Not a pro by any means. Have a one year old. Never, ever, ever slept through the night, as I imagine myself walking eyes,half closed to his room, (knowing I will never recover from all of this lost sleep) pat him, pick him up give, him a bottle, rock him, and back to bed. Waking up approximately fours hours later doing the same thing.

So at 9 months, week from H-E-** Let him cry for up to an hour and 1/2 after only once going to rub his head/chest, and assure he was okay. Then went to bed holding the pillow over my ears praying to God for him to stop crying and go to sleep. I love my baby, he’s is the biggest Mama’s boy ever. I give him all the loving and more, but Mama isn’t doing herself any good either if she doesn’t get some rest.

Since….13 months, old, sleeps from 8pm to 530-6am. Waking occasionally due to teething/sick times.

Toddler, I can only count the days till this time comes with B. I will just continue to read to get some future advice=)

it may have already been covered by some folks now (sorry – just don’t have the time today to skim through all comments)…

Re: cranky and whining. Whine back at them. Make it over the top obnoxious and show them what it is like when they whine to you. I’ve been doing this to my girls, and they immediately get it (and then forget it two days later and around we go again).

Regarding night time – its all about routines. If the routine is to wake up a give him a bottle, then that is why he wakes up – to get him a bottle. I suggest (and our Doctor suggested to us when our youngest turned 1 and was still waking up in the middle of the night for a feeding) make that mid-night feeding as unremarkable an event as possible. No eye contact. No talking. If you HAVE to change the diaper, ok, but maybe wait until morning to do that? And if you have to feed him – feed him water? Better yet, if you can leave a sippy cup of water in the crib with him (I don’t remember – can six month olds drink from sippy cups yet?) then try that. If not, maybe have that 11pm bottle be a BIG BIG bottle – enough to tide him over?

Perhaps try phases (sorry – I’m all over the map here). Try changing the diaper, and then putting him right back down. Or try giving him some water, but don’t change, and right back down. Start diminishing the number of “things” that are happening at night. And then eventually drop the other activity.

The point is, get to a routine where sleeping through the night without distraction IS the routine. You may have to let him cry it out a bit. My wife hates that. I do too, but also believe that occasionally letting them cry it out gets them so tired they can’t help but to fall back asleep by themselves.

Sorry for the rambling and scattered suggestions. Hope some of it helps.

You don’t even need this advice, but for me, it’s the hardest to keep in mind when my two kids are being jerks, and that is: Wait it out, because there is probably nothing you can do about either kid issue – it just has to run its course.

In the meantime, employ whatever sanity saving measures you can come up with, like running away from home the second you get the chance. And then…go somewhere fun. Like Target. (How sad is it that Target is where I run to when I need a break? Answer: saaaaad.)

OH. Something that helped me last Monday when I was having a tough time of things: I took the girls to IHOP (by myself, ugh) for the first time. But actually, it wasn’t that bad, and I let my oldest have a horribly bad for you chocolate chip pancake with whipped cream and my youngest had egg substitute and bits of one pancake (no syrup), and it just started the day off really well.

Much better than starting the day/week off with a struggle to get the oldest to injest anything, anything at all, and watching in despair as my youngest grinds oatmeal into her hair. And then sitting around the house counting down the hours until naptime.

I am right there with you on the whining. If I could just build some kind of whine-powered generator, I could solve the world’s energy problem.

This is going to sound bizarre, but the only thing that has given us any relief is “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. Sofia accidentally caught some of it on TV, and she was totally mesmerized. We read the book, and now she knows all of the characters and why they are bad, and she aspires to “act like Charlie”. Now whenever she has a freak out I ask her, “Are you acting like Charlie right now? Or are you acting like Veruca Salt?” It takes a while to sink in, but about half the time it actually gets her to calm down. Half the time it works, and having the shortcut phrase “Veruca Salt” allows me to quell the temptation to call her a spoiled brat.

My daughter did the get up at 3am thing until I just couldn’t take it anymore. What I did was go into her room, give her her paci, rub her back, pick her up if she was really upset, quiet her down, walk back to my room, wait until she started crying again, repeat, ad infinitum, until she went to sleep.

It took about a week, and it was a rough week, because feeding her meant she would go right back to sleep, and this way it took about an hour for her to go back to sleep, but she started sleeping through the night after that. Basically, the theory was to stop rewarding her waking up with food, since I was reasonably confident it was habit not hunger waking her up. And to avoid CIO, which I don’t have the stamina for.

I don’t know if anyone suggested this or not but have to tried keeping Dylan up later rather then putting him in bed at 7:30?

