I'm dying

[TigerLily]

Please...please help. A is 11 months old, and she STILL doesn't sleep through the night. She has had a few weeks when she will start to only wake up once, and then she reverts right back. It's worse than newborn. She is up every 1.5-2 hours. I am so.so.tired. I try to let her cry, but it keeps me up anyway, and then it wakes up A2 and then I have to get the whole house back to sleep. I've taken her to the ped twice thinking maybe she has an ear infection, but NOPE! she's perfectly fine just a huge a hole at night.
We tried Ferber, which worked for a few weeks but then one night I went in when Mike was on call and all of that went straight to hell. I am so tired of this. I'm rapidly aging and the lack of rest is making me a grouchy old lady.
HELP. give me your opinions, tell me what I did wrong, and for the love of everything holy, please tell me she isn't going to be still waking up when she's 10.

[MrsK]

Nothing constructive to say but offering bug hugs.

[scrub-jay]

I owe a couple ppl a write up on this topic. I'll send it to you in case it's helpful. Found " Good night, sleep tight" to be the most useful for us. Please remember that every kid is different and you didn't "do anything wrong" so many of us have been in your shoes.

[SuzySunshine]

BIG BIG hugs, R didn't sleep through the night until 13 months and we had many of the same issues. I hope scrub-jay's info helps.

[Thirteen]

BIG BIG hugs, R didn't sleep through the night until 13 months and we had many of the same issues. I hope scrub-jay's info helps.

This was us, too.
The waking every 2-3 hours is interesting to me, though...


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[ladymoreta]

Please remember that every kid is different and you didn't "do anything wrong" so many of us have been in your shoes.

This! I had so much guilt with DS that I did something wrong or that I wasn't doing enough or that I was damaging him for life by either sleep training or not sleep training.

How does she go to sleep at first at night, and what do you do when you go in there?

[TulipsAndSunscreen]

This was us, too.
The waking every 2-3 hours is interesting to me, though...

Dare I ask why?

[HouseofWool]

I got nuthin' for ya because at 3.5 years Sophie STILL doesn't sleep through the night consistently.

[Deebs]

My son slept in his swing until he was...14 months old (maybe 15 months). There were definitely nights with him in his bassinet or crib, but I quickly discovered that the only place he would consistently fall asleep and stay asleep (at least for a few hours) was the swing. Is there any contraption, position, etc she will sleep in? Also, she's old enough to sleep on her stomach. Have you tried that? Swaddling? Pacifier? At this point, I'd do anything that works. We also instituted "guest room" nights in our house. DH and I were lucky enough to have a guest room and each took one night/week uninterrupted in that room.

[Thirteen]

Dare I ask why?

Well, she said her DD was 11 months old. DS did a lot of night waking, but stopped waking that frequently around 8 months old.
He was still nursing on demand, but didn't need to wake every 2-3 hours to nurse at that point. I guess it just surprised me.

TL - when she wakes, is it to nurse?

[ides]

O woke up every two hours until over two years. Sorry no help here.

[ladymoreta]

2-3 hours makes a lot of sense. They wake with that frequency because that's the interval of a sleep cycle. At the end of each sleep cycle, everyone (even adults) wakes up slightly, then returns to sleep. Babies have trouble at the 2-3 hour marks if they have sleep associations that are not being met. For example, your sleep association is your bed in a dark room. If you pass through a sleep cycle and your pillow is missing, you'll probably wake up all the way. A baby wakes up, and their _______ is missing. It might be a pacifier, mommy's breast, or just mommy patting her back.

So the key to stopping the night wakings is to make her sleep associations exactly what she experiences when she passes through the sleep cycle in the middle of the night.

Night feedings are the big question, though. Breastfed babies may still need 1-2 feedings per night up to a year, when most of them can go through the night without one. If she wakes up truly hungry and doesn't fill that need, her sleep will continue to be restless. However, to complicate things, 4:00-6:00 a.m. Is the period of lightest sleep, so you may get more wakings then anyway if you have sleep associations.

[Phoebe]

Big Hugs! I have nothing to add, but sympathy.

ETA: My 5.5 month old sleeps all night in her swing sucking her fingers and with a favorite lovely. It is so funny because everytime she sees the little lovely she puts her fingers in her mouth. Now my 8 yo is frequently up during the night. I got little sleep last night because of her.

[hanginginthere]

Sending you big hugs! Our dd slept great from 6 months on BUT now she is in the big girl bed she rarely sleeps through the night so I am always going to crawl in with her....it's like being on call all the time now...does she wake up for a reason- hungry? need to burp? the only thing I suggest is that when hubby gets home, hand her over for a bit and go take a nap- that's what we do now so I can deal with night call...or do you have any family who can come visit and help out for a bit? I got desperate with newborn fatigue since hubby was working all the time, so I called my mommy to come and stay and spell me off a bit...

[spotty_dog]

HELP. give me your opinions, tell me what I did wrong, and for the love of everything holy, please tell me she isn't going to be still waking up when she's 10.

Like LadyM so eloquently described, this is completely normal. Human babies of this age are starting to explore during their daytime hours, so their little brains are particularly tuned in to making sure they don't get too far from mama. They don't have object permanence so if mama is gone, to them she is GONE. So if they wake up expecting her and she's not there? This is SEWIOUS.

You can employ psychology in a number of ways, forcing your baby to accept that you simply don't exist at night by making her cry it out, up through gently encouraging her to accept a lovey and other easier to replicate associations in substitution.

Or you can let baby sleep with you and wait until they're old enough to enjoy their independence of having a Big Bed and to understand some rules about when it's OK to cuddle.

The way you handle night wakings now is NOT going to affect how she sleeps at 10. Promise. Even if habits are made, they can always be broken. I remember the first time a toddler of mine slept more than 3 hours like the heavens parted. It was a beautiful thing. They now go to bed with no more than the instruction, "Bedtime!" and for the most part, they stay there. (They're still welcome to cuddle in the middle of the night, but they do that less and less.)

For some gentle ideas and some insight on how your kiddo's personality affects their sleep, I love the book Sleepless in America.