Q&A: early nighttime wakings

In the past few days I've gotten four separate emails from four separate moms who are at the ends of their respective ropes with their babies' sleep. The babies range in age from 4 1/2 to 7 months, and they're all sleeping decently (one or occasionally two wakeups) from around 11 to 6 or 7 am.

The problem is that first stretch, from 8ish to 11. All of them report that the babies are waking up every 30 to 45 minutes during that time and crying hysterically.

The moms are at their wits' ends about this. Firstly, because they feel like it's somehow their faults (or at least that they could be doing something they're not doing), and secondly because they're spending 3 hours every night repeatedly getting their babies back to sleep.

I just want to thank all of you who email me for being so honest and funny and poignant win your emails. This was a particularly bittersweet run for me to read, because they were all so funny and desperate at the same time. One mom said all she wanted to do was be able to have sex with her partner in the living room some night without having to go get the baby in the middle of it. Another mom signed off "Yours Truly,StaysUpLateToAvoidBeingWokenUp20Times". (I sooooo remember that phase with my older one.)

It makes me really, really sad that our first reflex is to blame ourselves when our kids don't sleep the way they're "supposed to." Most of the moms reported trying to let their kids cry it out, with horrendous results (two hours of crying! stick a fork in the whole household), rocking, nursing, bottles, no bottles or nursing, pacifiers, swaddling, white noise, etc. etc. The only things I don't think anyone mentioned trying were opiates and reading the babies constitutional law textbooks.

I think sometimes babies just can't sleep. Remember back when this was the witching hour when the babies were 6 weeks old? I wonder if it isn't just some developmental reprise of that.

[Hey--in the time it's taken me to type this I just got another email with this exact same theme! The older newborns of the world are in sleep rebellion!]

I also wonder if it isn't what happens sometimes when the babies are switching from three naps to two, or are going through that combo of movement stuff and developmental stuff that happens at those ages. I wonder if they're just so overstimulated from being inside their own bodies that they're tired and can get to sleep initially, but then can't stay asleep unless there's someone else right there with them the whole time (and sometimes not even then).

I'm not sure we can know the answer. (I know Weissbluth has his theories, but he also tells people just to let their kids cry it out as if that works for every kid and you're an incompetent dumbass if you don't, so I can't really get behind him.) What I do know is that it doesn't last forever. And that if you've tried the things that seem reasonable to you, given your normal lifestyle and your child's personality (like moving bedtime earlier or later, messing with nap times if you can, providing white noise, a full tummy, and a soothing routine), then you should just switch to trying to figure out how to let it bother you less until your baby grows out of it (which will happen--the commenters with older babies and I promise you).

It can be as simple as knowing it happens and it'll pass and it's not your fault. It could mean getting one of those reading light headbands and sitting in the room doing crossword puzzles or reading Lucky magazine or constitutional law textbooks while the baby sleeps. Or it could be a more formal plan to get past it, like switching off 8-11 duty with your partner on alternate nights, or trying to hire a babysitter if you can afford it for one or two nights to get yourself away from the situation mentally. (If you have relatives nearby, this would be the perfect time to ask for help! A few nights of not having to deal with the 8-11 hours could change your whole worldview.)

Anyone have any tales to tell of your own kids doing the wake-up repeatedly thing during that first stretch? Do you think anything you tried worked, or was it just the child growing out of that phase? (I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that people with kids who release tension by crying don't even realize that this sometimes happens, because it seems like the kids who do this waking thing are also tension-increasers. I know my first--a tension-increaser--did it, but my second--who had to cry a little to get to sleep--never did.)

Comments

[Treena]

My oldest never did this as a baby, but at age 3 has just started. I totally get the staying up late so that you don't have to be woken up. It just kills me to finally go to bed and be woken 20 minutes later.

I'll agree with Moxie's theory that it might be related to giving up a nap (or daytime sleep). My son gave up his nap in the past month or so, and the night wakings started pretty soon after that. I think in that early phase of sleep he's not quite sure whether it's a nap or he's asleep for the night, so he wakes up disoriented and unable to settle back down. He's completely inconsolable and not even lucid, so I'm not even sure he's totally awake, but he can cry for up to 30 minutes before settling back down and there's nothing we can do to stop it. He's typically been a kid who releases tension by crying.

On rare days he does nap, this nighttime waking doesn't happen, but he's absolutely miserable when he wakes up from his nap since he's so confused. So I think it just takes their bodies awhile to figure out when they're supposed to be awake and supposed to be asleep, and I'm anxiously awaiting the end of this phase.

[paola]

My now 10 month old did the wake up after 40 minutes thing for months, and was particularly bad during developmental spurts. I nursed her back to sleep every time as that was the way she got back to sleep and also because her ped said she needed more feeding being in the 3rd percentile for weight. At 7 months I had had enough and I found the strength to let her cry a little. It took around a month to get rid of these wakings. Every time she'd wake I'd go in and reassure her but not feed her,or pick her up, but the next night the same thing would happen and she would wake up crying hysterically after 40 minutes. Nothing changed until I started sending my husband in. Now she is a great sleeper and sleeps from 7.00 to about 5.30-6.00 without my ever having to go into her. She has learnt to get herself back to sleep which I believe is an invaluable gift to her(and me)

[paola]

p.s Never found it to be nap related in my case

[Lisa]

I totally remember this stage....and for us, we found that sharing the pain was what got us through. Since my son was also waking up at least once or twice during the night, we agreed that all wake ups before midnight would be my husband's job, and I would take over after that. Once we did that, he actually started waking up much less, presumably because the milk machine wasn't coming in and my son figured that just getting held by daddy, though nice, wasn't worth waking up for.

