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

[Charisse]

Attn hedra: click the link on my name for the costume pic you were interested in :)

[Charisse]

Oh yes, us too! We did some pantley-fying of our little increase-tensioner, which seemed to help some, but I think mainly, growing out of it was the deal. It's so hard--but it will be over!

Good luck!

[Mary]

I totally feel y'all's pain. Both my kids did this and it's such a blur I can't remember at what age exactly. I do remember however that it dropped off when we put them on earlier bedtimes (seriously, like 6:30). Now that's correlation, not neccessarily causation, so take it with a grain of salt, but it did work eventually. God, sleep deprivation is the worst.

[Cathy]

Meg - Mine likes that forehead/down the nose thing too! Even at almost 5 when she's having trouble getting situated, I'll do that and her eyes will flutter closed a little and she will visibly relax a little. When La was a tiny baby and fussing up a storm at the grocery store someone, who I'm assuming was a professional Grandma, did that to/for her and got her soothed out.

[Kristin]

I was so excited about this post, I raced upstairs to tell my husband. We read it together saying "yep, a-hun, that's us." We usually let our 6 month old sleep early in the night (7:30 to 8:30 or so) and then let her play until she is ready for bed (10:30 or 11) rather than fight with her to keep her asleep.

My 3 yo was the same and we've tried all kinds of sleeping training and ideas, nothing really helped and only made me crazy b/c my child wasn't conforming to what the plan said.

Slim's 2 cents seems most helpful "Cheer up, nothing helps." I will remember it everynight and it will make me laugh and I will be cheered!!

[NotQuiteRural]

Yep, we’ve done this on and off during teething or growth spurts for the past three months with my now seven-month-old—up every 45 minutes between bedtime and about 10, and again between 3 and 6 am. Or all night, if she’s feeling particularly frisky. And yes, she’s a tension increaser.

After trying it all (crib, no crib, bath, no bath, even hotter bath, earlier bedtime, later bedtime, prophylactic dose of ibruprophen, teething tablets) I still don’t have any solutions, but have developed some coping methods. The most helpful thing was adjusting my expectations: Baby-free time at night to read/have a cocktail/re-introduce self to husband is now a fun bonus. I DO NOT allow myself to look forward to it all day, because then I end up lying in a dark bedroom with a baby kicking me in the groin and resenting the hell out of her. Not the most relaxing situation.

Beyond that, husband and I worked out a system. The first wake-up, I boob her back down. Sometimes that’s all it takes. On the bad nights, he takes the second wake-up, and like a previous poster said, he tries to convince the baby he’s a good guy. When the screams hit a fever pitch, I try to boob her down again. Then, if it isn’t working—and this is what has saved our sanity—we call it. We stop worrying about it. She comes downstairs with us, gets popped in the Ergo or sits next to us on the couch, and we go on with our night. We eat dinner, we watch TV, go on a walk to put her to sleep if we’re feeling ambitious. And then she goes to bed with us and usually falls asleep just fine at that point.

And no, it hasn’t trained her to wake up repeatedly in order to spend her nights up with us. Her night sleep has already gone to hell on these nights (that’s why we’re up!), so that’s not an issue. She may be a little bleary-eyed, but we don’t end up hating the baby, which is bad all around.

Then we wait for it all to change again…

[Maria]

Ah, yes. This too shall pass... I wish I'd known at the time how common it is, it was driving me mad. We resorted to controlled crying (going back in there every 5 or 10 minutes) at 7 months. Worked for a while, but them he got into the working-himself -up-to-vomiting, and that was the end of that. For a while I just took him into bed with me at some point for the rest of the night (mainly b/c after the wakings in the evening I couldn't deal with the additional night wakings as well).

Our main problem was (I think) that he never learned to fall asleep in his crib, so once he woke up, he wanted to be rocked back to sleep.

Once we stopped nursing at night (not because of the sleeping issues), we very slowly transitioned him from falling asleep on my lap in a chair to falling asleep on my lap in the crib (ehm, yes), then falling asleep in the crib with me holding him (more crib gymnastics). Finally, I was able to just hold his hand from outside the crib, and that's still how I get him to sleep now. Once he started to fall asleep by himself, the evening/night wakings got fewer and he could fall back to sleep by himself. He's a very good sleeper now. Yay!

BUT he was about 14 months before that all fell into place. So yeah. Not too encouraging, I'm afraid. This too shall pass. This too shall pass...

