep but I can't get past step 1. I have read every Sears book out there as well.

The goal right now is to help him to sleep 2-4 hour stretches at night.
Any tips, suggestions, things that have worked or NOT worked for you mamas out there?

Thanks Ladies

[confustication]

Oh gosh- I was right there with you with my youngest until about a week ago when it magically changed. He is just over 12 months old now. We have gone from 5-10 night wakings to 1-2 quasi-waking/dream feeds. He sleeps from 11pm to 9am.

No real advice, but it will get better, and it won't take CIO to get there.

[emiree]

I'm in the EXACT same boat with my 11 month old. For naps, I also try to get her to do 2, 40 min stretches and I usually have to sleep with her for the second '40' in order for her to stay down. Sometimes, if she is very, very tired, she will sleep 1 1/2 or maybe 2 hours on her own. I noticed this when she skipped her afternoon nap one day. When we put her to bed at 6:30, she slept until 8:30!!

My DD sleeps from about 7 to 7 and when I am next to her, she wakes every hour as well. I don't know if I have much advice, but just to say I'm in the same boat and it has started to drive me nuts!! I read Pantley's book, and do the pull-off method, which at least helps her unlatch sometimes (but with teething forget it!), and it did help settle her more easily for bedtime, but has not helped with nightwaking.

I'm wondering if the crib thing that you are doing will work, but maybe just take a little more time? Either that, or maybe your DS just needs another month or 2 in bed? I'm hoping that it magically gets better with age, but who knows!

[Tattooed Hand]

Yes, unfortunately Pantley's book seems to assume that if you get them to bed earlier and unlatch them before they are asleep, that they will begin to sleep longer stretches on their own. This has not been the case for us and I almost feel like I am getting less sleep now because DD goes to bed at 7 (instead of 9) and has her one and only 2-4 (most nights closer to the 2 end of that) stretch before I can get to bed and is up 5:30-6:30 am. She really likes going to bed early, but I can't leave until she's been asleep for like an hour, which is when I get up, say hello to DH (who sometimes can't make it home in time to see us or help before she sleeps), wolf down some dinner and get back in bed. After her first waking, which is around 10, she is up every 1-2 hours. sometimes every 40 minutes.

She slept better until she was around 4 months old and things have been going steadily down hill from then.

I've been unlatching her before sleep for 3 months and getting her to sleep earlier ( which has made getting her to sleep much faster) for about 3 weeks. Still waiting for longer stretches of sleep...

We've had her in her own little twin bed pushed up against ours (all on the floor) for 3 weeks now and I've not seen much improvement. We're going to maybe try a crib (for daytime napping and the first part of the night so I don't have to be right there). Who knows. I am eager to see what other mamas think.

[Magistra]

This is my 8-month-old. 2 30-minute naps a day and waking up every 1-2 hours at night--usually one 2-hour block and the rest an hour or less. He usually falls asleep for night-time without nursing. He'll nurse until he's sleepy-ish and then roll around in bed for a bit. I keep a hand on him for a little pressure, and he drifts off eventually. I generally get an hour from him then. And getting him to sleep this way now takes 45 minutes to an hour.

I can occasionally get a 90-minute nap out of him if I'm willing to keep him on my lap the entire time. Of course, that defeats the goal of me getting a lot of work done while he's sleeping.

I'm exhausted since he's never slept more than a 3-hour chunk--and that's only happened a couple times. He'll only calm down at night with me, so I've been on full-time duty at night, although my partner's not getting much more sleep either.

[ACsMom]

My 8 month old is exactly like this as well. So was her older sister. With my older one, I night-weaned her at 13 months out of desperation to get more sleep, and after two weeks it worked and she started sleeping through the night and has ever since (she's now 4.5 and sleeps great, mostly in her own bed )

Trouble is I don't feel like I can completely night-wean an 8 month old who's not eating more than a couple tablespoons of food a day. I'm working, slowly, on getting her down to 2 nursings a night, not counting nursing to sleep at 8pm. It's hard, though. Even though it's not CIO, I still have a hard time letting her cry in my arms, and on nights when she gets really upset I've been going ahead and letting her nurse. So, I'm thwarting my own plan, I know, but I'm not 100% sure she's really ready for this. Some nights when she wakes up and I soothe her back to sleep instead of nursing her, she fusses for maybe a minute and drops back off. Then I think "Hey, yeah, this is going well!" Other times she cries like her heart's breaking, even though I'm holding her and rocking her and stroking her, and I feel like the world's worst mother and wonder why I'm questioning her signals now when my whole baby parenting philosophy is that babies know what they need and they will tell you if you listen. On the other hand, at 3am when she's awakened for the sixth time that night and I'm so tired I can't even think and my primitive animal mind starts to take over and tell me there's a 16 pound threat to my survival wiggling around in my bed....well, when that happens I gently pass her off to my husband, knowing she will definitely be crying because she can't nurse, but I soothe myself with the knowledge that she's in her daddy's loving arms. At 3am that seems good enough - for me, anyway. Don't know how it seems to her.

Anyway, I feel for you with this issue. I don't think there's any easy answer. You try stuff, you do the best you can. You tell everyone who's questioning you to shut the hell up. Aren't you dealing with enough stress without other people, who AREN'T parenting your children to sleep 10 times a night, putting in their rotten 2 cents? Sorry if I sound bitter - but btdt too!
I wish all of us luck, love, and peaceful sleeping as soon as possible.