[Christina]

Both of my children were tension-increasers so I had to go to them quickly (or they'd end up throwing up and that's just what I always dreamed of while trying to relax/watch a tv show/have sex: a puke-filled bed & puke-covered hysterical infant!!). This stage lasted off and on for my first child at the time period you mention; she grew out of it around 7 or 8mo - it just started happening less & less. I swaddled my 2nd child through this phase (even though he was a huge papoose of a baby) and that really, really helped him stay asleep. I actually swaddled him until he was right around 8mo.

[Slim]

I am trying to figure out how to write a response that says "Cheer up! Nothing helps!" I believe that is known as a mixed message, yes?

Anyway, a person in the basement of our house cannot hear a crying baby in a bedroom upstairs. And knowing I was f*cked as far as sleep went, I used to go down to the basement, where the exercise equipment is, and NordicTrack until my husband came down to tell me the baby was awake. Then I would run and take a shower while my husband tried to persuade the baby that he was a nice person too. Once I'd showered, I would take the unconvinced baby to nurse and doze while I watched TV, then dump him in his crib after a few hours, when I could get some uninterrupted sleep.

Even though I was exhausted, I liked getting to feel a tiny bit smug for having gotten a tiny bit of exercise, and I would have gotten more if it hadn't been for that baby. It was all his fault!

And now he sleeps fine, except when he doesn't. Just like the rest of us, really.

[Diane]

So, yeah. About this stopping at some point? My daughter is 14 months old, and she STILL does this waking up between 8 and 11 business. She started it around the same age the PP have mentioned, but at the age when most were growing out of it (7-8 months), she took it in the complete opposite direction. Suddenly, one of us had to be holding her for almost that whole stretch of time. Finally, around 12 months, she went back to laying by herself, but waking several times in that 3 hour period. We actually WELCOMED this. Only recently she has cut back to waking maybe only once or twice in that time. (Of course she still wakes 1-2 times between 11 and 6AM too.)

We're at the point where we're starting to think about trying for #2, but oh my goodness is that a hard thing to do when our first has been such a terrible sleeper.

[Laura]

Ours did this. It was so frustrating to have my only supposedly baby-free time interrupted every 30-40 minutes!

I don't know if she would have grown out of it on her own because at 10 months my spidey sense was telling me it was much more habit than need. By that age I felt that she had enough object permanence to know we weren't abandoning her, so we started the great Labor Day Weekend Sleep Experiment.

What reassured me was that all her crying was just that pissed off yelling - "I know you're out there and why the heck would you want to do anything else than hold me to sleep for the next 3 hours?!"

After four evenings of up to 40 minutes of yelling, she finally would squawk when I put her down but usually figure it wasn't worth anymore effort and put herself to sleep.

I always thought when Moxie said "Tension releaser" that it wouldn't take so danged long for the tension to release. But I do think my daughter is a tension releaser because after those initial 40 minute stretches she would just throw herself down onto her mattress and sleep with as much gusto as she'd previously been crying.

Anyway, now we're battling the 4am-ready-for-the-day wakeup. Ugh.

[Shandra]

We traded off which helped. But this was also my key Ergo stage - I would pop him in, don a reflective jacket, and walk until about 9:30 or 10 at night, listening to my iPod. It was great for my fitness.

[CJ]

One thing for nursing moms to consider is caffeine use. Tom Hale says caffeine has a 14-hour half-life in babies 3-5 months old, which means that your baby could be taking a long time to metabolize the secondhand coffee he's getting.

I've been known to get into a bad cycle myself, drinking extra coffee during the days because I am so tired from a nursing child who won't sleep. Maybe he won't sleep because if I have a cup of coffee at 8am, 11am, and 2pm, all that secondhand caffeine is still floating around in his system? Sometimes it helps to cut the caffeine. (And sometimes it doesn't. This is not in any way intended as a mother-blame comment!)

[Nancy]

I just don't get the Weissbluth hate. I don't think that's what he says at all. Going through this time right now with our second, it's nice to have some answers and suggestions of a plan - and he does offer different approaches for different situations.

Boiling down what he says to "CIO or you're a dumbass" is the same as boiling down your advice to "suck it up". Unfair overgeneralization.

[sue]

hahahahahahahahahahahaha

If I was on my first, I would've written you, too. My second is almost 8mos, and since we cosleep, I can't get up from the bed after he goes down, but I also have a 3yo, which makes things tricky. So baby nurses to sleep, but then wants to latch on for a minute every 20 minutes or so (or instantly when he feels me gts out of bed) I haven't gotten ANYTHING done for over a month. No cleaning, no knitting, no cooking, no sewing, no making christmas cards, no calling Grandma. Pretty well the only thing I can do that doesn' disturb him is ready trashy spy novels. So that's what I do.

I remember VIVIDLY when my dd was this age. Only she woke up every 1/2 hour all night long. It was about 3 am and I was at my dad's house, bouncing her back t sleep in a sling for the 10th time that night, and getting so incredibly angry at Dr. Sears that I actually tried to google him to I could wake HIM up in the middle of the night and tell him how his advice was working for me (something about how if you meet your child's emotional needs, the baby will sleep just fine. HA!) We turned to Weissbluth, which worked like a charm for her (ok, she STILL has trouble falling asleep at 3, so I think she just has troble falling asleep. But it helped with the continuation of sleep).