[Maria]

I feel I just jinxed myself saying he's a good sleeper, period. Let's rephrase that: he's a good sleeper at the moment.

[hedra]

Oh, Charisse, WOW. B would have serious costume envy (though he was fab in his Aragorn-no-I'm-an-Elf costume, LOL!). I'm holding that one for next year! It looks easy, too! What did you use for the feathers, fabric-wise?

[Anon]

Meg, yes on the forehead touching! Except T. likes little circles over the third-eye region. If I sprint in there at the first peep and do the forehead circles, he'll conk back out maybe half the time. (My niece: "How did you know to try that?" Me: "Oh, that's what his dad likes.")

and Hedra: yes, now I remember all those happy southeast asian babies up at all hours... but happy! Gives me a little more reinforcement that the wait-it-out-because-nothing-else-works method is not just my own laziness.

[Charisse]

@hedra: glad you like! The feathers were somewhat realistic shapes cut from velvet, glued onto basic shapes cut from felt (you can blame Mr. C., local verisimilitude nerd, for the velvet--we were at the fabric store sale and he said "you can't just use felt--ravens are shiny, they HAVE to be shiny"). I would absolutely love to see the LOTR costume, being a huge fan & in case you can't guess, total nerd myself. :) Am counting the months till Mouse is old enough to have the Hobbit read to her!

[NotQuiteRural]

Maria, in the crib?!? Never thought of that!

We nurse to sleep lying down, and it usually works like a charm, but now that we have a little crawler, we have to sneak upstairs to VERY carefully transition to crib about 20 minutes after she falls asleep. Success rate? About 50 percent.

Now if I crawled in the crib with her...

Do you think an IKEA crib would hold up?

[Candice]

I could have written the very same email, we tried everything and checked out every sleep book in the library and asked friends etc. from 6 months until about 2 weeks ago, my baby was doing the EXACT SAME THING. Finally what we decided is that my husband would be the one to put her back to sleep. We do our routine, I nurse her and put her in bed and if she wakes up (which she almost always does after 30-50 mins) my HUSBAND is the one who comforts her back to sleep.

What would take me 30 min takes him 5 min, she knows who has the boobs in the family! However there was afew weeks when she had separation anxiety and only wanted me and that was hard, I teach PT and my mornings sucked because she would do the same thing in the early morning after her feeding. So I would rush around, nurse her down, repeat until I left at 630 when Gma came over.

She still wakes up BUT sje's not crying, just fussing and making fussy noises. Whatever was bothering her has now lessened, she's not crying hysterically anymore and she's not "rejecting" daddy ( and she was and that hurt DH feelings so much) when he comes in. I think teething may have been a reason for 2-3 days but for the other weeks I had no and have no idea. She's a quick one and started crawling at 5.5 months so maybe your baby is just hitting the bad sleep zone earlier than other babies bc they are reching milestones sooner???

She now 8.5 months and it started around 6 months and is just now doing MUCH MUCH better, maybe it just takes time if you have a great routine down already.

It will get better, I know how desperation sets in and you feel likethe worst parent ever but then when it changes and it probably will, you'll go back to feeling much better about your parenting. I sleep much better now and so does she.

[julie]

Another t-shirt idea: give it up already....boob your baby to bed.

love it.

[Amie]

does anyone believe that nursing/feeding to sleep is a bad idea? It's the only way he knows how to go to sleep and I was wondering if that's why he has problems going back to sleep after a sleep arousal. I don't know how to change that though...we've tried feeding before his bath, and he won't take it then, he always falls asleep eating, I've tried waking him up after feeding so that I put him down awake (he'll just scream FOREVER), so for now we're continuing to feed to sleep and just dealing with the arousals the best we can and hoping he'll grow out of it...

[laury]

I haven't read all the comments so maybe this has been said before, but round here the 45 minute thing is always a sign of complete overtiredness. Bedtime an hour or more earlier usually fixes it. For us it means the babe's too wired to get into the deeper sleep cycle, because otherwise, even when he was tiny, we woudl usually get 3-4 hours then every 2.

[NotQuiteRural]

Amie, NO! It works, they fall asleep, and to me, this seems totally unrelated to periodic waking up.

