My 10 Month Baby Is Still Waking up All Through the night....HELP!

Neither of my children were good sleepers. They slept through the night when they were maybe 2 or 3 YEARS old. LOL One thing that helped my DS sleep was letting him fall asleep laying on top of us (tummy to tummy). When he went to sleep, we would roll over, letting him slide off onto the bed. That worked the best. Sometimes if he woke up at night, he would get in that position again, and go right to sleep. I guess it made him warm and comfortable, because it worked! I can't stand the cry-it-out method.

~A.

I agree with Amy as well! My daughter is 13 months old and I still breastfeed. She sleeps with us b/c I don't want to make her "cry it out". I think that is awful! I will def get that book too! Thanks so much!

The first thing I thought about is teething. If she just wanted you, she would sleep fine with you. Have you tried tylonel before bed? That seemed to work with my girls. I know that their little gums start throbbing when they are laying flat. Another trick you might try is to lift up one end of her mattress. This way, her head stays higher, which might help with the pain. My youngest teethed for months before her teeth came in. She was a year old before her first tooth. I hope this might help. I would definitely call her pediatrician if this continues on too much longer.

T., mother of two girls. they are now 6 and 4, and growing up way too fast!!!!

PS A friend said to rub dimatapp on thier gums to help with the teething.

Hi C. - I have a 3&1/2 year-old who only just recently started sleeping through the night - and she actuall still wakes some. At 10 months old she also woke up many times each night - sometimes as many as 12! I also turned to the internet for help and advice as her doctor was prescribing medication after medication, and NOTHING was working! We had a sleep study done that gave us proof that she had sleep apnea (she stopped breathing several times while sleeping - only briefly, but enough so that she couldn't sleep soundly). This story is really long - and if you would like to talk on the phone or e-mail please let me know! I have been where you are and can empathize with you! I would love to have had someone to talk to about it. I don't normally share personal info like ph number over the internet - but you sound like you really need someone to talk to. Please let me know if you want to connect...
A Fellow Non-Sleeping Mom

I recommend this site: http://www.babywhispererforums.com/

Post your question and they'll help you with a plan. There is no quick fix, but you can do this and both of you can sleep.

Hello! My 15mo old baby girl just now started to sleep through the night... she was breastfed too and loved to sleep with me (she tossed and turned and woke up a lot). I have finally gotten her to sleep in her room in her crib all night! There is hope, becuase i thought that this day would never come. I got her on a very strict schedule for bedtime, for me it took about a week, for her to put herself with out screaming, then about another month for her to stop waking up at night. Hang in there!!!!

C., could she be teething? My daughter went through a very similar stage while she was teething but it lasted only a short time until the teeth came through. Or is she a little congested or possibly have allergies? My daughter also did the same thing when she had a cold because of post-nasal drip down the back of her throat. I'm sorry to hear you're not getting any sleep. Keep your chin up and I'll pray for you and her!

Read "The Baby Whisperer". It's a great book and will help with all aspects of helping your little one but mostly with sleeping. I agree with some of the others to have her checked by the Dr. again (or maybe get a second opinion). The response you got from your Dr. the first time, sounds like you aren't being taken seriously. Most babies like to be close to their moms but that doesn't mean they wake up all of the time. Good luck! I hope you get some sleep soon.

I'm not sure what else to tell you except to get a book called Solving Your Child's Sleep Problems by Ferber - it worked for us. Please talk to your pediatrician and make sure he/she understands just how concerned you are. I she gaining weight? Is she developing appropriately? Your pediatrician should be able to tell you if she isn't thriving (a sign that she isn't eating enough).

I am also concerned for your mental and physical health. Please convey to your doctors just how tired you are, as well, and that you don't have much help during the week. Babies are hard enough without an issue like this. Please seek out help from friends , family, your lactation consultant, anyone you can talk to about the problem.

Take naps on the weekend when your husband is home whenever you can. Drink a cup or two of chamomile tea in the evenings 20 minutes or more before you feed your baby - this might help her sleep, too. Stay away from the pacifier - it will fall out during the night and wake her.

Talk to your lactation consultant (usually available through the hospital) or got to a laleche league meeting in your area (www.lalecheleague.com) about your feeding schedule and see if they have any suggestions. Eat oatmeal and be sure to take your vitamins to help "beef up" your breast milk. Try to nurse your baby for longer periods of time - switching breasts frequently can help a sleepy baby eat longer (and maybe then she'll sleep longer).

I hope things get better soon. Please try to take care of yourself as well. If you are exhausted and emotionally strung out, it also affects your child. If you feel overwhelmed or frustrated beyond the usual, depressed or sad, please call someone or see your doctor. I have been in those shoes - your hormones are still out of whack and this situation can make them much worse! Don't feel bad about asking for help!