I don't think Weissbluth would help with the little guy, though. If we don't get him while he's crying, he'll stop crying and start crawling around on the bed. Then he's up for about 3 hours, happy as a clam. Then he sleeps till 10 the next day. And then the schedule is off. I know there are tension-increasers and tension-releasers, but he seems to be a tension-discarder. It's like, after a few minutes, he's says to himself "why am I bothering with this when I could try to topple the bedside lamp? Let's PARTY"

So anyway, sympathy and commiseration to all. I've been there, and am there, and remember it getting better at about 10 months (since right after this is the 9month sleep regression). And, from the post, you can tell my brain is a bit addled from it all. One thing we've been doing so far as sex is concerned is trying to wait out the baby. At around midnight, he goes to sleep for a couple hours. So we wait. And if we're both awake, we go for it. Doesn't work out that often, but at least I'm not *officially* celibate :-)

[Susannah]

God, I love this site! It makes me laugh so hard- way better than crying!

B sleeps like a dream UNTIL 11, then does this for the next 4 hours. So if I can get to sleep at 7:30 when he does, I do OK. But then, no baby-free time for anything else. I guess I could go for spy novels starting at midnight, but mostly I just dose, wake-up, dose, wake-up, rinse, repeat. It's chinese water torture (is that is even PC to say?).

My only advice for evening wakers is to look at Ferber's concept of the early-evening "forbidden zone" for sleep. I think it is maybe more for kids who won't fall asleep at all, but the new Ferber explains the science of sleep pretty well and offers some ideas for helping that might apply.

Specifically here you might want to look at the timing of sleep cycles and see if you can move the forbidden zone a bit earlier by tinkering with wake-up and nap times. After the forbidden zone, there are supposed to be a few hours of deep sleep with no awakenings. If you can line that up with bedtime, you're golden. Or so he says, anyway.

Maybe sometime we should do a topic on reading lists for brain-dead-but intellectually-starved zombie moms. Personally Eat Pray Love has been working for me. Delicious fantasies of taking off to Italy earn Italian and eat great food with no responsibilities whatsoever....

[Nutmeg]

So, I'll preface this by saying that our son is a terrible sleeper. 30 minute naps, waking up all night long until the last two weeks or so, at 10.5 months. And we DEFINITELY had the wake up every 30-45 minutes thing in the hours between when he went to bed and we went to bed. We dealt with it while trying to tile the bathroom, making dinner, watching LOST! I mean, really, kid, cut us a break!

After dealing with the waking up and screaming for hours every night no matter what we did and him wanting to play at 3 am, I night weaned him and we also resorted to a "no one picks up the baby in the middle of the night" policy. We go and pat the baby and sing to the baby and this has worked really well (unless we're in the middle of getting three teeth, as now or he's sick then all bets are off) at cutting down the amount of time it takes to get him BACK to sleep.

I mention this because I think I just figured he'd get there when he got there, and he DID get there, but for us it was key that it didn't take SO LONG to get him back to sleep. He STILL wakes up once between when we put him down and 12 am or so, but usually goes right back to sleep and sometimes puts himself back to sleep before we can get in there. And he still wakes up once in the middle of the night, usually and by 5 am I figure he's hungry and we nurse and then it takes a long time to get him back down.

BUT it got better and frankly, very little of it had to do with me, and almost all of it had to do with him just getting over all the milestones and regressions he was having. For me it was just surviving until we got there.

Of course, he woke up >5 times last night (see three teeth, above). So take my words with a grain of salt!

[Maggie]

My 7 month old daughter does the same thing and has for a couple of months. She goes down between 7 and 8 p.m. and wakes up every 30 minutes to an hour until 11 but that is when I join her as an unintentional co-sleeper and I assumed that was what stopped the constant waking. Although I know it is misery I really appreciate these moms sharing as it has given me hope that maybe we can start transitiong to a crib without affecting the post 11 p.m. sleep so there is a silver lining for us.

[Jessica]

My daughter did this a little later in life it seems (9 months-16 months), but seemed to work for us was running to her room at the first squeak, popping in her binky, and rubbing her back until she fell back asleep. She'd still wake up every half an hour or so, though, until we moved her into our bed when we went to sleep (and then she'd only wake up for an early morning snack). As long as one of us got there quickly, it was relatively painless. But I wonder now if she would have slept just as well without us as the wakings seem to stop at the same time for all of you as they did for us . . . eh. At least this way she kissed me in the morning when we woke up.

She eventually stopped waking up herself--I can't say we did anything different.

I never thought it was nap related and I don't drink any caffeine. We actually live in a dorm a a boarding school, so we just blamed the girls who lived above us. After hearing that other babies do this too, I feel a little bad about cursing the girls out in my head as often as I did . . . but not toooo bad.

(On the parental interruption--maybe wait until just after a waking to start the festivities. Then you'd have a half an hour until the next waking?)

[Jessica]

I feel I must add that our daughter does still have bad nights. I don't want my comment to read like we have all wonderful nights--talk about a good way to jinx myself! Heavens. Wish me luck tonight!

Sorry!

[Laura]

My kids did this when they were extremely overtired. I think it's really hard to discern overtiredness with an infant, which is how it can happen so easily. When mine were in nap transitions they were especially prone to getting overtired.

Anyway, what always worked for me was putting them to bed very early. Crazy early, like 6:00 or 6:30. And it seems weird to do, because they don't even seem tired then, but I swear it worked. After a week of so of crazy early bedtimes, they were much better rested and we could push bedtime back to a more reasonable hour. It seemed like the only way to get them extra sleep was to front-load it. Hoping they would sleep in NEVER worked for me. Oh, and I still use this general philosophy now, even with my older kids, and it works for them too.

