Bedtime Tips?

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-06-2004
Bedtime Tips?
3
Wed, 01-12-2005 - 9:34pm
Since the sleep topic has come up a couple times I was just wondering if anyone has any tips on getting a baby to sleep. On tv you see couples rock their baby to sleep or sing and pace up and down the room and their baby falls right to sleep. Is that to good to be true? lol my dd is 7 months won't take a pacifier and doesn't comfort suck her thumb the only way she'll sleep is by nursing. I wouldn't mind it if she wasn't teething because she wakes up a few times a night now. Is there any hope or is this the only way?? Help I would love to have one full night of uninterrupted sleep!!!!
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2003
Wed, 01-12-2005 - 9:45pm

Buy the book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child," by Dr. Marc Weisbluth and all you questions will be answered. It's a wonderful book explaining why children need sleep for proper heath, and gives step by step instructions on how to get you child to put themself to sleep. It's worth every penny and all the hard work!!

Kelli

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-13-2003
Thu, 01-13-2005 - 2:08am

I think ANY 7 month old teething baby will wake up through the night. No matter what you do! But it doesn't last forever!...Just off and on for the next year or so! Does she actually drink when you bf her, or is it more a comfort thing? The first year is tough, I hope this will soon pass for you, and you can get back to sleeping again!

Lesley

Photobucket

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-26-2003
Thu, 01-13-2005 - 11:18am

I was in the same boat with our first son--he thought of me as a 5'2" mobile pacifier. I finally (at about a year old) had to just put him on a night time schedule, and let that be that. I had reached a point where I hadn't slept through the night for over a year, and he had a LOT of teeth LOL! We had to listen to a lot of angry screaming for the first week, but then he figured out that he was wasting his time, (and that a silicone passy wasn't all that bad lol--but that's another story of woe and frustration hehehe) and he's been a breeze to put down since.

When the twins were born, we decided that we wouldn't be going down that road again, and as soon as they were beyond needing to eat every 4 hours or so we started training them to go to bed at a specific time. It was the best thing we ever did--for everyone in the house. People would come over when they were 2ish and be amazed that we could just say "Bedtime" and they would gallop happy as clams down the hall and jump in bed waiting to be tucked in lol! If I can be so brazen as to give ANY advice to anybody, it would be to set a bedtime early in life--or else you're going to have to fight for one later, when they're big enough to argue with you in earnest LOL! I know it's a cliche, but the best thing in the world that we found was a bedtime "ritual" that never changed. They started picking up on those "settle down bedtime is coming" cues pretty quickly, and it made it so much easier now that they're all three up and running :)

Oh, and as far as breaking the mommy is a pacifier thing, the breastfeeding consultant I asked about it told me that if the baby was obviously not really nursing, but just comfort suckling, to use your finger to break contact and take it away, screams or no--one thing that I hadn't really thought about was that just like laying down to sleep with a plastic bottle of formula, keeping a nipple in his mouth for long periods of time while he wasn't nursing allowed a small amount of very sugary milk to dribble into his mouth, and it would damage his forming teeth. (You know--the babies whose teeth come in ucky and black!!!) Not to mention the fact that I was convinced my nipples were going to actually just fall off soon. . . :)

Good luck--I know it's hard listening to them cry (it makes you feel like a big ogre), but in the next couple months, you're going to NEED to start sleeping again LOL!!

Angela