However, I second (twentieth) the suggestion to have someone else (husband, partner?) deal with the wakeups if you are worried about him waking up just to nurse. This takes some of the "fun" out of those repreated arousals and seems to work (after some nights of serious trauma for everyone).

And it helps me feel less trapped to know that there are other methods to put baby to sleep, in case I want to leave the house between 5 and 9 pm. My husband can use the Ergo or drive around in the car, but she still needs to be PUT to sleep either way. No sleep from a waking state here!

And waking the baby up to put them to sleep? WAY more effort than I am willing to put into it...

[Ally]

I remember this like it was yesterday. Jamie went through a period at this age when the only way he'd sleep between 7-11 was if he was on the couch next to me. That way I could lay a hand on him when he started to stir. Otherwise we were up and down constantly during that time frame.

And early waking...hate to say it, but it was an issue for us until very recently - maybe the last 6 months? And he's 3 now. You could blame cosleeping and our alarm clocks, or you could say cosleeping was the only thing that got us through it. He still gets up and comes to bed with us some time between 3-6 a.m. 99% of the time, so I say it's just his nature and thank goodness he can walk to our room by himself now.

BUT, it made life very difficult. My best time to exercise? Early morning. Haven't done it in 2 years because if I wasn't there if he woke between 5-6 hysterics would ensue. I'm just getting to the point where I think it's ok if Dad's there and I'm not.

Now, part of our problem was that Dad has sleep apnea and so was never comfortable being in the same bed alone with Jamie until he was 2 or so. Otherwise, I would definitely let dad handle that early morning waking and go for my walk.

The 7-11 thing though, having him on the couch was a small price to pay for an otherwise uninterrupted evening.

[Ally]

"does anyone believe that nursing/feeding to sleep is a bad idea? It's the only way he knows how to go to sleep and I was wondering if that's why he has problems going back to sleep after a sleep arousal. I don't know how to change that though...we've tried feeding before his bath, and he won't take it then, he always falls asleep eating, I've tried waking him up after feeding so that I put him down awake (he'll just scream FOREVER), so for now we're continuing to feed to sleep and just dealing with the arousals the best we can and hoping he'll grow out of it..."

Nope, they're designed to fall asleep while eating. For us, it was about how the first wake-up was handled that really made the difference, if that's any help.

But we're living proof that eventually, they'll learn to fall asleep on their own, and my guy's only 3, not even near college age...

[m]

Oh my god I feel your pain. If I had known about Moxie back when this was happening to us, I would have written in with the same quesiton.

The only thing that helped was time. We tried everything and nothing worked, even though eventually it worked out. It's a blur now, but it was hellish then.

It is NOT your fault or your baby's fault. It's just stupid nature. And it sucks. But it will get better. (That's been my mantra these past few weeks with our son who is waking in the middle of the night after being able to sleep through the night for a few months. I blame the effing eye teeth that are teasing him again. It will get better, it will get better.) It has to and it will. And again, it is not your fault.

[Ally]

Oh, and when he was too big for the couch in that first year and went through the crazy 7-11 thing, we got a DVR upstairs and I lived in our bed. I'm a pushover I guess! :)

Data point - he was a terrible teether. Slept fine unless he was teething. Unfortunately he had big, slow teeth and was teething most of the first year after 4 months.

[luolin]

I could have written one of those letters!

[julie]

Aimee.....boob your baby to bed! (I swear that is my new favorite saying....and of course also me being my 2 y/o's bitch...but that's not a saying, that is a fact.) There's no shame in your game. Do what works. I promise, you won't be doing it when he/she is in kindergarten.

[Jan]

My older kid had trouble going down in the evenings, too, even though she needed it. It made me crazy trying to get her to go to bed and stay asleep. With my second I just sucked it up and held him until he was solidly asleep, then put him down. Yes, sometimes it was an hour an a half.

I don't know if I would try this with an older baby, but I definitely would with a 4 1/2 month old.

What happens if instead of trying to put the baby down, you simply turn the lights down low, put on some quiet music and nurse/rock/sing to him until he's sleep, then continue to rock him? I discovered with my second one that if I held him all the way through one (sometimes 2) 45 minute sleep cycle(s), I could get him back to sleep before he ever fully woke up, and THEN he'd be totally out and I could put him in his crib and he'd continue his nighttime sleep. If I tried to put him down when he first fell asleep, it was harder to get him back to sleep when he woke up 45 minutes later.