Reach out to as many people as you can and beat the bushes for ideas and help. If you are doing nay hours at your local hospital for school, run up to maternity/peds/nursery (anywhere) and talk to the nurses. You may even need to try a different pediatrician if the one you have doesn't seem helpful.
Bless you and hang in there! Please let us know how you are doing!

In my experience, the only way to change a baby's sleep habits is to change their daytime routine. All the crying in the world won't make a "not tired" baby go to sleep. Neither does attempting to pin them down on your own bed while shushing in their ear. Ask me how I know LOL

Is your daughter taking two or more naps during the day? Does she get lots of time to wrestle about on the floor? Do you get her up at the same time each morning?

My sister just went through this with my neice. At 14 months old, she was still awake a large part of the night. Sister's hubby is a long-distance driver, and she works full-time, so you can imagine how exhausted she's been!

Last week, my neice started daycare, instead of being watched by my sis's MIL. They keep her up during the day, so she is just getting one nap at daycare and a short nap on the way home. And guess what!

She's sleeping through the night MUCH MORE! She's woken up a couple of nights for a diaper and a quick bite to eat and gone right back to sleep, but then she's right back to sleep.

My daughter, who will be 7(gasp!) next week, was not much of a sleeper. As a newborn, she slept for 6 hours at night (starting at 3 am after hours of crying and fighting sleep), took 2 naps, 2 hours each, and that was it. When she started napping only once a day (at around 11 months), she started sleeping 8 hours at night, and only occasionally waking up to nurse. She slept with me until 17 months, and then moved into a toddler bed in my room. At 2, I moved her bed across the room from mine, and at 3 she moved to her own room. That's also when she dropped her afternoon nap and started sleeping 10 hours at night. Now that she's in school, she's down at 8, up at 7:15, and we rarely see her at night. :)

Try shifting your daughter's morning and afternoon schedule. Get her up in the am and from naps at the same time every day, and see if she can make it on just one afternoon nap. If she's with you during the day, keep her awake and make sure she gets lots of interaction. If you use a babysitter or daycare, talk to them about keeping her up more. Make sure she has some noisy time about 2 hours before bedtime. Wear her out with tickle-time and playing with toys. Get her to crawl or run (if she's walking) around a lot. Play baby chase through the house by moving out of her reach with a toy and calling her to get it or you. Then, after an hour or so of play, start to settle her down and start her bedtime routine. We do baths (every other night) pjs, snack, tooth-brushing, story or cuddle time, then off to bed, even with the two big kids (who go to bed at 8 and 9).

This does pass, although it seems like it never will while you're in the middle of it. With my non-sleeping girl, I thought I would never stop feeling like a zombie! The house was a pit, and I couldn't get anything done. It's funny to me now, because what is a few months compared to 7 years, ya know? But OH they were loooooooong months!

Good luck!!!

C.,

I hate to tell you this, but I think with some babies, they just have to grow out of it. My daughter who is 2 & a half woke up 3 times in the middle of the night until she was about 16 months old, and my son who is 13 months old still wakes up to nurse 3-5 times a night. Im working on weaning the nighttime nursing sessions, but I too am a full time student and it is easier to just give the breast rather than get a bottle together or to let them "cry it out" becuase then, instead of them being half awake and half asleep, they awake fully and it takes even longer to get them back to sleep. I totally feel your pain!!!

But know that you are not alone. I cant say that it's a breastfed baby thing, because my friend has a breastfed baby 11 months old, and he stopped waking at night to nurse at 3 months old. Do sleep issues run in your or your husband's family? They do in my husbands family, and neither of my two kids take naps too well, either (my daughter stopped napping alltogether at only 24 months!). Perhaps its genetic, I dunno!

Im sorry I dont have much advice other than putting the crib in your room or letting your little one sleep with you if you feel comfortable with it. I know many disagree with that, but you gotta do what you have to to acomplish all that's on your plate!

THIS TO, WILL PASS!!!!! My daughter sleeps wonderfully at night now, but I remember being absolutely exhausted when she was 16 months old and I was 7 months pregnant trying to find sleep in between my midnight wakings to pee and her midnight wakings for her drink. I was working full time then, too! :)

Kids do grow out of the middle of the night wakings, it just takes time- unfortunetly! :)

Hang in there!!!
A.

