how do you deal with night waking episodes

[mizznicole]

If you bedshare, how do you deal with waking episodes?  By that I mean 30+ minutes of refusing to sleep in the middle of the night.  Baby won't nurse down and can't be ignored (basically wants to be up playing and cries if not attended).

I'm getting a 2 hour episode almost every night and am about to lose my mind.

[HappyMonkey]

How old is your baby?

[mizznicole]

8 months.  He's had  sort of pattern since birth of a couple of good nights, then a mess of bad ones, then some good ones...not really related to milestones or teething.

[ContentMama]

I am in the same boat. It's been tough to find info on this as it seems the general advice has to do with just nursing back to sleep or co sleeping. For us, cosleeping seems to cause the lengthy wake ups. So I've been putting him back in the crib until 3 am at which point I'm so exhausted I'll bring him to the bed, nurse and *generally* he can fall back asleep. Before when he was in the bed and I'd nurse at every wake up, by 3 am it was like he was tired of nursing and it wasn't calming him so he'd just be up.

The thing is I really enjoy cosleeping. However, I enjoy sleeping even more :)

I totally empathize with you. Actually I've had to leave the room many times to calm down as I'm so tired and just don't know what to do!

[motherhendoula]

Every night !  Thats hard mama!  My LO has been doing this off and on since he was about 4 mos - hes 11 mos now.  - we are down to about once every 2 - 3 weeks he will wake up - for no reason that i can see, nurse for a while and wont fall back to sleep.  I can only nurse him for so long (- really more than 30 - 40 minutes total and im done for....)

We co-sleep but we have a futon next to our bed - all teh same level - so i would usually roll him onto that and give him a toy to play with and watch him with half an eye open.  We were fortunate that he has been OK with quiet play...i have a frog that lights up and plays music and he seems to enjoy that - he sometimes sits up, but will often lay down and he will 'talk' to the frog for a while.  Its annoying - but of course, every night would be mind-blowing.  Have you tried cutting back on his naps? 

When he wakes up - we keep everything in the room the same - meaning, no lights, no TV, no waking up and interacting....of course im watching him -  we just dont 'play'