Sleeping through the night

Christine - posted on 12/30/2009

My daughter is 9 months and slept through the night until the week before Halloween. All of a sudden she started waking up once or twice in the night. We couldn't figure out what was causing her to wake. We started using a white noise machine (ours is "Rain") and she started sleeping through the night again. She still wakes sometimes, but she'll cry for 5 minutes or so and is now learning to sooth herself back to sleep.

Renae - posted on 12/30/2009

You have several options. No-cry methods and crying methods. Crying methods are most effective, have higher success rates and work quickly. No cry methods are gentle and require some time and patience. Personally, unless you and your baby are desperately sleep deprived or the sleep disturbance is adversing affecting you (contributing to PND for example) then I always recommend trying the no-cry options first as one of them usually works, you just need a little more patience. But having said that, crying methods do have their place too.

If you use a crying method I recommend you use crying it out with cry interpretation. I am not an advocate of control crying or any method where you go in and check on them as each time you go into them, you must leave again, and when you leave they go through the initial distress of being left all over again and it makes the baby more and more distressed. If you use a crying method and leave him to figure out he is supposed to go to sleep and do some research on cry interpretation and listen to his cries so that you know if he needs you, you can cry it out without distressing your baby. This method is very effective and is usually not nearly as bad as mum's expected.

The no-cry method most commonly used by behaviourists and sleep consultants is gradual withdrawal. This is where you gradually withdraw the baby from needing your help to go to sleep. This has an 80% success rate and takes 2-4 weeks.

Another no-cry method is that of UK baby whisperer Tracey Hogg, called Pick-up/Put-down. She has a website with a support forum for people using the method. This method is not commonly recognised but I have read lots of posts saying it works. Her book is called the Secrets of the Baby Whisperer.

Other good books are Save Our Sleep by Tizzie Hall (involves a little crying time before going to them) or if you are looking for a really gentle method try No Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley (though her methods take from 4 weeks to a few months).

There is lots of info out there if you google any of the above methods. You are also more than welcome to contact me for info or instructions on anything I have said - or if you are too exhausted to read the books (if I include all the instructions this post will be too long).

Tawna - posted on 12/29/2009

Thanks I will give that a try.

Aimee - posted on 12/28/2009

I gave up breast feeding just 2 weeks ago and was concerned with how to cope with the same issue. My son has slept in his own bed from earlty on but I usually just let my son feed to get him to settle if he was distrubed in the night, I instead gave him water from his beaker and a cuddle. When he realised after 3 nights that water was all that was on offer he's slept through ever since (except for 2 nights where being in a different bed was problem). Hope this helps