I'm sure holding the baby for an hour or two every night doesn't sound like much of a solution, but honestly, I read, I watched TV, I talked (quietly) with my husband -- not so different than what I normally do in the evenings anyway. And an hour or two of being confined to a few quiet activities beats 3 hours of not knowing when you'll be called upon to fight a losing battle any day of the week, as far as I'm concerned.

For what it's worth, I think Weissbluth is right about a lot of stuff but is either an extremely bad writer or has a bad editor or both. It's so hard to get through his book. But he unequivocally does NOT say that you must let your baby cry. He says (once they get past a certain age), always let 'em cry, or never let 'em cry, but consistency is the key. He then gives a plan for switching from one method to the other when and if the time comes for you. He DOES say that letting them cry won't hurt them, which I understand is a bone of contention and I'm not going to touch it.

Sears is the author of the line that made me angrier than anything I have ever read on the web and I will never forgive him for it, even though in many ways his ways are my ways.

[Jen in Redwood City, CA]

"It's not freaking sudoku" -- I love that!!

I'm also loving reading about all the tactics to try to teach your child to sleep. My 9.5 mo old has been, for the last month, sleeping for about three hours at the beginning of the night, then waking up every hour and a half after that. Every week or so he'll surprise us with a bout of two hours awake in the middle. Some sort of sleep training is looking really good right now.

Maybe this'll help someone else: I finally read the revised Ferber and one of the things he mentions is that some kids just cannot sleep more than x amount during the day. This seems to be the case with my little guy, who has rarely slept more than 12.5 hours in any 24 hr period. Also, Ferber's average amounts of sleep for kids seems to be lower than the other experts: he said a 9 mo old would probably get about 12-14 total hours. If he's right, I'm feeling a little better about the sleep my guy gets.

[z]

So many comments and i haven't read through all of tem so forgive me if it's repetitive. First off, it's not you it's them.
Second my son goes through this cycle it seems every few weeks since the 4 month regression. Actually that's when sleep went to crap for us and has been since. He is one of those kids that on the surface seems to be grasping new skills really quickly but i think it's weeks of mulling over it that gets him to that point.

For him actually i think the frequent night waking related to regressions starts 2-3 weeks before the regression and then last for about 2 weeks after the 5-6 weeks of regression and so we go through 2 months of this night-waking hell and then about a 3 weeks to a month free from it. He is now almost 14 months.

All i can say is that i have notices that after the 10 month regression it has been easier to get him back to sleep. We cosleep and he sleeps in our bed before we go up so my husband and i take turns going up and whereas it used to take 30+minutes to settle him down it has now dropped to 10-15 and it's usually just going up and reassuring him and patting him. Of course he is a tension gainer with crying so we can't let him fuss and it gets rough many nights but truly after the 10 months it got better. There were longer stretches in between the waking and easier to fall back asleep.

So all i can say is there is hope. Just take turns switching off and definitely try to get out of the house during that time. I remember going out for ice cream a few times when it got too much to take. Just that 15 minutes and sugar rejuvenated me.

[hedra]

We seriously need an Ask Moxie t-shirt with the top ten fave phrases. I'd buy one! Cafe Press anyone?

And I think I'll have to go buy (rather than flip through) the new Ferber book just for the new sleep numbers. My kids seem happier at lower numbers than people seem to think normal, too.

[Jan]

I sometimes wonder, hedra, if when they do the sleep averages, they counting the time the kids are in bed, not the time they're actually sleeping. Which for some kids at some stages isn't the same thing by a long shot.

[Susannah]

@rudy-in-paris and caramama, wow- you have described me exactly!

[Briana]

I was just thinking about writing you again today on this. My baby's a week shy of six months now, and has been driving us crazy for the last few weeks with exactly this pattern. He's never been a great sleeper, but after a horrible, horrible, nasty no-good time where he would only sleep if I was holding him, we had started to get into a good groove. He was going to bed easily and sleeping for three to four hours at a time. Then it got bad again. He is currently on a remarkably rigid self-set schedule during the day of waking up around 6am, and then demanding a 40-minute nap every 1 1/2 to 2 hours until 6pm, when he goes to bed for the night. Then he wakes every 20 to 40 minutes until 10pm, when I take him to bed and nurse us both to sleep (another reluctant co-sleeper here). He sleeps for two hours, then three, then is up for an hour and a half from 3am to 4:30, then sleeps 40 minutes and wakes ready to play. I can usually get another 40 minutes, an hour of sleep if I'm lucky. It's exhausting.

