Nursing/rocking baby to sleep...need desperate help.

[solongtogo]

I have created a monster. When I was nursing, DD would nurse to sleep. Now that we no longer nurse, she falls asleep at her last bottle and I go to lay her down. She has terrible seperation anxiety, and it seems for the past month, will wake up anywhere from 10 minutes-4 hours after I go lay her down and cannot go to sleep without me. I know she can fall asleep on her own, she does it at daycare, she does it during her naptime.

Can anyone PLEASE help me break this bad habit that I'm doing. I don't know what to do, and I'm at my wits end. All the sleep books are geared to helping babies sleep at night...she's a good sleeper once she gets there. It just seems she can't go to sleep with out me rocking her. I need help please!! Are there any links or anyone who's had a success story breaking this nasty habit ?? :(

[lady1297]

I don't have any advice for you, really. I still rock my son to sleep every night and he's almost 2. And I don't have a problem doing it. Your daughter is at the age, though were seperation anxiety is normal. Regardless of whether you rock her to sleep or not. So, personally, I would continue to rock her since it's giving her what she needs. That said, my husband can put my son to sleep with minimal rocking (they rock while they read books). He used to give him his bottle at night, so he did break that habit. What he did was just pick DS up and cuddle him then tell him that he would lay him back down inthe crib. And continue the pick up/put down until DS fell asleep. He basically modified suggestions from Elizabeth Pantley's No Cry Sleep Solution. She has on out for toddlers now too.

But again, I would say just relax and go with the flow, following your daughter's needs for now, since it's very normal at her age to have seperation anxiety. Especially from her mom.

[Ole Miss Bride]

I was going through the same thing with my 6-month-old. He would fall asleep while nursing, but he'd wake up fussing about 30 minutes to an hour after I'd put him in his crib. I didn't mind nursing him to sleep, but what I did mind was the hour or two of soothing/rocking/nursing to get him back down after he woke up. Once he was down, he was a great sleeper - it was just the initial getting him down for the count.

Anyway, I read "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" by Dr. Richard Ferber, and it really made sense for us. Ferber talks about the sleep associations children form, and how they can cause problems. For your DD, she associates rocking with falling asleep. When she wakes up alone in her crib, she can't put herself back to sleep without the rocking. So Ferber would suggest you teach her to fall asleep alone in her bed.

What really made it click for me was when he gave this analogy - imagine you go to sleep snuggled up with your favorite pillow every night. You wake here and there throughout the night (as we all do), arrange your pillow and go back to sleep - that's normal. But imagine once you were asleep, somebody took that pillow away from you. At the point where you normally awaken in the night, you'd be confused and would wonder where the pillow went. You'd probably look around for it in your bed. If you couldn't find it, you might get out of bed and look around the house for it. You'd have a hard time getting back to sleep because of the missing pillow. Now imagine every single night you go to sleep with your favorite pillow, and every night somebody takes that pillow away after you fall asleep. Your sleep might be disturbed, and you might even start fighting sleep, simply because you know the pillow is going to be yanked out from under you once you get there. So to get any decent sleep, it would be ideal if you learned to fall asleep without the pillow.

The same goes for your daughter and rocking her to sleep. Every night she goes to sleep snuggled up with you in the rocking chair, but when she partially wakens a bit later, she can't get back to sleep without those same conditions. If you're fine going back into her room and rocking her back to sleep - no problem. But it sounds like you're not, so you might want to start a bit of light sleep training.

I know there's a lot of controversy around here regarding STing (and Ferber, I think), but the sleep association thing really made a lot of sense to me when I read it. I'm not trying to be all Yay Ferber!, but I just had to share because it seems to be working well for us. And now that Scott is learning to fall asleep on his own in his crib without nursing, getting him down for the night is no longer a huge struggle.

-Betsy

[pixiecat]

Solong - I could have written your post a couple of weeks ago! L was getting progressivly worse about going to sleep... she went from going to sleep on her own to going to sleep next to me to going to sleep *only* if we were nursing to taking forever to go to sleep even if we *were* nursing! Argh!

I had always been against CIO, but the other week I was at my wit's end. I let her cry in her crib for 30 minutes (yup, I timed it) and she went to sleep on her own. From that time forward, and I'm not kidding here, she has gone down in less than 2 minutes with no crying. And I don't feel that our "bond" has been broken at all.

I always said I wasn't going to do it, but I guess I did and it worked for us. (Now I just have to work on getting her to sleep longer!)

Good luck!!

[solongtogo]

I am close to letting her CIO as well although I sure hate the idea. What happens though since she's all crawling all over her crib and standing up and what not...do I just let her do that until she tuckers herself out?

[SarahKatG]

We had a similar problem that lasted from when DD was 7 months until I did something about it at 9 months. She was waking at the 45 minute mark every night, often multiple times a night in 45 minute intervals. It was making me crazy!! I would go in and rock and cuddle her until she fell asleep and put her in her crib and then she'd wake up 45 minutes later. Finally, in the middle of the night one night I pulled the recliner right next to the crib and made myself comfortable. I gave her a kiss and put her back in the crib awake even though she still protesting. I sat in the chair next to her for two hours that night until she fell asleep. We did the same thing the next day for naps and at night and again it took around 2 hours. Then it dropped to 30 minutes and then 10 minutes. She learned how to put herself to sleep so that if she did wake at the 45 minute mark, she could get back to sleep without being held. It was the best solution for us. I needed to sleep but couldn't stand to CIO. Good luck!

[Ole Miss Bride]

I can only speak from the experience of having a kid who's not mobile, so I imagine CIO was a little bit easier for us than with an older child. What we did first was establish a soothing bedtime routine. My husband gives Scott his bath, then they read books together, snuggle, rock until Scott appears a little bit drowsy, then into the crib he goes, awake. If he cries, we give him five minutes, then we go to him and soothe/pat/shush, but we don't pick him up. We'll stay in his room for about 2-3 minutes, then we leave. The goal is not to get the kid to fall asleep while you're in the room because you want her to go to sleep alone, but it's to let her know that she's not deserted, and you're right there if she needs you. After that, we give it 10 minutes before returning, then we do 15 minute increments thereafter. It was tough that first night, but knowing I had just "a few more minutes" left on the clock before I could go to him made it more tolerable. He really wasn't soothed by my going in there - in fact, it seemed to tick him off because I wasn't picking him up - but it reassured me that he was fine. And I really needed the reassurance in order to stick with it.

The first night, it took about an hour and a half before he went to sleep. The second night, it took about 10 minutes. The third night, there was no crying at all. Tonight will be Night Four, so we'll see how it goes.

For us, returning to his room every so often to soothe him has worked well. I tried cold turkey CIO a couple weeks ago - where I just let him cry for an undetermined amount of time without going to him - and that did not work for us at all. He cried for over an hour, I was miserable, and I still feel all kinds of Mama Guilt about it. He never even went to sleep that night - I finally broke down and went to him because I couldn't deal.

-Betsy

[Mickey&B]

I just wanted to suggested Elizabeth Pantley's book "No cry sleep solution" (it was mentioned earlier. It really worked with us and helped me get through the seperation anxiety as well. DS still has his moments where he won't want me to leave the room, but he definetly goes to sleep better in his crib than in my arms at night. CIO just wasn't for us, besides I knew my child could cry till the cows come home :p