1 Year Old Still Not Sleeping Through the Night - Colbert,WA

Boy, your story sounds very similar to mine. I am raising my fourth child, who has been absolutely different than any of my other children. He also was waking 4 -6 times a night to nurse. I finally had enough, so 2 weeks ago I put him in his crib after I had gotten him to sleep for the first time of the night. Then when he awoke around 12:00 to nurse for the first time I walked in, and I gave him a big hug, told him I loved him and then walked away. Of course he was not very happy about this. The first night he cryed for about 45 minutes before falling to sleep. Then he slept till 6 a.m. The second night he only cryed for 10 minutes. After 2 weeks he is only crying for 1 minute and falling fast asleep. In fact last night he went to bed at 10:00 and didn't wake until 5:30. What a relief it is to have some consistent sleep. It may seem really cruel to just let him cry, but it is the only thing that worked for us. Plus he is a lot happier now that he is getting enough sleep. Good Luck

I think nightweaning and moving out of your bed are two entirely different issues, though, and you need to tackle them one at a time, or it will be too much change all at once. If you are determined to change your sleep stuff right NOW, I would suggest looking up Dr Jay Gordon's "Changing The Sleep Pattern In The Family Bed" article (which should be <a href="http://www.drjaygordon.com/development/ap/sleep.asp&quot;... here</a>).

All that said, I don't think your son is by any means abnormal. It seems very common for breastfeeding children I know to continue nursing at night, especially in circumstances where they may feel they don't get enough one-on-one mommy time. We nightweaning to 6-hour stretches using the Jay Gordon technique around 20 months, and my daughter nightweaning herself almost completely, suddenly, at 23 months.

The address for the article mentioned by E. T is now: http://www.drjaygordon.com/development/ap/sleep.asp

I agree with E. that you are dealing with two issues that should be handled individually.

There's a third issue that is possibly as important, and that is your expectations. Hoping, expecting, or needing somebody (especially a baby!) to be a certain way sets us up for almost guaranteed suffering, and when that happens, we can easily end up shortchanging the baby.

Not intentionally, of course - we so love our children. But there's a disconnect that happens between what we see as our reasonable needs and the needs of the baby. We have a great deal more flexibility than our children to "adjust to reality." I hope you aren't making assumptions about what or how Carter should be that might be totally out of touch with what or how he can be.

You make what could be a very important comment, that Carter scares you a lot. You may have some intuition working here that you should not ignore. Have you considered talking over your concerns with your pediatrician? He/she may want to run some tests or send Carter to a specialist for evaluation. There could be something going on that needs to be addressed.

I'm the first of four daughters. Child number 3 was (and is, in adulthood) extremely challenging. She became something of a curse to my mother, who in turn treated her as a curse. The damage to our whole family is still evident today. We were really poor, so perhaps no professional intervention was possible, but I think my sister's life would be much easier today if our family had gotten help when she was little.

Hi! That's a tough one! My 1 year old still wakes up 2-3 times a night. I stopped feeding her at night and that helped her to back to sleep more quickly once she realized she wasn't getting anything. I now just go in and pick her up, hold her for about 10 seconds, and put her back down. She usually goes to sleep. Some nights, I just let her fuss and cry and she will usually give up. I could tell by her cries that she just wanted mommy and didn't really need anything else. Right now she's getting several teeth so I think that's what's waking her. I don't know if what I do will work for everyone, but I hope it gives you another perspective. My first born slep thru the night at 4 months so we entered new territory with this one.

Does he sleep well when he sleeps with you? You mentioned that he "kicks" dad out of bed. Any other issues -like snoring when he sleeps or mouth breathing/drooling during waking hours? My daughter had all of the symptoms you mentioned, plus some other ones, and it took until she was six for a doctor to realize that her insomnia and chronic snoring and severe dark circles under her eyes which kept bringing us back to the clinics (naturopathic and allopathic) were due to Sleep Apnea. Surgery was the miracle for us. We were strong proponents of the family bed, and believe me, I thought I had created a monster, too. I probably have created one in many other ways, but she does sleep through the night in her own bed now ;) Hope that helps.