Also, what's with this 'put him down awake' thing? I keep thinking I must be doing it wrong, because he will not sleep unless I put him to sleep by nursing, rocking or carrying him in the Bjorn. If I put him down drowsy but not fully asleep, he wakes up completely as soon as his head hits the mattress and screams until I pick him up and rock/nurse/whatever again.

Here's hoping he will sleep one day. Hopefully soon.

[Susannah]

oh, and I forgot to ask Jan, what on earth did Sears say??

[Susannah]

oh, and I forgot to ask Jan, what on earth did Sears say??

[colicmommy]

I can't jump on the Weissbluth hate. I'm a Weissbluth lover. But then again, I never read him as saying "do this or you suck." I DID read Sears that way...and after having disasterous results with sleep after Sears parenting, Sears is dead to me for sleep advice. (On his website? There's some question from a mom who says the baby will only sleep on her, what should she do? And that #$&&* Sears tells her to "just deal with it because those are the baby's needs"? Um, WTF? Hello PPD! Hello Lack Of Sleep! Hello Subjugate All My Needs To The Baby! WTF??)

Sorry. Off my soapbox.

I was going to say that I guess my kids were both tension releasers. My son (first) had terrible colic and slept like crap, and then when the colic subsided, he still slept like crap, and CIO worked. Yeah, he screamed for a couple of hours one time, one night, then an hour or so the next, then 45 min the next night, then 30 min, then 20 min, then 15 min, and he settled on screaming 15 min every night from age 4 mo. to age 15 months, at which point he just decided screaming wasn't worth it and quit it. I guess if he'd screamed 2 hours plus for night after night I'd have had to rethink. My daugther is a good sleeper by nature, and letting her cry for 15 min one night at age 4 months did the trick.

I'm wondering if the babes in mention are overtired. Move the bedtime up crazy early (6:30). My daugther still goes to bed at 6:30 (she's 2). My son at 7 (he's 4.5). She wakes at 7:30 am. He wakes at 6-6:30 (lark). Move to 2 naps instead of 3, and move the bedtime up crazy early. Worth a shot. Whenever my son goes to bed late (now even at age 4), even just 30 minutes late, he sleeps like crap, wakes up, has nightmares, sleepwalks, sleeptalks, etc.

[pnuts mama]

ooh, jan, was it the line about "if you're feeling guilty it's probably because you've something wrong?" cause i'm on board with AP (my own way of doing AP, of course), and i have his book, but that BS totally pissed me off. the whole "i'm an expert MD and my wife is an expert RN and we've raised 234 kids and we're martyrs and all sleep in the same giant bed" thing eventually turned me off. i still refer to his site for the occasional quick info, but i just couldn't get around his tone. i'm like, dude, you didn't discover or invent the attachment parenting theory, stop pretending like you did. i never read weissbluth.

i also love your idea about rocking the baby through a few sleep cycles- right on.

amie- eventually, your baby will be able to fall asleep without nursing down, i promise. i have a girl who i expected to have to go away to college with still nursing to sleep, and the happiest damn day of my life thus far was when she finally was able to be left in her crib alone to fall asleep on her own. even after weaning, i still had to snuggle her in a darkened room with her lullaby cd playing, and then put her down to her lullaby birdie projection/soother thing. she still goes to sleep after we snuggle in our bed for a while, then start the cd. she's 27 months now, and it got so much easier after 9-10 months, then 16ish, for us. hang in there!

[Nancy]

Aren't all parenting advice books written with the "and you're ruining your child if you don't follow my plan" tone? I certainly felt it from Elizabeth Pantley, Dr Sears...all of them claim they know "the way". I just don't get why Weissbluth gets such a bad rap when they all do it. So before you write that post for another day I would ask that you re-read "No Cry" and see if you don't see the same judgments.

And FWIW - The Wonder Weeks - which you recommend frequently - has f-ing checklists at the end of every chapter on what your baby should be doing now and mine was never meeting any of them. Talk about feeling like a failure. But I didn't freak out - I just quit reading the lists.

With all these books - I take what works, learn a little from it and ignore the rest.

A friend of mine met a woman in a park who had been sitting there for two hours because her baby fell asleep in the stroller at the park and she said she couldn't go home because all sleep had to be motionless (per Weissbluth). I seriously doubt that's what he had in mind. Anyone can follow advice out the window.

