Micah is a terrible sleeper at night. I have been putting him down at 630p and he would sleep until 1030p, take a bottle and usually sleep until 630a. Worked for me. Then he decided he needed to wake up at 1030p-230a-630a, taking a bottle at each time.
I started searching for ideas. For crying out loud he was 10 months old this needs to stop. I tried cry it out, that never seemed to work as he would cry for over an hour and that is/was my limit. Then I found this website The Baby Sleep Site. I had never seen anything like it. I don't have time for books and this was straight and to the point. I realized a month ago he was not on a schedule and that was effecting his sleep. Duh. I had Lo on a solid schedule by 6 months.
While the schedule has helped with nap time, it hasn't really helped with night time. Part of it is my fault. I have several excuses I use to allow Micah not to sleep through the night.
1. He is starving. Thanks to all his spitting up issues, I told myself he "needed" to eat over night to "survive."
2. I was afraid his crying would wake Lo. It never has thus far, but I figured him crying over an hour would test my luck.
3. I.am.exhausted. He would wake up at 230a, if I let him cry for an hour I was up listening to it for an hour, getting mad and stirred up over his nighttime wakings. Then I would give in, go get his bottle, change and feed him (15-20m process) lay him back down and then toss and turn myself for another1-2 hours. By the time I fell back to sleep my husband's alarm was going off. This was miserable, so when he woke I cut out the "middle man" aka crying it out and just jumped to what worked: feeding him.
However, this past week I finally decided that all my "excuses" are bogus and I need to fix this NOW! I received the email from the site about how crying can lead to babies sleeping through the night. It was just what I needed to hear!
1. He is not starving--it is a crutch to fall back to sleep. {because there have been a few night this month he has slept 12/13 hours fine!}
2. If he wakes Lo I will deal with it, but that has yet to ever be the case in 11m.
3. I have been running on 4-5 hours of broken sleep per night since his birth what can it hurt to have a few more under my belt?
I was committed to this. Even if it meant he cried for 3 hours straight I was NOT going to feed him. He was going to learn to put himself back to sleep! End of story. We are now on day 3 and while he has woke up each night between the hours of 230a-4a he has successfully put himself back to sleep in under an hour! Hip Hip Hooray! And he is sleeping until 7a! I am still waiting for him to sleep all night with NO wakings. But thus far we have success. Matter of fact on night 3 he didn't even cry out at 1030p like he usually does. So here is hoping by Christmas he sleep through the night soundly. Scratch walking I will take sleeping through the night instead!
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