Any advise for 18 month old sleeping?

sharonfrancis

for the dummies problem my solution is to keep ALL of them in his cot - my son is 20 mths old. He has learnt that dummies are for bed time....and when I get him out he throws his dummies back in cot. my son always used to lose his dummy in the night but given there is a load of them in there he can feel around for another.......

emma-uk

What about a dummy clip? DS has one for bed that clips onto his PJ's so when it falls out at 3am it's within his reach.

somegem

OK, tonights the night.....

I have taken the side of the cot off and am going to put the gate up.

We had a shocking few nights of sleep - he is getting worse.

It's tough love time - feel sick at the thought already...

Wish me luck please !

jopsey

Aww i feel for you so much I am going through the same with DD she is 17 months but she settles ok fall's asleep on her own and has done since day 1, but now has started waking up through the night and it's slowly getting me down xx hope it works for you xx

choccybikkie_2

Good luck and keep us posted! I too am having similar issues. 16 month old dd who uses the breast as a prop. Has not slept through the night (wakes every 2-3 hrs usually) since 4 months old. I have to feed her to sleep and every time she wakes,anything past midnight and we end up co-sleeping as i can't get her un latched and back in her bed
I have 4 kids, we've tried letting her cry but she gets soooooo worked up all it does is makes it longer to get her back to sleep and wakes the others up!She won't let dh settle her. I think I have managed the past 16 months on possibly 3 hrs sleep a night (accumilated) I feel like I can't go out with friends anymore as when I have done I get back to a distraught baby. And as for having an evening with dh......no chance. By the time the eldest is in bed of an evening dd has usually woken and i spend most of my evening sat upstairs in a dark room trying to settle her back down. Sometimes I actually feel like i'm going bonkers!
I really hope you get things sorted and i will be lurking to nick some tips x

jopsey

How did your night go op ?

somegem

Morning...

First night over with, he went to bed no problem, settled down & snuggled into his new pillow...
Fell out of bed once about 12.30, I was able to put him straight back down...
Thought this is going to be easy....
Woke at 2am & screamed for 2.5 hours !!
Just did pu/pd with about 3 - 4 minutes inbetween going in each time.
He was not happy & my DD kept waking up crying because of all the noise
The more time that went on the more resolved I became to do this though, no way can that all be wasted effort!

He woke up this morn like nothing had happened ! - how do they do that...?!?

Bring on tonight (I'll be the walking dead by the weekend)

Choccy - I can completely sympathise with your situation, it really takes its toll on relationships !
I am out on Friday night & have family staying over on Saturday - feel like cancelling it all & sleeping !

Emma - I think I make a trip to the shops today to get a dummy clip.
x

nikki1520

Hang on to the thought that you're not going to waste last nights effort- it's really hard, but hopefully it won't last long and then everyone will be happier, healthier and better rested

Stay strong, and well done!

squashy

There is another way.

There are other things you can do then controlled crying.

The very language of it makes me so sad: the child is manipulative, trying to control you, tough love, don't look at them, the child is winning. It's a BABY!! They are meant to instictively want to be near their parents!

Before I'm judged as some hippy dippy head in the clouds person, I was pretty harsh with my first child as I had in my head I had to "train" her and therefore spent every day of her little life in a battle. My third baby was a different kettle of fish, we pretty much co-slept with her and I just chilled out a bit more- instead of trying to make her comply to what I wanted I listened to her and reacted accordingly to meet the needs as best I could. Life was/is much easier this way! I am a working mum too but by being happy at home this helped us all to remain close.

I read a blog post a few months ago comparing leaving a baby to cry with leaving an elderly relative to cry...seems inhumane when you put it like that. A strong word but I am honestly full of regret for what it did for my relationship with my eldest and goodness knows what lasting effect the stress levels have had.

I would really advise moving your baby back into your room (either in the cot or in with you) where you will ALL get a lot more sleep, it's not forever as they are babies for such a short time! (Youngest has just started nursery *sniffle*)

KiKi

squashy wrote: »

I read a blog post a few months ago comparing leaving a baby to cry with leaving an elderly relative to cry...seems inhumane when you put it like that.

The comparison isn't really a valid one, though. An adult has faculties of reasoning, communicating, asking - and habits formed from a lifetime of experience.

Babies are learning habit at that age. They are learning that - as they can't yet talk - crying gets attention. Sometimes that attention is needed and warranted: for love, for food, for milk, for comfort, for company. Sometimes, though, that attention is wanted purely because they are forming a habit of something which isn't healthy for them, and is habit because of the parental response, not because of distress.

I agree that controlled crying isn't for every baby, not at all. But when you are sleeping in the child's room and they're still demanding attention every hour (not for comfort, just because they are now in the habit of waking up every hour), then going to them *isn't* always the right thing. Because what you can do as a result is create habits which are then even harder and more emotionally difficult to break once they've had years of it.

I appreciate it's something you don't feel is right for your child, and that you find it sad...but I don't feel that the comparison of leaving an elderly person to cry is a very valid one.

KiKi