A book that may help you is "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" by Marc Weissbluth. It helped us with our first son. We sleep trained him starting a little after four months, and after an absolutely miserable week, he started sleeping 12+ hours a night. He still sleeps around 12 hours a night, plus a 90+ minute nap at midday, and he's 19 months now. Weissbluth says that many times we parents train our kids to wake during the night because we continue responding to them like they're newborns long after they're physiologically capable of sleeping through the night. And the kids will keep waking up because they'd prefer to play with us rather than sleep. It is possible it will take longer than a few days to get your child used to the "new normal" of sleeping through the night because she has accumulated a lot of sleep deprivation, which makes it harder for a child to fall and stay asleep. Weissbluth's book is very helpful in explaining all about sleep. It was given to me when I first had my baby, and I've passed it on to others who have also found it useful. :) Good luck with everything! You have a full plate!

im sorry i know how you feel... my child just turn 2 and sometimes she sleeps and sometimes she doesnt. when she goes to daycare she sleeps because she does alot and shes tired and someitmes if its been a bad day she'll have dreams she'll be saying...My Turn,My Turn. she well sleep one of these days and when she does you wont. hang in there the first time she slepted i woke up in the night scared that something happened. she's in a full bed so if she wake's,usually about 4, i just crawl in bed with her and set the alarm and we go on good luck!

My husband I often joked that if our second child had been our first, she likely would have been our only child. Our first slept through the night early -- 9 hours by 6 weeks and 12 hours by 3 months. I didn't truly understand sleep deprivation until our second child. She had ear problems that we did not detect for a while. She actually had more fluid than infections (our third had more infections). She got ear tubes at 10 months. Within two weeks of the tubes, she started crawling and sleeping through the night. She was a very miserable baby and I didn't know what was causing it. I told the doctor at the 2 week check up: "I don't know what you did with the child I gave you, but I'm keeping this one." If you think your child's problem might be medical, it's worth checking into the ears. I've read that it is impossible to sleep through the night with fluid in the ears (even for older children) and I believe it.

One thing to try if you don't think it is medical is to do a more modified cry thing. I would let my babies cry for five minutes, check on them (lay them back down if they were standing) and rub their back for a moment and say "it's night night time, go to sleep. It's not time to get up." I would leave the room for ten minutes and repeat. I would add about 5 more minutes each time between visits. Also, as odd as this sounds, I would try putting her to bed a little earlier. Sometimes when they are over tired, they cannot settle into a good sleep. Make sure you don't wait until she is tired and fussy for bed time. Our oldest was a schedule freak. If we were 30 minutes off of her schedule, she would awaken 1 or 2 times during the night. Children do not hadle being overtired the same as adults. It really stimulates their immature nervous systems. By the way, all three of mine were breast fed and I never added cereal or anything to get them to sleep. I kept a journal for a while to track changes and what may have led to the changes. I discovered my first child would sleep through the night if she had 8 feedings. If she had 7, she would wake up for number 8. Learning this, I woke her for feedings during the day, so we could sleep at night. (for 4 months, she ate every 2.5 hours, but it was worth it to have a full night's rest) I tried to discover my children's natural schedules and then tweak them to fit our family.
This will pass, just keep using your maternal instinct until you find out what works for your child or what is wrong. Good luck!

Does your daughter go to daycare or is she with you all day? She might be sleeping to much in the daytime. If she is at daycare, check with the teacher to how much she sleeps, if she is with you how much sleep is she getting in the daytime. I had to start a routine with my child. I would get them up at a certain time every day, and have a routine about the day. When it was bedtime I had a routine for that.

Best thing I can tell you is to get the book - The No-Cry Sleep Solution. I don't remember the author but it worked great. It's not a quick solution but it is very effective. Mdaughter who was not a good sleeper when she was an infant. She was breast fed for about four months but she has always been a child that wanted to be close to either me or her father. She still does. Crying it out was not an option for her because she could go two hours straight and still not go to sleep. She's 7 now and does great. I truly believed it saved my sanity.

I was wondering...when she wakes up, what does she do? Does she want to nurse and then go right back to sleep? Or does she act like she's not tired and wants to play? Could it be her teeth bothering her? There are 2 medical reasons I can think of that would wake her up...one being reflux if she's eating right before bed. The other is sleep apnea, which can affect infants if their adenoids/tonsils are blocking their breathing. You might want to talk with the pediatrician if you feel like you have tried everything and nothing is working.

My son wasn't the best sleeper either, but he wanted to nurse back to sleep anytime he woke up. Once he hit a year and I could give him cow's milk it improved because he didn't want that. He finally slept all night...when his teeth weren't hurting him that is. I loved the book, "Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child" by Weisbluth. It really helpoped me figure out where my schedule needed to change a little and is good even for toddlers and young kids who have sleep issues. Good luck.

My son had the same problem. When he was about 20 months old we finally were referred to an ear, nose, & throat specialist who said said his adenoid may be enlarged, making it difficult to breath while he was sleeping. They did an x-ray, found the enlarged adenoid and gave us a steroid nasal spray to try to shrink it. There was a noticeable difference the first night and within a week he was sleeping through the night. It turns out that the adenoid was causing sleep apnea and he would wake up screaming because he couldn't breath. It may be worth seeing if you can get a referral just rule out sleep apnea.