Good luck!

[Cathy]

While I don't remember this specifically (La is almost 5 now), it sounds vaguely familiar. I know that personally, it drives me crazy if bedtime takes more than an hour - it really cuts into my "me" time where I get to decompress and unwind.

I do remember that La would have more trouble getting to sleep when she was working on a "project" (rolling, walking, standing, etc., or going through some develomental phase)

And the thing that sticks with me is the idea that just when you think you can't possibly stand it anymore, it'll pass.

[janel]

This is giving me a flashback. For us, it started at 5 months, with the baby waking every 30-40 minutes, sometimes even every 20. If the downstairs neighbor farted, he woke up. We would go to him and stand over his crib, stroking him, singing to him, until he fell back to sleep. Sometimes this would take an hour, and then 20 minutes later would start all over again!

We stuck with this plan for over a month before asking our pediatrician for suggestions. She said we could either wait it out a few more months, or try some sleep training. Her method was to let him cry for 5 minutes, comfort him for 2 (without picking him up), then let him cry for 10, comfort, and then let him cry up to 15. She personally doesn't believe in letting the baby CIO for more than 15 minute intervals. She also said that standing at the door and talking or singing while the baby was crying was fine.

She recommended doing this on the first waking of the night, but then after that go to the baby immediately to soothe. In our case, we saw a dramatic improvement right away. Of course some of this is luck because it turned out our baby never cried more than 10.

But now we're embarking on an 8 month sleep regression, so I guess part of the lesson is to never take good sleep for granted!

[Kelly]

This cycles for us every 2-3 months, it seems. I also HAAATE being woken up shortly after I've gone to sleep, so I won't put my daughter (13 months) to bed until she's exhausted. Right now that's around 8, but there have been numerous stretches where it's 11 or midnight. I dread those. I've tried things to change it during some stretches, and did nothing during others, and she always went back to an earlier bedtime either way. So I'm becoming much more of a wait-it-out kind of parent. With a pinch of ship-them-off-to-the-fam one or 2 evenings per week thrown into there. I do get caught up on alot of TV and audio books during those times!

[Moxie]

Nancy, if you got half a dozen emails a week from people who were terrified that they were hurting their babies by not letting them cry the way they understand Weissbluth is telling them to (including the emails this post is based on), you'd hate him, too.

A lot of people have been really, really hurt by thinking if they don't do what Weissbluth says they're bad parents. That makes me really angry.

That's also why I can't recommend Sears, although I tend toward his parenting style personally. He just writes as if anyone who doesn't do what he says is ruining their child forever.

But that's another post entirely.

[rachel]

Moxie, you've done it again. You've gone ahead and posted about the very thing that's making me want to jump out the window this week. Either you're a mind reader, or all my issues with my kids, problems that seem so very unique and make me feel so very sorry for myself, are completely unoriginal and are actually experienced by 9 of 10 parents, whether or not they want to admit it. Nothing else to add, just that waking every half hour after bedtime is the new normal at our house too (I have a 4-month-old).

I did wonder whether our problem was with transitioning the baby from our Amby Baby hammock, which is on fire to her since it's near impossible to roll over in, to the crib, which is also on fire to her, I guess because it's so flat and vast. Has anyone else used an Amby Baby for a newborn? Do you have any advice about the transition? It didn't go well with my first child either, and I'm about to stop recommending the Amby to other parents, since moving out of it has been so sucky for us.

Hey, I guess I had a lot else to spew after all.

[Amie]

Rachel,
Oh no, don't tell me that! I'm one of the ones who wrote in to Moxie about the issue, and our 5 month old is currently in the Amby bed. We haven't tried transitioning yet, but I was afraid we might have some problems...I was also wondering if part of the issue was the Amby bed and was thinking of trying the crib...as you can tell, I'm clutching at straws...

[electriclady]

My 9-month-old was doing this for about a month starting at 7 months old (as part of her windup into the 8-9 month sleep regression, now officially at 2 months long and counting, ugh). For us it coincided with when she learned how to crawl and pull up (did them within a week of each other), so she'd often, in her sleep, roll herself up into sitting position and wake herself up, then crawl over to the side of the crib and pull up--and then at that point there was no falling back asleep. I'd come in to find her hanging on to the side of the crib, crying pathetically. Sometimes (before she figured out how to sit back down) she'd fall over and bang her head, which added to the fun.

I knew she wasn't hungry, since she had a big bottle at bedtime, so I just picked her up and rocked her back to sleep. And eventually she just stopped. She'll occasionally do one standing-up-yelling-MAMAMAMA waking between 8 and 11, but generally she sleeps straight through, maybe with 30 seconds of sleep crying around 9:30.

However, she now wakes up 3-6 times between midnight and 6 am, so I don't think that's a fair trade. 8-9 month sleep regression is making me want to put my eyes out.

[Melissa]

Ha! Cosleeping nurse on demand mama here to say that at almost 15 months old, we've been doing this for almost 15 months in a row now. I don't think my family has been able to watch a movie from beginning to end yet without pausing while I head upstairs to nurse back to sleep the Bean who is a tension spiraler. We keep the monitor close so at the slightest peep (which means she's already been sitting up awake and looking around for at least 3 minutes).

