Dealing with sleep issues in a 9mo old?
I've got a 9 month old daughter, and she's still waking several times a night. Initially, she was sleeping with her older brother (2yrs old) and we would go to her when she cries, but now she's in her own room and we just let her cry it out. Are there any other options?
1 Answers
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To clarify, we don't let her cry endlessly, we let her cry a little longer than the running-to-get-her-the-moment-we-heard-a-peep that we were doing when she was sleeping with her older brother. We were worried that we weren't giving her a chance to try falling back asleep on her own because we were so worried about her waking up her brother.
UPDATE (a month later):
She's been sleeping on her own in a temporary crib in the guest room. After a few nights, maybe a week, of letting her cry 5, 10, 20, 30 min or so, and piling her crib high with pacifiers (maybe 8) on the theory that usually she's crying when she realizes it's fallen out of her mouth and can't find it, she now is sleeping just fine from 7:30 or 8pm to 5:30 or 6am. Occasionally, she'll make a single cry in the middle of the night and then goes back to sleep. Yay!
Next step, figure out when/how to return her to her brother's room.
UPDATE 2 (baby is now almost 1):
We just moved her from her temporary crib back into the room we'd intended her to share with her brother (but that she didn't end up sharing for most of her first year). She's sleeping through the night now from 7 or 8pm to 6:30 or 7:30am. Her first two nights with her brother have gone well - much easier to put them both to bed at the same time than it used to be, now that they can both enjoy a story or two. She fussed at around 10pm last night (as she is wont to do) but settled herself back to sleep after a minute. It's going surprisingly well.
Learnings so far:
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It's hard to get a baby to sleep through the night when every couple of months you end up traveling, creating jet lag, and the need to sleep in a shared family room, and occasionally a shared bed. It's hard, but possible, with some setbacks.
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Two kids sharing a room might (now) sleep through the night well, but one side-effect is that their joint wake-up time is now set by whichever one wakes up first. The plus side to this is that, at least this morning, they entertained each other for a good half hour / 45 min before we came down - and even then everyone was still happy.
Aw. Not sure if this has continued, but if it has...
If you don't mind the night wakings, that's one thing. If you do and can't stand to see it continue, could it be time for some tough love so she learns to fall back asleep on her own/entertain herself quietly at night? (lights stay out, serious expressions & no talking during minimal night tending, no milk, fewer and fewer night-time tendings?)
This of course is one of the most sensitive of parenting dilemnas so I hate to even advise. Many families would rather go to their child than entertain any other ideas, and that's an admirable approach that I'd like to follow (but at some point I needed to come to terms with the fact that lack of sleep & no naps seems to cause me to slowly lose my mind).
- andrea, Jan 12, 2010
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Sounds like you have things under control, at least better than we do! Ours has been waking at 2 to 4 wanting attention and sometimes milk. Then she is up at 4:30-5:30. Ugh. We turn the light on for her to play while we try to get a bit more sleep, but that only lasts a half hour.
- Brian, Nov 24, 2009