settling issues - 8 month old

Any advice here would be much appreciated.


We have a beautiful 8 month old, who is not, and has never been, a great sleeper. She's a cheerful and happy little thing in the day and she naps well. Our main problem is that she has such a tough time settling at night, and then wakes quite often and needs help to get back to sleep.


We will not leave her to cry, but we have worked at getting her used to putting herself to sleep. Before naps and bedtime, we rock her until she is calm, then lay her down. She often fusses a little, and if she really cries out, we go to her and soothe her. At nap times, this works great. Often all it takes is a kiss on the head, she looks at us, then turns and closes her eyes. At night however, she tosses and turns and kicks her legs. She just seems unable to calm down properly. Often when she is just starting to calm and lie still, she'll let out a cry and work herself up again.


We have a repeat of this in the night when she wakes. Sometimes I'm able to feed her back to sleep with little fuss, but if that doesn't work, we go through the whole thing over again.


We're both getting really tired, and I guess we're just mostly confused and frustrated by knowing that she is able to settle quickly and easily in the day, yet seems unable to do the same at bedtime and in the night.


I'm hoping some kind soul will have a light bulb moment on my behalf and say 'have you tried.....' and all our problems will be over. :) Unlikely I know, any advice you could offer would be gratefully received.

Hi AshaDay,

I had two kids but now they are bigger already. As my experienced, when you rock or carry a child in your arms to make her/him sleep, they will get used to that and each day they need more and more of that otherwise they wouldn't sleep. I think you can try to let her play or do whatever to make her not to nap so long during the day, so at night she will be very tired and sleepy, she will fall as sleep any where without rocking her. Try not to put her to bed during the day if she doesn't feel sleepy, even at night, just leave until she's very tired and sleepy then put her in bed soon she will fall as sleep. At first may need to take sometime but when it come to routine you will have more time to relax yourself.

Hope this would help.

Thank you for your suggestion. I do think that perhaps she is often not tired enough to fall asleep. Often she has been awake for over three hours though which seems a lot to me. Maybe I'll try keeping her up a little longer after her second nap before bed.

How much does she sleep during the day? I know lots of people hate Gina Ford but I think the Gina Ford schedule gives parents a good guide on how much babies should sleep etc etc.


I don't have much extra advice for you - I also don't like the crying method but if you are at wit's end, then maybe you could try patting her, instead of picking her up. She will cry, because she's used to getting picked up - but at least she's only crying out of annoyance, rather than being truly upset because no one is there. After a while, she'll figure out that you won't be picking her up and will eventually fall asleep out of tiredness.


Mind you, if you don't think you can persist with this method, then don't bother trying it, otherwise you'll just be making her cry unnecessarily because you'll be inconsistent.


I have two daughters, 3.5 and 1.5. My older daughter wakes up in the middle of the night and climbs into bed with my husband. I sleep in the same bedroom as the 1.5 year old. If she wakes, I'll pick her up and put her next to me. I find that if you don't do the crying method, then invariably you end up sleeping with your kids! It's fine for us! Later this year, we'll put them in the same bedroom and by that stage, they're old enough to understand us when we tell them they can't come to our bedroom anymore, whether they like it or not!! A crying toddler is less heartbreaking than a crying baby! hahahaah.

I know the crying method doesn't sound nice at all however, our new born cried all the time. She would actually cry all day and vomit regularly. QMH did so many test to get to the bottom of it including an MRI but everything was normal. So my next question is, What can I do? Several of the top Pediatricians there said, Wrap her up and just let her cry it out, it's a case of being cruel to be kind. I asked if it could be damaging and their reply was, no only to you if you can't eventually stop her because it will make my husband and I crazy. We ended up doing this and after two weeks she will now settle down without any problems at all. She will even smile at us as we put her in her bed. While she was crying she was having very poor weight gain and some weeks she even lost weight but now she is full steam ahead. This may now be quite difficult with an 8 month old but if you decide to have another baby it maybe something to keep in mind not to rock your baby to sleep.


We went from hell to now heaven and because the doctors told us it was fine, I was fine with it because nothing else was working. And another plus is, from 8:30pm until 6am my husband and I have our own time because our baby is sleeping and that time I feel is very special to having a healthy relationship with your partner.


Good luck, I'm sure there are others out there that can share there experiences with you too.

A baby needs to feel near it's mother to be able to sleep well because it is programmed by nature to know that it's survival depends on it. A human baby is no different from any other primate baby.

Gina Fords book is based on an out dated principle, namely that human babies should be raised like herd animals.

Your baby is behaving perfectly normally for a human.

Thanks for all your replies. Slammy, I have to say that already, my husband spends a fair few nights in the spare room while I sleep with our baby! I like having her close to me and I'm not ready to move her out of our room just yet. I agree that consistency is key. I tried lying with her instead of picking her up one night, but when she wouldn't have it, I scooped her up anyway, which just confused her I'm sure. She gets a bit of sleep in the day. It varies, but she usually has 2 naps of roughly an hr and a half. I think this is about right for her age...??

Christeve and hknixon, thanks too. I do agree that she's pretty normal, I just also know that other babies settle much more quickly and easily than her... but if leaving her to cry is the only way to achieve this, I'll just grin and bear it. While some doctors might not think it hurts the child, I'm sure others would disagree. I know this works for some people, it's just not for us. That said, I'm very happy to hear that your little girl is doing so well and I also agree that time for your relationship with your partner is very important too.

One thing I am very conscious of, is that she's much more distracted during daytime feeding these days and so perhaps she's catching up on calories at night. I've tried feeding her when it's quiet, but find this very hard when I'm out. Any suggestions or things that have helped you?

Thanks again.

Hi,


Don't have any advice on feeding distracted babies. My second was like this, so I just had to make sure that I could find a quiet place to breastfeed her. Whenever she heard a noise, she would poke her head out from under the blanket to take a look. Very annoying!


3 hrs daytime sleep is probably okay but I suppose it depends on what time her afternoon nap is. For Gina Ford, she recommends a morning nap of around 30mins...


For eg. wake at 7am

nap at 9-10am

1.5 to 2 hr nap at lunchtime, between 12-2.3pm

a short afternoon nap of 15 minutes.


Baby must be awake from afternoon nap before 5pm, otherwise it will be difficult to put them to bed by 7pm.


Are you familiar with the Baby Whisperer? She talks about controlled crying method, where basically you pick the baby up to calm them down, and then just before they fall asleep, you put them down in the cot so they fall asleep by themselves. You continue this until they finally fall asleep in the cot. In other words, you could be picking them up 100+times for the first night, but if you continue this method, supposedly by the end of a few days the number of times will decrease until finally they put themselves to sleep.