[staysuplate]

this is "StaysUpLateToAvoidBeingWokenUp20Times" here... it's so comforting to read all these comments and realize how common my baby's problems are (and that happens pretty much every time i read this site... it's amazing what a little honesty does for a mom's soul).

but i'm feeling a little bad now for writing in because it seems my daughter's wake-ups (she's almost 7 months) aren't half as bad as they could be, relatively speaking. she is now finally to the point where i don't usually need to pick her up, i just give her the soother back, pat her bum, offer her dolly, and shhssh for a minute. although... the fact that she wants me yet doesn't really need me to do that much makes the wakings almost more irksome!! i have now started describing them as "checking in with me" or "just wanting to say hello".

it's reassuring to know that many of you found it just went away with time. i keep contemplating soother-weaning, swaddling again (she was swaddled til 5 months), earlier bedtimes... but i really just don't have the motivation or the balls to attempt any major tinkering with her routines right now!

p.s.anyone else find with the early night wakings that when you get them back to sleep, it's the LIGHTEST EFFING SLEEP EVER? you even so much as scratch your nose on the way out the door and they hear it.... "aheh aheh... WAAAAAAAAHHHH"

[Amy]

How bizarre! My 5.5 month old is doing this this week (down at 7pm, awake at 8pm, again at 9pm, yet again at 10pm then into the normal night nursing routine)... but I don't recall #1 or #2 doing this...

And I second (or third, etc.... haven't read the other comments) the movement for us to stop blaming ourselves. My MIL, husband, mother all frequently ask me why the baby isn't sleeping through the night, why he hates his crib, why he cries a lot, why he likes to be held for naps, why, why why??? I don't know... because he's a baby and he wants what he wants??? But they ask in that tone that says it's my fault... that he's spoiled... that I've failed as a mother because I haven't *taught* him how to behave otherwise. I'm sick to death of it... just as his older siblings, he will not go to Kindergarten needing to be held for naps or needing to be nursed back to sleep at 3am... and given that they aren't the ones nursing him at 3 am why does it bother them so much??? (rant over)

[Melissa]

I completely agree with Kristen that soooooo many people lie about their 4 month old sleeping through the night!
My son is 14 months old and has been doing the same thing for 14 months. Now that my husband is able to go in a sooth him I feel better- not like I am going to go insane. But we have no life to speak of and never watch movies anymore because it seems futile.
However, we are seeing a little bit of a change now that he can run around more during the day.
Thank you so much for this post- I needed to know I wasn't the only one.

[Amy]

Okay, and now that I've read through some of the comments, I want to add one last thing--expert bashing and my own experience with 3 kids.

When I had #1, I had no clue about sleep schedules or anything of the sort. I figured he'd sleep when he was tired. This worked well until about 9 months when my mother pointed out that having a baby on an adult schedule (going to bed late, sleeping late) was probably not the best thing for him. So, I came across Weissbluth and my world was turned upside down. With hindsight, I'm glad to have had the info on nap schedules and the "sleep begets sleep" theory... but I felt like a failure b/c my baby didn't sleep the recommended number of hours (he fell at or just under the 10% range on W's sleep charts--and I can't tell you the hours I spent pouring over the charts and the anxiety of knowing he was so low on them). I just knew that I had screwed him up for life by not getting his sleep organized from the get-go. I tried at the 9 month mark, but it was a no go. We failed at CIO, we failed at the 1+ hour naps... total sleep drop outs. Enter #2. She was a Weissbluth STAR! She had all the sleep cues (eye rubbing, yawning); I could put her down awake and she'd put herself to sleep; she slept on his recommended schedule naturally and always came in above the 50% on the sleep charts. Finally success at sleep! I was convinced that it was because I had done everything right. But as they got older, their sleep habits did not change. #1 is still an early riser and thrives on 9.5-10 hours sleep (he's 7.5). #2 needs about 11+ hours (she's 5.5). I began to think that maybe their sleep habits had nothing to do with how I handled their sleep as babies but was just built into who they were. Enter #3. I was all set to do Weissbluth again because surely using it with #2 from the start was the key to her successful sleep. But #3 is having no part of it. Like his big brother, he's a fairly short napper (unless I let him nap on the breast--which is difficult to do as a WOHM!). He wants no part of his crib. He builds tension with CIO. He wants to nap MORE often than the Weissbluth schedule (due, I'm sure, to the less than 1 hour naps). Basically, he's just not wired to be a Weissbluth baby.