When both of my girls where babies, we kept them up as late as we could and made sure they had full bellies and that resulted in them sleeping through the night sooner. We started doing this when they were newborns – my oldest slept through the night when she was 6 weeks and my youngest slept through at about 2/3 months.

Baby bedtime was always around 11/ 11:30, later if we could keep them up. But, around 10:30 it was cereal time… around two months of age, I started feeding them rice cereal with a spoon (mixed with formula in a bowl). We’d take our time eating and playing, and then wash them up, get pajamas on and we’d hold them or play with them on the floor. (This also made the transition into eating baby food a little easier since they had already been eating off a spoon)

I can’t stand to hear my kids cry so CIO would have never been an option for us. I remember my parents did that with my sister (she’s 22 now) and it drove me crazy listening to her cry. I told myself I would never do it.

I don’t know if this is doctor recommended either, but it worked for us and we weren’t losing sleep due to middle of the night feedings. Both of my girls have been excellent sleepers and of course as they got older we tweaked the bed time. They’re 10 and 6 now and go to bed at 8:30 during the school year. I need the peace and quite more now than I did then so it all worked out.

As far as the whining goes, I still have a whiny 10 year old. I do the “Until you can speak to me in words I understand, I will not be able to listen to you” thing and it works.

(Oh and the 123 magic works too as one commenter suggested. We do that for misbehavior, works especially well for outings when time out is not an option).

As most people have said, every baby is different. But this worked for my 3.5 month old.

After a month of getting up around 3am to eat, I decided she wasn’t acting very hungry anymore at this time. She was over 12 pounds, and everything I’ve read says they can sleep through the night once they weigh this much.

So instead of feeding her, I rocked her back to sleep at 3am. It took 30 minutes, but it worked. The next night, it took me 5 minutes to rock her back to sleep. The next night, a minute.

And now she doesn’t wake up! She sleeps from about 8pm until around 7am. She talks to herself in her crib for awhile each morning and I wait to feed her until about 7:30am.

When I started doing this, I noticed that she ate more the next day, since she didn’t get her 3am feeding, just like the book said would happen. I nurse, so I’m not sure how much extra formula you’d need to feed Dylan to compensate for not being fed in the middle of the night, but just do whatever feels right. Babies are smart – he will figure it out!

my advice for dylan is to put him in huggies overnights (if he’s in size 3 diapers yet, they start at size 3), dont’ worry about the middle of the night diaper change, and either cut that bottle out entirely, or make it smaller until it’s gone. you may need to do some crying-it-out, but really, at his age, he shouldn’t need that bottle. he’ll make up for it during the day.

don’t you love how i’m an expert on babies and i’m on my first? but i’m on my first three, i had to get rid of the middle of the night bottle for triplets, so i think one should be pretty easy. :D (you can slap me, if you want.)

my boys are 8 months old (but 6.5 months, adjusted) and have been doing without that 3 am bottle for about 2 months now. bliss!

ps i just realized how badly my reply was written. let me add:

when i say “make the bottle smaller”, i meant decrease the amount of milk in the bottle until it’s too little for him to bother getting up for.

huggies overnights rock. we went from waking up every morning with pee (or worse) soaked jammies to dry babies! hooray! i had to order them from amazon, but maybe your stores carry the size 3.

Ugh, sorry. The sleep deprived should not have to face a whiney kid. That’s a recipe for disaster!

Here’s a summation of my sleep experience:

Baby #1 – rocked to sleep every night + monitor on full tilt so that we could respond to every rustle = no self soothing skills + extremely tired parents

Baby #2 – flexible schedule + moderate fussing allowed = remarkable self soothing skills + sleeping through the night since 2 months old

Of course there are issues such as teething or growth spurts that cause the occasional night time crying. But that is the exception rather than the rule. And we don’t feed him, just soothe him. That early morning bottle is probably more of a habit than a necessity. A few nights of dealing with the fussing may net you more nights of solid sleep in the long run.

PS – “Babywise” is my hero.

I’ve got a whiny 3.5 year old and I can say that it’s been like this since he turned 2. That child can whine over anything and goes from zero to demon in about 1.1 seconds.

*But* it seems to have been getting better the last few weeks. For example, when I had to put him into time out the other day for throwing his glasses (for 10,000,000th time) instead of laying in the floor and pitching an almighty fit, he actually walked over to the corner and sat down with minimal fuss. I looked over at husband in disbelief because we usually have to carry him kicking and screaming to the timeout spot. He hates being punished. I’m hoping we’re at the peak and the closer we get to 4, the less whining there will be. *fingers crossed*

I have a 3 year old and an almost 7 month old and … I have no advice for either malady. My 3 year old is on the autism spectrum, so crankiness appears to be part of the package. I try and remember that he’s a toddler, too, so I try to tell him *every time* that it’s unacceptable to shriek, or scream, or whine, etc.