I know it'll end someday, and that she might even want to be in her own bed sometime in the next couple of years, but holy god am I tired sometimes. What kills me most is that while she sleeps in until 8:30 or 9 a.m. with her daddy, guess who gets up at 5:45 a.m. to work 10 hour days?

Grrrrr . . .

[A]

My 11 month old has been doing this for the last couple of months. Mostly it is between 11 and 1, but as soon as he wakes up, he pulls up in the crib and refuses to lie down again. Even if I make him lie down and pat, he just pulls himself back up. The only thing that works (most of the time) is to pick him up, pat him for around 30 seconds and put him back down, on his belly and pat for another 30 seconds.

[MJ]

My son, now 6 months, did the waking up every 45 mins or so until I would finally just go to bed as well (we co-sleptt). I think he would still be doing it if I hadn't modified anything.

I really wanted to have bedtimes be easier so I got hardcore on my bed time routine and moved his bedtime earlier. I moved it to 7pm and then when it seemed like he just wasn't making it that late, I moved it to 6pm. He's been taking 2 mini-naps and 1 decent nap during the day since before bedtime was moved and the early bedtime hasn't really impacted that. I heart early bedtime!

I got the impression from my son that he was ready to be a bit more independent about his sleeping because he seemed to cry out of frustration at being awake not because he was scared, bored, etc. I also put him down in his crib to sleep as part of the bedtime routine. When he wakes up to nurse, etc (usually between midnight and 2am) he comes into bed with us.

I believe the falling alseep in the crib (where nothing, namely me, that had been there was now missing if he half-woke up) and the bedtime routine/early bedtime have made a huge difference.

[rudyinparis]

Coming soon, to a theater near you! The quakes! The shakes! The awe-inspiring terror! It's... "Brain-dead-but intellectually-starved zombie moms!"

(I picture zombies with green pallor, staggering, moaning, dressed in torn rags with spitup on them and clutching copies of "Being and Nothingness"...)

[Luann]

We also had this from month 5 - 7. Would go down fine on his own at 7 pm, then wake up screaming an hour later. Only cuddling and nursing would get him back down. Sometimes it seemed like he was asleep - then we'd try and wake him by calling his name and holding him upright. Sometimes it would work, sometimes not. Eventually he would stop, and he'd go back to sleep from 11 - 5 straight. We chalked it up to night terrors and "he's a baby and it will change sometime we hope" and it did. Now he's 9.5 months and we're trying to get back those 5 - 6 hour stretches that used to come after the screaming... is that worse than waking up every two hours to drain Momma dry? I'm not sure!

[pnuts mama]

oh i wish i had a chance to really read the comments, but we are running out the door-

by about 4 months i was losing my mind with sleep deprivation, and thankfully by 27 months i seem to have blocked a lot of that hell from my memory/psyche. which explains why i think having another one is such a great idea right now!

i do remember that right after dinner, i would cluster-feed the pnut (nurse one side 15 minutes, 15 minutes for burp/break/diaper, then 15 minutes the other side, repeat one hour later, about 4 times, ending with about 4 oz of pumped milk in a bottle from dad since i was losing my mind at that point) just to tank-her-up for the night. it sort of worked, i guess, in that the first real leg of sleep would be a little longer (3 hours?) but a chunk of that was on my chest on the couch to ensure she was really zonked out.

then around 2am she'd wake up, nurse, pass out, be up again in an hour, and i would cry and punch my mattress in the frustration and horror of getting zero hours of REM. forget the whole "give her a bottle of ebm", b/c that was too much trouble when my boob was literally right there. these were easily my lowest moments as a new mom. i felt like a complete failure, and i hadn't yet found all of you to know this was normal.

i eventually decided to just sleep in bed propped up with a ton of pillows and my body pillow as a giant boppy, husband on one side, co sleeper on the other, holding her so whenever she'd wake up to nurse she could, and i could sort of stay asleep. eventually, (i personally think it had a lot to do w/ developmental growth and weight gain) she started sleeping longer stretches, and i could get her off of me and back into the co sleeper, and then, the crib.

in retrospect, i should have let her sleep in her swing at night, where she took her longest naps during the day, but for some reason i wanted her to sleep flat in the co sleeper next to us (wtf was wrong with me?). next baby sleeps wherever it wants to, seriously.

best of luck to you all. this part of being a mama sucks so bad, and really, really can wear you down. eventually, your child will sleep, and you are all doing a great job in the meantime, i promise!

[Meegan]

This is so familiar. I almost sent Moxie a similar email at least a dozen times. My now 14 month old screamed every 30 minutes between 7 and midnight for months. We finally Ferberized and it worked. But honestly I think she partially grew out of this stage. We didn't try Ferber until she was about 6 months old. We tried Weissbluth but my child could scream for 3 hours, no problem. I'm not that into letting my baby scream for 3 hours without at least some comforting. Plus, she was one who would throw-up from crying. Ouch.

There is light at the end of the tunnel. I now read her a story, give her a bottle, sing her a song and then tell her I'm going to put her in her crib. And she goes down without a peep.

Good Luck!

[JessA]

Moxie, have you been reading my emails? My husband and I were *just* commiserating about this over IM (since we're both too tired to talk to each other at home) when I found this post.

Rachel/Amie - we're also in the process of transitioning DS (20 weeks) from the Amby to the crib, and unfortunately it seems to have had zero effect. He's a very tall 4-month old (80th percentile) and we thought maybe he'd sleep better with more room to stretch out, but it turns out that's only true after 1 am, if at all. So we're currently in a phase where we put him down in one place, and if he wakes up after 5-10 minutes, we put him in the other to see if it makes a difference. Mostly the decision is based on whether he falls asleep with his arms curled up (Amby) or sprawled out (crib).