And this brings me to my point (finally), the experts make money off of getting us into a tizzy. I'm not saying that W et al. haven't done their homework, but until you've studied MY baby, don't make me feel guilty when I can't get your plan to work. It does not make me a failure. My baby will not end up stupid if he doesn't *need* as much sleep as other babies do. I canNOT make him sleep. Yes, I can set the scene for him... but short of narcotics, I can't force him into it. The sleep experts should put caveats in their books about the individual personalities involved in sleep. They should also drop the guilt. This is hard enough without having an EXPERT tell me I'm doing it all wrong and that my mistakes will affect my baby all his life. As a mother of three, I can say on good authority... that all babies are different, and if you have one with sleep issues, you might have to dig deep in the bag of expert tricks to solve it... or, like me, you can go with your gut, put away the books, and rely on the support here to get you through it.

[Jo Ann]

It's weird that the first response on this topic referenced the reader's 3-year-old rather than an infant, because my Younger daughter (also 3) has been doing the frequent waking thing for over a year. It is awful. Bedtime is 8pm (often creeps close to 9), and sometime between 11-2, Younger "wakes" up crying. Always about 10 minutes after I come upstairs to go to bed, too, even if I go to bed on the earlier side.
Looking back, I think we've always had a similar problem with her at night. And I am still waiting for her to grow out of it. And my husband and I are still fighting about how to handle it.

Sorry, no ray of sunshine here! Just a sigh (wishing it was a snore!) of solidarity.

[luolin]

I had to cut my comment short because the baby was waking up from a nap...Now he's asleep, but I fully expect him to be up in the next 10 minutes or so, since it's 11:15 here.

Briana-the " put him to sleep while drowsy but awake" didn't work for us either. So I nurse him down and try to remember Moxie and the commenters who tell me I haven't ruined his sleep for life. (btw, before having the baby, when I read " nurse the baby down," I imagined the mother nursing the baby while in the act of lowering him down into the crib ;-)

About the experts, I think part of the problem is how we read them. When I was first home with the baby, everything I read made me feel like I was doing everything wrong, even my reaction to the same thing a week before would have been, "well, I know some people think this is the way to put babies to sleep, but others don't and the other way makes more sense for me" . On the other hand, some of those writers do say that you're doomed if you don't do it their way.

I got Wonder Weeks from the library and have found that it is hard for me to look at the checklists, even though they say upfront that your baby won't do everything on the list, and what he does depends on what he is most interested in or good at.I still started getting worried as soon as I saw the list.

[pnuts mama]

i just remembered another thing that bothered me about sears: if you didn't attach the way he said you should, you kid was ultimately destined to a life of being a socio-path. maybe i was reading into those comments, but his tome really rubbed me the wrong way.

pantley didn't bother me as much, but i skipped so much of her book and went straight to the tips. sleep journal my ass.

i think it's terrible that so many desperate sleep deprived mama's turn to these people like they are gods. all they are are self-named "experts" (mostly pop-psychologists or former docs, not actual researchers or academics or practicing docs) making a ton of money off of our misery.

i've never believed anyone who told me their baby slept through the night regularly before 6 months. sorry. just.not.buying.it.

[Jan]

Susannah, I don't want to start anything controversial. If you're really dying to know (I would be, too!), you can email me. :)

[jill]

Jan - just tell us!

Anyway, I'm late at posting, but it's 11 here and my baby has already woken up twice... the second time I sent my husband up and after 5 (yes 5) minutes of crying he called to me and said "I think he's hungry." - yeah, no he's not. So after another 30 minutes of me rocking, patting, shushing, I got him down without the boob. I'm on the "no boob for 4 hours" deal right now...

My guy is 10 months old. He slept like a champ from 3 1/2 to 6 1/2 months - 10pm to 7am every night. No waking. It was awesome. Then at 6 1/2 months, we started with teeth, then with rolling over, then crawling, pulling up etc... oh, and solid foods, and transition to the crib, and separation anxiety... and maybe some night terrors even. God only knows. But we've had hellish sleep for 3 1/2 months now. I'm a zombie.