My 7 month old is not sleeping all night either, she’s on a similar schedule to your Dylan. She goes to bed a bit earlier (6:30) and sleeps til around 1:00 and then around 5:00 and then until around 7:00. I haven’t slept in months, she is breastfed and doesn’t take a bottle (which BLOWS for me). As long as she is hungry when she wakes up, i.e., will eat and not mess around, I am going to go in and feed her. It doesn’t take long and I’m just not ready to let her lie there crying yet if she’s hungry. My sleep book (the above mentioned Healthy Sleep Habits…) allows for the night time feedings you mention until they are 9 months old, so that is what I’m going with. It also talks about learned waking, which is when they get up just because they know you’ll come and they miss you! That is a tricky one, I am praying that my girl just starts to sleep soon because I hate – HATE – the sleep training part of motherhood. I hope it gets better for you soon, I feel for you.

I agree with Kalisa on the “1-2-3 Magic,” and I’d add that with our kidlet, I simply tell him, “I can’t hear you when you are whining, sniveling, screaming, etc.” I tell him he must ask appropriately, then model the behavior and tone of voice I expect until he asks in that manner. This only works if you are going to grant the request, of course… Sometimes the answer has to be “no,” and you must not let yourself be drawn into the argument. You just refer to the magic book then… On the sleeping, I have no advice other than we took kidlet into our bed, and that was probably a huge mistake, but I had.to.sleep. He still wants to be in our bed, but he’s mostly sleeping in his own now, if someone will just lie down with him, read him two stories, and stay until he is sleeping. He might come get in bed with us in the wee hours, especially if his allergies are bothering him.

Uh, my daughter is nearly 17 months old and rarely sleeps through the night. Let me in on your secret, please!

when my monkey was 3, we had a long session of whines. about a year and a half. it started at 2½ and continued until about 4. as for sleeping through the night? that didn’t happen for her (us?) until she was two. that was with me trying EVERYTHING ANYONE suggested. what worked? sleeping with me. that was the only thing. then i switched her to a big girl bed at two. it was like magic. i loved it.

You probably have enough advice on this, but have you tried pushing Dylan’s sleep time off a little? We used to keep Max up until about 10 pm, then feed and change him, and he would sleep until 5 or 6 am.

I have a suggestion for everybody. Drop your kids off at Gillian’s place.

Travel back in time and make JB go through the old snip snip.

My almost 5yr old is in the complete butthole stage right now. We figured out (too late) that yelling doesn’t work, it just makes it worse. Hmm. Ya think? We, too, are now trying to be patient and speak calmly like you, but it is VERY trying and VERY hard when I just want to pull her hair out. But she responds better to calm voices. Maybe he’s getting some molars in? (do they get molars at three? I don’t remember) That’s the best I can come up with. Sorry.

I let both my girls cry it out when I wanted to cut out that middle-of-the-night bottle. And they both only cried less than 10 minutes. Longest 10 minutes of my LIFE, but they are both great sleepers now and do not wake up at night unless they’re sick. If Dylan’s going right back to sleep after that nighttime feeding, he doesn’t need it. You just have to be ready to commit to letting him cry (if he even does cry). Until you’re ready, keep the routine. Don’t not get him one night and then get him the next night. You can do it!

Oh, Linda. The threes are TEN TIMES WORSE than the twos. I’m sorry to tell you, but there is nothing to do except, as someone said above, clench your teeth and hold on. By the time he’s 4.5-5, he’ll be a joy again (I’m loving my 5 year old right now more than I ever thought possible!) and you’ll reconsider the whole “I’m going to sell you to the gypsies” thing.

I don’t have any magic advice, at least none that no one above me has said. I have a two-year old and a almost four-week old so I am with you every step of the way.

I read your comments and flag the posts that I know I’ll need in a few months because on the whole (other than the ParentDish bungoles – seriously, how did you not punch Rachel Campos-STFU in the ovaries, I’ll never know) your commenters usually have wonderful advice and are very down-to-earth.

Lesley: Uncalled for.

I cannot be the only parent here who believe that letting babies cry – regardless of their weight or what their doctors tell them – is wrongwrongwrong. It’s proven to not be good for them physically or psychologically. Google it if you don’t believe me.

The point of my last (deleted) entry was just that part of being a parent is lack of sleep. Just because it’s night time doesn’t mean that our children will shut off like a doll or a television. They still have needs, they will wake up and miss you or be hungry or wet and it’s all part of the deal of being a parent. I don’t complain because it’s not that big of a deal. If you’re tired during the day and you’re a SAHM, then nap with them. If you’re a working parent, turn off the tv or put down your book and go to sleep earlier.