Sorry to tell you this but sometime that happens no matter what you do. I have had 4 kids and nursed them all for a period of time and all of my kids woke up manny times during the night to eat... easecially when they got older. My oldest son was really bad, he was a big baby and ate all the time my doc told me that he wasnt getting full enough when he nursed that was why he wasnt sleeping good, he had a bad habit of getting snuggley and falling asleep before he finished eating. And than my oldest daughter my 3rd child had growing pains really bad and would wake up screaming for no reason (she didnt want to eat again) and my mother in law suggested that I give her a dose of tylonal before bed for a few days so she could sleep through the pain and when it was all said and done she slep like an angle so it is just a new thing with her waking up crying ALL THE TIME it might be growing pains. Good Luck!

I know what that is like. We tried many different things with our daughter too. The one thing I tried with our daughter is letting her know I was there for her but I immediately left the room. Are you strictly breast feeding her? Can she sit up? She may be ready for table/solid food. See what her doctor says. Try letting her sleep with something that has your scent. She may just need your scent for her to feel close to you. For example, if she has a favorite blanket. Try sleeping or just laying on it so that it gets some your scent. When ever our daughter would wake up in the middle of the night, I would make sure she was ok and if she was I would just leave her. It is tough but it did take longer than 3 days. This may not help but good luck! Let me know it goes!

I would read Dr.Furber's book about training your child to sleep. It will also help you figure out if something might be wrong. I just did his technique on my 10 month old. He is my seventh child. I have had to do this with 3 of my babies. I would also get The Contented Little Baby Book by Gina Ford which has schedules. Your 11 month old baby should nap from 9 to 10, 12:30pm to 2:30pm then sleep through the night. Furber's system works like this put the baby in the crib in a DARK room (velcro black out fabric over your windows if you need to) leave the room and shut the door. When the baby cries, let her cry for 5 min, go back in pat her tell her you love her but it's time to go to bed. Then let her cry 5 for 7 min, go back in. Then 10, 15, 20 minutes. Her crying time should not exceed one hour. This way she'll get the picture that mom loves me but she's not picking me up. If she doesn't fall asleep after an hour pick her up and try again for her next nap. You really need to get the book. The biggest thing is to commit to enduring her crying you will feel bad for her but it probably take 2 nights of crying possibly a week. She will be so much happier once she sleeps through the night. And she deserves a mother who can function. You can't live long without sleep you will turn into a grouch. You really have no choice since she doesn't sleep even if she's in your bed. I also suggest a noise machine.

The no cry sleep solution by Elizabeth Pantley. my son woke up every hour, or more for the first ten months of his life, after spending the first three sleeping on our chests, and within ONE MONTH he was waking up only to nurse, and then only once a night. sleeping nine hours at night, plus a two hour nap. she has tons of little ideas that add up to big sleep, and you can still allow your baby to nurse as often as you want without messing up her 'plan'. the BEST book ever, and very gentle and kind to you and your baby.

please, IGNORE most of the other advice you will get here, to let your baby cry it out, or to wean her, which are both really common reccommendations here, i've noticed. you can help her learn to sleep better, without switching her to formula or damaging your bond (not to mention her emotional health!) by letting her cry alone in the dark.

you are probably trying this, but just in case i wanted to suggest white noise. we use a cd with streams and waterfalls and also in my 9 month old's room we have a cool mist humidifier going which is loud white noise and is helping her breathe better. you can find one for $20-$25 at walmart. hope that helps.

Is she still spitting up more than once a week? My daughter was very similar at that age (only sleeping a few hours at a time if that, tossing and turning but never resting) and it turned out to be acid reflux. I also breastfed, so after we got her on meds for the reflux she still didn't sleep through the night, but it was more like every five hours instead of every two.

I agree with Amy, the No Cry Sleep Solution is the best book about helping your baby sleep through the night. I don't believe in "crying it out", I think it's cruel. It's just going to make your baby afraid to sleep in her bed. Go get that book and I know it will be a huge help to you. I know it's hard but the book gives such great ideas, and it helps within a month, sometimes sooner. It will get better, I promise! Let us know what happens.

C.

do you have a bedtime routine? that may helpe her know that is bed time and she is expected to sleep for at a few hours. maybe she is too hot or too cold or uncomfortable. my daughter was like that the first 2 months, she was awake more than she slept. it was rough. at 3 months though she sleep through the night just fine. not sure what else it could be at 10 months. I would just make sure she is comfortable in her pj's and in her bed and that she has been fed. maybe spend some quaility time with her before you put her to bed. Good luck.