He's also started sleeping later in the mornings - the past week or so he's gone from waking up at 5 wanting to eat/play to waking up at 5, happily babbling at the ceiling for a few minutes and then falling back to sleep until 7ish. (And if someone could reassure me that letting him entertain himself while I get an extra hour of sleep doesn't make me a horrible neglectful mother, I'd really appreciate it! It was tough training myself not to rush in there at every peep, but he does seem to sleep better in the morning if I leave him alone until he cries.)

So uh...yeah. I've got nothing. Just hanging in there until this phase resolves itself.

I will say this - feeding him a little bit of rice cereal in the late afternoon when we get home from daycare has done NOTHING for or against his sleep. I was all geared up about waiting for 6-months and letting him self-feed, and then my ped said the magic words "It might help him sleep better" so I caved. Oh well. He does seem to think eating is fun, so it hasn't been a total loss.

[caramama]

Moxie is reading my emails to husbands and friends with same-age babies, too!

Has anyone considered that it's a time of year and/or change of daylight savings time issue? Of course, in addition to the teething, growth spurts and development spurts.

The sun is going down earlier, telling the babies bodies that they should be going to sleep earlier, yet our external clocks have not been changed to show an hour earlier. So we continue to put the Pumpkin to bed when the clock says 7 (or there abouts), but the sun has already gone down and we are about to change the clocks so that 7 would be 6. I think it's all very confusing and messing up their internal circadian rythyms.

What I can't figure out is if that means I should put her to bed earlier or later.

Transitioning to crib: Somewhere around 6 months (when things were REALLY bad for us), we decided to transition her to the crib. We figured that since she wasn't sleeping anyway, she could not sleep in her crib. We do the shifts, which works better when she's not in our room.

[Michelle]

The older newborns of the world ARE in sleep crisis! My 17-week-old daughter is driving me nuts with the constant waking! I put her down between 6p-7p, and she will wake up at least every hour to maybe 2 hours on a good night. She does this ALL night - and won't cosleep well either.

My son is 19 months old, so it hasn't been that long since he was this age - but I don't remember it being this bad. I think my tolerance for sleep deprivation has also decreased now that I have two under two and work from home part-time. I can barely formulate a thought.

I have suspected that maybe my caffeine intake might be a problem - but you tell me how to cut out caffeine when I haven't had a good stretch of 4-5 hours of sleep in months? I mean seriously. Plus I only drink two big cups of regular coffee in the morning...could that really be the culprit?

I am trying to repeat the "it's a phase" mantra - but next week we head to my parents out of state and I am terrified of sleepless nights on top of annoying but well-meaning family advice.

At least I have this site to share my pain. I am so taking the laptop with me.

[jill]

I have to agree with Moxie that I did find Weissbluth to be blaming, even though I also found parts of the book to be helpful. I'm a non-CIOer and I felt he was saying that I was just a tool for not doing CIO. I didn't like that characterization of me or of my baby.

My daughter did the early waking thing for a month or so, too, but has recently stopped on her own (11 mo.). One of us would go in and hold her / lay with her until she'd fall asleep, usually 5 minutes or so.

That being said, we did nothing to help her stop the trend, or the other sleep "issues" we all have. She 's still in our bed, still nurses several times each night, etc. But, it did pass and now when she goes to sleep we have a few hours to spend with our oldest and then (gasp!) by ourselves.

[julie]

I think the thing to remember (that took me so long to figure out) about the books (Weissbluth, Ferber, Hoag, whoever) is that you can take pieces from a program that work for you without having to do the *whole* program. For example, from Weissbluth, we took the early bedtime and set wake/nap times but ignored the CIO part of it. From Hoag we took the schedule info but completely abandoned the pick-up/put-down nonsense. Doing pieces of a sleep program is not the equivalent of doing pieces of Weight Watchers or AA. It's not an all-or-nothing concept. So if you're like me and have all the books and have been beating yourself up because you can't stick with a "program", give yourself a break. Create your own hybrid program. Write your own book and make millions of dollars.

That being said....I would say if you are in that phase of constant waking up at the beginning of bedtime, you bump bedtime waaaaaay up (like Laura above said) to 6 or 6:30. Granted you are still going to have tons of interrupted time, but at least it's at an hour where it's not so annoying, and you get past it and still have some time with hubby to do some adult recreation without feeling like you're burning the midnight oil. When we did that with our son (around 7-8 months) it changed everything. He slept for 12+ hours at night and his naps went from 30-45 minute torture sessions to 1-2 hours. It makes no sense. But then, what does? It worked for us, but might not work for you. If it does, great. If not, move on to the next idea.

It's so frustrating. And exhausting. And brain twisting trying to figure all this sleep stuff out. Why do we torture ourselves with thinking there is an *answer* out there and if we just search hard enough or long enough we'll find it???? It's not freaking sudoku. If the early bedtime doesn't work, I say sign up for some kind of class a couple nights a week, or go to the gym and remove *yourself* from the situation until it resolves itself. If you can't take adult time at home, then take it somewhere else.

Good luck. It gets better. And then it gets worse. And then it puts on a funny-nose-and-glasses disguise and looks like an entirely different sleep problem, but really it's still the same one. Overall, it sucks ass.

[hedra]

Mine were the other way around - slept hard at the early end of the night, then woke frequently from 2-7 AM.

Our main solution the first time was a good rocker-recliner. As close as possible to where the child was sleeping.

