Please let this be a turning point...
Please let this be a turning point...
We've transitioned our 1yo out of our bed and to their own cot. We had to co-sleep after they puked on their old cot and refused to sleep at all once it was cleaned. Every time we've gotten them used to the cot something messes it up like travelling etc. but it's finally looking like something stable.
I was amazed the other night because it was the first time ever we didn't need to hold a hand or pat them to sleep, I could just lay them down in bed and watched them drift off.
The sleep is a little better but still not sleeping through the night and also constantly sick from daycare so they keep waking up cause of the coughing. When they were with us it was a lot easier to put the pacifier back in and go back to sleep but now we have to get out of bed to send them back to sleep.
Then there's also the night feeds... we're still doing a 10:30pm bottle and another bottle anywhere from 3am to 7am, it all depends on how much they ate during the day. Which they've now decided they don't like any of the food we make even though it's exactly the same stuff that would be at daycare. Which then prolongs the cycle of not eating enough and needing night feeds and then not eating much because there was milk overnight. I feel like we have to cut the night feeds somehow but it feels really cruel to starve them when they're used to it...
I just hope getting them to their own bed will be a positive turning point and we'll actually be sleeping through the night soon. I know other people have it worse but everyone I talk to directly has babies that sleep from 8pm to 8am with no stirring and no bottle, it's making me feel like I'm messing something up. Overall still feels like we're taking positive steps though.
Thanks for reading the rant.
everyone I talk to directly has babies that sleep from 8pm to 8am with no stirring and no bottle
That is fantasy talk by those people.
As a long term nanny and now a parent myself, I've had exactly ONE charge out of 22 + my own child who can sleep 8 hours with no bottle. He stirs but puts himself back to sleep silently and if you aren't watching a video monitor, you'd have no idea that he had stirred.
But if you ask The Mister about our own child, he'd swear our own kid sleeps twelve hours with no bottle and no stirring. That's because THE MISTER sleeps twelve hours and wouldn't hear a smoke alarm, much less the child stir. So I agree with you to consider the source and that it is very likely fantasy talk.
It depends on what steps you're willing to take. 1 yr olds can sleep for that long uninterrupted.
I mean, this has been ours since like 6 /7 months, it happens
I wouldn't be sure all of them are. Our daughter (now almost 2 years old) is also a good sleeper and she tends to sleep from 9-10 PM to 7-8 AM with just a few backrubs and sips of water in between. Not something I hear from other parents for sure, but there are some really great sleeper babies out there.
You can cut off the feedings cold turkey, he's not "starving", just wants comfort and might be a little peckish at most. This is pretty much the case after they're 6 months and have achieved a healthy weight. Sub it out with other non-food ways of comforting.
W/o the night time feeding they'll probably be encouraged to eat more during the day as well. The first days after the cutoff will be the toughest, just stick to it and youll be fine
Yes to the milk vs solids. Kids are smart and they know if they can get the bottle they will skip on other foods so they can get more of that.
My 3 yr old niece kept getting a big glass of cows milk before bed. As a result, she wasn't really eating dinner. Was underweight. They cut milk out and suddenly she's eating a lot more.
OK. I recently had to go thru a lot of this and here's my experiences. Every child is different... But there are some points here I think I can help with.
- night feedings. Talk to your Dr. if you don't believe me. But I asked ours when our baby was 6 months old. The Dr. said that the baby was completely possible of sleeping thru the night - they did not need extra food in the night. They just wanted it. That's fine … but it seems like that is affecting their sleep.
- location. Both of our kids slept better outside of our room. Noticeably so. I think us turning in our sleep or snoring is what triggered them to wake up. From tossing and turning and waking up to going much longer before wakeups. I subscribe to the view that your job as a parent is to minimize sadness in the long term - and sleep training does that - you have a bad week and at the end of it you're kid can sleep in a room by themselves.
- sleep training - The goal being that your kid knows that their bed is a safe place to fall asleep - and to do that they need to fall asleep there by themselves. Wait until they're sleepy, almost falling asleep, place into bed, pat pat on back for 10 seconds, then leave. Let them cry. Wait 10 mins and come back, comfort, get breathing even. Then place back in bed and let cry. Repeat a few times and they fall asleep. A few nights of that should be enough as long as you stick to the schedule.
- when child was 6-9 months, we did the transition to falling asleep by themselves. At first we got 8 to 3 am. Wife was doing night feeding, just to let children sleep so that she could go back to sleep quicker. Once we quit that by me stepping in instead at nights, child stopped waking up in middle of night. We were getting kid to sleep for 8-5. Now at almost 1 yr we're getting 8-630.