I have no words of wisdom, except to say this is my new favorite website. I love reading everyone's ideas, and finding out that "this too shall pass" and that I have not ruined my baby by not doing CIO, my nursing him to sleep, and by doing what I feel is right for loving my baby....

For those of you who got your husband to do the night stuff, how did you do it? My husband is a good guy, but I don't know how I can convince him that he needs to get up and slog through it all when he's the one who has to go to work in the morning...

I hope you all get a good night's sleep one day. I'd pay $1,000,000 for it. :)

[marypoppins]

I know he's not technically a baby but my almost 3 year old has a coffee with me almost every morning ( 3 teaspoons from my cup - caffe latte 'cause he's 3)and he still manages a 3 hour nap everyday ( plus 12 hours at night). God, he's probably sleep forever if I didn't give him the stuff.

[Maria]

NotQuiteRural, about the crib gymnastics: first off, I think most cribs are pretty sturdy. I've sat with Mio in many a pack&play, even, though I'm always afraid it will collapse ;-) (I'm about 140 lb, btw).

But once it was clear we would be doing this for a while, we disassembled our crib, took out the bottom and put that on the floor with the mattress on top. We then turned the crib upside down over it. This worked, no gap b/w the mattress and the sides of the crib, and no danger of the whole thing collapsing.

I know it sounds crazy, it certainly felt that way. But it worked!

[Shandra]

I was chatting with a friend of mine about this and thought I'd share.

Her kids go to bed between 11pm and 12am. They get up between 10 and 11 am. They nap at 4. All three of them - 4 yr old daughter, 1.5 yr old twins. This didn't surprise their parents, who are also night owls to the extent that the father actually has organized his working schedule so that he doesn't start 'til 11 am.

I think there are a lot of "rules" that don't work for individuals. Having said that, my son needs to get to bed before 7:30. :)

[Lisa]

On the topic of expert-hate (full disclosure: I must confess I have a healty dose of expert hate directed at both Weissbluth's proclamations of developmental problems that are sure to face my son if I don't get him sleeping, and Pantley's last chapter when she characterizes the non-cosleeping CIO mom as a bottle propping, neglectful robot), I have been recently surprised by Ferber. I had lumped him into the CIO group a la Weissbluth's "extinction" recommendation, likely because ferberizing has become a verb in our generation, but when I read the book I was pleasantly surprised. He is really much more thoughtful, gives lots of great info on what's happening during sleep, and I've understood a lot more about my son while reading it. A friend of mine (also co-sleeping, though her daughter's almost 2) went to see him to strategize about how to night wean, and he helped her come up with a plan that did not involve ending the co-sleeping. I thought that was pretty cool.

Oh, and while we're expert-bashing, they're doing it to each other as well. Remember the part of Weissbluth when he talks about how awful the "other author's" pull-out method of trying to get your kid to not fall asleep while nursing is? How unnatural? Totally a Pantley-bash.

[mezzaluna]

my almost 7-month daughter has been doing this on and off, so it's hard to see a pattern, but she does like to get good naps, go down early enough, and be bundled up warmly enough. i'll put my money on overtired as the most common reason for interrupted early sleep.

i want to put in a plug for the recent book Sleepless in America by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka which covers a lot of sleep biology and is highly in favor of routine/schedule but does not advocate CIO and supports cosleeping if it works for the family. and i've found moxie's 2-3-4 observation of the time for wake intervals for the 2-nap baby to be very helpful!

also wanted to say i dislike using sleep book author's names as verbs... i'm sure people mean it tongue in cheek, but it has a whiff of dehumanization to it. i keep thinking about getting a car "simonized" when i hear "ferberize" - as if it's some kind of scientific process you can apply to your child to fix them. sleep is more of an ongoing negotiation!

[Cassie]

Can I second the recommendation for Mary Sheedy Kurcinka's "Sleepless in America"? She seems to approach the whole subject of sleep more like a scientist (i.e., I don't have all the answers, but I'm going to investigate to see if I can find some) rather than an expert (i.e., I know everything and here's what you must do). She is also very big on finding the appropriate sleep approach for the personality of your child -- and she has some useful tips for figuring out what kind of child you might have (while pointing out that some children might have a combination of personalities, or might change over time, and might have personalities that completely conflict with their parents' sleep personalities). And it's an interesting, accessible read as well -- but then I'm a scientist and a research-junkie, so I find all of that sort of thing interesting!