That first experience was why we attached the crib to the bed with our second. And then he ended up a primo sleeper. Don't think it was a cause-effect thing, just the way he was. But he also tended more to wake toward the tail end of the night.

The twins, one was an all-night regular cycle waker (turned out to be reflux), and the other... oh, wait. She *did* do this. She mainly wanted to snuggle in, though. Cosleeping worked for that. And going to bed as early as possible for me, so I was getting as much sleep as possible. And sometimes the rocker-recliner if she woke up her sister or they were both sick, etc.

For some reason I associate the early-evening waking cycles with a) adrenaline (lack of sleep during the day/aka nap-change or nap-dropping; overstimulation late in the day - exciting daddy return home, etc.), and b) physical discomfort (teeth coming in early, dry nose/sinuses/mouth, too cold, too warm). But maybe that's my imagination, since I think with R, it wasn't necessarily those. Though definitely, getting them to even fall asleep is derailed by the adrenaline factor ('overtired').

Good luck. Rocker recliner works in any case, IMHO. That and tv with headphones...

[Emme Bea]

Delurking here to say, "OMG, do I feel your pain, ladies."

First of all Moxie, I love your blog and love your commenters and love the vibe of your cyber-space here.

Next, I also think Weissbluth is an ass. BUT I did learn from him that babies have that 45 minute sleep cycle and when I read that, it made so much sense. Babies simply wake up after 45 minutes. At least mine does. Some can go back to sleep easily, some don't. Mine spent the days of his months between 2 and 9 doing the 45 minute nap/wake up for 2 hours, wash rinse repeat until it was bedtime. Then at bedtime it varied. Usually he would wake up at EXACTLY 45 minutes and cry. If I went in IMMEDIATLY, and I mean AS SOON AS HE STARTED TO CRY (sorry Weissbluth) I could get him back down with a soft song and a gentle rock within 3 minutes. (THis only worked at night, NEVER at naps.) If I waited, his crying would wake him up more and then, well, it sucked. Then he was AWAKE and thought he could BE awake for another 2 hours. So CIO is not a solution for my kid's 45 minute cycle. (Though it is for some.)

Now he knows how to put himself back to sleep. No, I did no sleep training, or CIO or anything, he just kind of did it himself. And I have no idea why, unless it was that by going in immediately he learned NOT that Mommy was his bitch (I am, but that's another story) but that sleep is okay to keep doing. BUT, at almost 12 months, there is exceptions to the putting himself back to sleep. When he's teething, all bets are off. He now sleeps 12+ hours through the night, but when teething, he will still cry at that 45 minute mark. Even now. I think the pain wakes him up more than he normally would wake up if not teething.

So, no real advice except to say that what worked for ME was to go in ASAP before the crying escalated and wound him up. But your kids may very well be different. I say to do whatever it is that will work for YOU, if that's CIO, great, but if it's not, and your kids are like mine, it could make the situation a bit worse. Keep your mind open and listen to what your child is telling you. I was sure I would be a CIO mom until I had a child that reacted nucularly to it, but responded really well to a gentle peaceful environment. And the oposite may be true. (As was the case with Moxie's 2nd baby.)

Most of all, just know that this won't last forever and you WILL make it through this.

[Lorraine]

Seriously, that this came up today is amazing - I am sitting at work about to cry from sleep deprivation. I have been feeling like a failure for a while because my 5.5 month old will NOT stay asleep.... We try to get him in his crib by 7:30 each night, and he's up and down, then around 11 he's ready to start the all-night-feasting-party. The transistion from Amby Hammock in our room to his crib in his room has helped a little, because I can sleep from 8:30ish to that 11pm waking while daddy works on soothing/feeding, then when he cries (screams) at 11ish, I pull him into bed with us - like other posters, my child sleeps much better with the foodsource nearby!

I keep telling myself that if I didn't have to be at work in the morning, I'd be a lot more vigilant about sleep-training. As it is, we're still in by-any-means-necessary lockdown mode - I'll do anything to get more hours of sleep for our family, we all need it so desperately.

[caramama]

Oh, I forgot to add these things:

Caffiene - I did a serious experiment where I took caffiene out of my diet for over 1 month. No affect on her sleep. She went through good and bad stages of sleep. Adding caffiene back in, also went through good and bad stages of sleep. But I limit it to 1 cup of coffee a day. My sister noticed a big affect on her daughter if she even had 1 cup. So, I think it affects some babies but not others.

Brain-dead-but intellectually-starved zombie moms - In the movie, the moms are walking (in that slow, zombie walk) towards crying babies who are in pajamas but obviously not sleeping, maybe crawling around their cribs or arms up reaching for the moms. With voice overlays reading bits of Weisbluth and Sears giving conflicting advice! hehe.

[Kathy]

Holy crap, maybe this is what's going on with us! I've been frustrated that my baby wants to stay up until 1 or 2 am, although I feel like I can't complain because at 7 months old, adjusted, she'll then usually sleep for 8 or 9 hours.

I've tried to put her to bed earlier, but she just wakes up after a short nap FREAKING OUT and it takes that much longer to get her back to sleep.

Maybe it's not that she wants a 1 am bedtime, maybe it's just that she wants to go to bed earlier, but can't stay asleep. Holy smokes.