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most babies do their highest caloric intake at night because it is the lowest stimulation time. While it is possible to have them fast all night long, it isn't in their best interests because their stomach has a fixed size and simply cannot hold enough calories to get them through the nightly brain growth without a meal. Can vs should. And also, that pediatrician needs to attend some continuing education.
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the fact that children sleep less well in the room with the parents is EXACTLY WHY roomsharing is recommended to prevent SIDS. Cannot die in deep sleep if you never get to deep sleep. Sleep apart at your own risk. And on that note, almost every single SIDS prevention tip is designed to give your child sh-tty sleep in order to prevent sleeping deeply because you cannot die in deep sleep if you never get to deep sleep; it is by design. Ask me sometime how I feel about that.
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sleep training doesn't teach them that their bed is safe to sleep in. It teaches children that parents don't want to hear them cry. There have been objective studies that find that children night wake the exact same amount whether sleep trained or not. Absolutely no difference whatsoever. But the sleep trained children wake silently. So this one is one where the benefit is to the child from having a well rested adult caregiver. But the child doesn't learn anything from it other than to shut up.
- Babies yes. I don't think 1 year olds like the op are in that category. Both I and my friend with a baby recently asked our separate pediatricians that question - and they both responded with what I said.
- https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/sids-risk-by-age. The highest risk is 1 to 4 months old. That's not op. This is about assessing risk vs other risks - like PPD and health of the parents. It's ok for you to take that risk assessment one way and others to do differently.
- what I've heard is the same - there's no difference in sleep trained vs other babies at the end of the day. So another way of saying that you can balance the impact on the parents and baby. We needed to do that for us. It's ok if you didn't need to.
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Which they’ve now decided they don’t like any of the food we make even though it’s exactly the same stuff that would be at daycare.
Are you judging this based on dinner? Ask any pediatric dietician and they will tell you that toddlers and preschoolers are quite likely to skip dinner. It might not be the food but the fact that there is a meal at that hour which is the issue. The recommendation is to serve a full meal afternoon snack and then consider dinner a bonus meal if they even eat it at all.
Which then prolongs the cycle of not eating enough and needing night feeds and then not eating much because there was milk overnight. I feel like we have to cut the night feeds somehow but it feels really cruel to starve them when they’re used to it…
Trust your instincts. It is biologically normal for children to have one or two night feeds up until age 3. Though at some point you can start leaving "the offering" (a bowl of food you are comfortable cleaning up left in their room for them to eat from overnight without waking you, such as a bowl of cheerios).
The sleep is a little better but still not sleeping through the night
Unless you get extremely lucky, plan on your child not sleeping through the night until age 3. Instead, focus on teaching them what is appropriate for them to do by themselves when they wake in their room. You'll sleep through the night and they will wake, play with some toys, and put themselves back to sleep and everyone will thrive and be happy.
This is terrific advice.
We experienced many of the same things you mentioned and ended up fully embracing co-sleeping.
When our son was 2 and a bit he was ready to be in a toddler bed beside our bed. This happened more or less naturally with a bit of encouragement. It was around this time that he started "sleeping through the night".
We recently had another baby and our eldest (almost 3 at the time) decided for himself that he was ready to sleep alone in his own room.
This process took a lot longer than some of the other people I've spoken with. However we're okay with it because we never had to do any sort of sleep training, our son feels secure & has a healthy attachment with us, and in retrospect this whole process was shorter than it really seemed at the time.
So I guess what I'm saying is, try not to compare your situation to others—every child is so different. Do what you have to do to support your child and yourselves. And finally, this will pass more quickly than you think—you may even think fondly of these times later.
Good luck!
You'll get through it. Keep up the good work and be on the same page about how to handle these types of issues. It's very important for both parents to deal with problems consistently and in the same way.
Pro tip: When the baby loose the pacifier during sleep, put it in their hand instead of their mouth. They will then sort that out themself.
After a while they will start to look for them with their hands instead of just crying for assistance.
Once our kids hit a good weight and age and we felt comfortable not feeding at night, we stopped.
Comfort them when they cry, but no picking up and no food. Once they understood bed is bed, they started sleeping through the night pretty well.
It was rough for a few weeks. We would set a timer to check on them every 5 minutes to show them we were still there and we're not leaving.
Now my kids are old enough to get in and out of bed on their own and they haven't quite mastered the idea of "emergency" so we still get woken up by their random thoughts in the middle of the night.
Our 20 months old definitely does not sleep a full night on her own for the record. She doesn’t feed but she does wake up screaming and refuse to go back to sleep unaided. She also sleeps at most 10 hours, usually about 9.