[mollyball]

Hi everybody, time for my inspirational story! I think I've trotted it out before in response to other sleep posts, but whatever. My kid woke up every 45 minutes until she was 10 months old. Then she started sleeping for 12 hours a night with one 11:00 wakeup to eat, and these days she sleeps from 7:00 to 7:00. Why? Nobody knows. I think she just needed to learn how to sleep. And I'd like to do my part for letting mothers everywhere off the hook by saying that I believe there was nothing I could have done. Except for wait. And drink. And order a lot of takeout. It will pass! But I don't think anyone can tell you when or why or how.

Guess what! I just ate 7 teeny, tiny coffee crisp bars. Was that wrong?

[julie]

Emme Bea.....you inspired me to order a t-shirt that reads "I am my 2-year old's bitch"

Because that's what I am.

[Lisa]

What are coffee crisp bars? Do they taste like coffee? Do you eat them with coffee? Both?

My son woke up at 5 AM today so I think I am in need of 7 teeny tiny coffee crisp bars.

[Kristen]

Hi everyone,

I am one of the sad, tired mommas that e-mailed in the past week. Although the comments do not necessarily make me feel like things are going to get better for our poor sleeper anytime soon, it is nice to know that we're not the only ones with a baby who is sleeping through the night. At our last visit, the pediatrician said that 45% of 4 month olds are sleeping through the night. Well, guess what. I think 45% of 4 month old parents are liars!!!

-K

[Meg]

We did have this for a couple of weeks, until I started playing the same song for her as she feel asleep at nap time ("Beautiful Dreamer"). After a couple of days, she associated the song with the relaxation of falling asleep, so one or two repetitions would calm her down 90% of the time. My mother taught me that most babies like having their foreheads touched (for some reason) and as it turned out, stroking gently side to side across her forehead and down her nose also relaxed her.

Maybe I just have a weird kid?

[Carla Hinkle]

I had this with both my girls starting at about 4 months and lasting for a few days/week at a time, then stopping for a while (few weeks/month), then picking back up again, ending sometime around 10-12 months.

It was pure torture because with both of them, that 7-11 pm block of sleep was the one time I could really, really count on. When that went too, I was about to throw myself out the window.

I'm guessing it was something developmental because it never lasted for more than about a week or 10 days. (The longest 10 days of my life, it felt like at the time.) And I never had any good solution except to nurse/rock/bottle back to sleep or, if I got desperate enough, co-sleeping. (Both my kids loooooved sleeping with my and my husband but I just never get that relaxed with it.) But then both of my kids go quickly hysterical if left to cry so I didn't really have a lot of options.

It really is a brutal stage. Sorry I don't have any advice, just BTDT.

[stacy]

My 10.5 month old has, for the most part, been a MISERABLE sleeper. And yes, among his many sleep issues has been the "waking up every 30 minutes in the first part of the night" thing. (Of course, he woke up every 30 minutes the rest of the night, too, but that's not the point...)

Anyway, we're finally in a good place with him, sleep-wise. I don't want to jinx it, but we've been doing really well for the past week or so.

The first crucial step was changing the bedtime routine. I now nurse the baby before the bath, PJs, book, etc. My husband does the bath and all that, then puts the baby down to bed. How, without boobs? He cuddles the baby to sleep. Daddy holds the little guy, or lays next to him with a reassuring arm, until he drifts off.

The first few times we did this, the baby cried upward of an hour. But his needs were met, and he had his Daddy there to love him. So I sucked it up and dealt. I'm glad I did. Now? The kid drifts off as soon as he's alone in a dark room with his Daddy. Not a single tear. AND, he usually sleeps about 3 hours before he fusses now. It's wonderful.

We're working on night weaning, too, and that's also taking a lot of work on Daddy's part. We've set time limits (like, "we won't nurse him for 4 hours") and if the baby wakes up before the time limits are up, Daddy has to soothe him back to sleep. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I think eventually (probably around 12 mos.), we will block out an 8 hour chunk and insist that Daddy tend to him during that chunk until he's sleeping through. It'll definitely take some more tears. But the kid is never left alone to cry, it makes my husband feel like a more involved (if more tired) parent, and for once I'm actually getting some decent sleep.

Moxie is a big promoter of letting Daddy share the load, and I TOTALLY agree. Had I not found Moxie, I probably never would have come up with our current scheme. (It started when I spent the night alone in a hotel, at Moxie's urging - she answered a sleep question for me - and I realized the kid was not traumatized the next day.)

[hedra]

Rewinding my memories a bit, again. It's been a decade, it's amazing what leaks into the far corners of the brain and gets hidden under the dust bunnies.

Oldest child's bedtime was 11 PM for a loooong time. Because he wouldn't go down before that without an up/down endless cycle. Then again, he was the wake from 2-7 kid, too. So there wasn't much sleep love with him (for years).

I think maybe he WAS one of these kids. But we just assumed he was a night owl like mommy and let him stay up until 11. It wasn't like he needed to go to school (DH was home with him). 'Regular' bedtime started when he started daycare at around a year. It took a while to work it back to a reasonable hour, then it slammed back HARD to 5:30 PM (when we got home at 5, which meant shove food in his mouth the instant we got in, and put him down immediately). Then it shifted gradually later again, but never as far as it had been in those early months.

Oh, and who here has traveled in asia? Anyone else notice the kids hanging out all over the place (markets, front yards, wherever) at 11 PM? Babies carried around looking totally happy to be out and about at 9, 10, 11 PM? It shocked me to see it, but then I wondered if our schedules were really so culturally driven... maybe we're just crazy to be trying to get them to sleep from X to Y hours, and the whole world should be our 2-year-olds' bitch(es?), and should just change schedules for them. Sigh. Seem to have misplaced my magic wand to make it so.