My child has never, NOT ONCE cried at night because he sleeps beside me in our bed and knows he’s safe and I’m near him, and he’s nearly 11 months old.

I’m far from a perfect parent, but I never, ever EVER allow my child to cry, day or night. And again, my personal opinion is that CIO is child abuse.

Maybe Riley still isn’t feeling 100% yet, hence the whineyness?

And, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but my son didn’t sleep through the night until 12 months. He was up twice a night for a year. It sucked, so much. I was so, so sleep deprived. I tried everything, bought tons of books, and ended up convinced that a kid just will not sleep through until they are ready. Period. So I hope that Dylan gets ready, soon.

Um, Gillian? You never let your kid cry, day or night? Can we all say spoiled rotten???

I don’t have much assvice to offer and I’m only on my first child, but from what I’ve read, waking one or two times a night at six months is actually, sadly, normal. And also, Ferber? No-Cry Sleep Solution? Sears? FUCK THEM ALL … they don’t actually KNOW YOUR BABY. I do feel your pain though.

Does he sleep in a crib the whole night? Bassinette? Swing? Maybe mix it up and maximize time where he sleeps best? I dunno …

One more thing: Does he sleep on his stomach? Once babies can roll over on their own, stomach sleeping is safe, (anyone: if you doubt me, email me! and I’ll explain) but, at 3am is he trying to roll over and just waking himself up, or getting stuck?
Also, I think some would say you don’t need to feed him again, but I’m nursing my 7 month old and when he wakes in the night which isn’t every night, but does happen, I nurse him back to sleep after a fast in-the-dark diaper change and we’re all sleeping again within about 30-40 minutes.

Geez, Gillian, grow a sense of humour.

As for your advice to nap with the kids when they do – “If you’re tired during the day and you’re a SAHM, then nap with them. If you’re a working parent, turn off the tv or put down your book and go to sleep earlier,” – parents aren’t robots either and can’t just drop off to sleep automatically when their children do.

You can also Google sleeping in the same bed with your children and find plenty of naysayers on that score. Psychologists and psychiatrists – oh I forgot that PD moms are loathe to listen to anything professionals have to say – have come out against this because it’s extremely difficult to wean kids out of mom’s bed and you’ll eventually be facing some very difficult nights of screaming and crying when the cognizant kid interprets you kicking her out as rejection.

Also, parents need privacy and sex once in a blue moon and this is usually best accomplished when kids are sleeping in another room.

(This is a moot point, probably but worth tossing in. There have been cases of infants dying from mom or dad rolling over them in their sleep and not realizing. Personally if I had an infant in my bed I’d be on tenterhooks all night worrying about the dangers.)

I’m pretty sure most moms are quite aware that parenthood involves sacrifices. They don’t need somebody telling them that.

I’m not a parent, so I can’t comment on your advice, Gillian, but I am a person, so let me comment just a little on your delivery. You may very well be a well-intentioned, loving person who takes fantastic care of your children, but something about the way you’ve worded your comments (both of them) comes off as being superior and judgmental. There are certain ways of saying things that make other people bristle, and you’re saying your things that way.

I don’t know what to tell you about how to change your delivery and possibly fit in here where we’ve managed to figure out how to say things without putting others off, but luckily Sundry can simply continue to delete your comments until you learn to play nice.

Wow guys…come on. I was soooooo happy to delete the PD feed from my daily reading because of the negativity and personal attacks, and now this is going on here. This should be a non-judgmental forum so if you don’t have anything positive or constructive to contribute don’t post. Why you may ask, because that it how Sundry is.

This is her space that she has so graciously opened up for the world to read. And yes some may say that blogging will inherently open you up to personal attacks, but why should it be that way?

I think of blogging as a sort of invitation into the bloggers home. Would you sit in her living room and berate her, or any of her guests, in front of a house full of people? If that is something that you would do, if that is in your personality then I’m sure you would not have been invited in the first place. But if somehow you did get in you would be asked to leave. And, huge personal opinion here, but I think that’s exactly what should happen here.

Again this is just my opinion (that is now open to personal attacks I’m sure). But I have a lot of respect for Sundry because she is so open and honest and I couldn’t just sit by and watch it happen here.

Sundry – I am happy you announced that you leaving PD on PD because if you had just disappeared I would have missed your wonderful honesty and amazing sense of humor. Plus I would have probably not thought to search out your blog. I am just immensely sad that in doing that you may have allowed the negative vibe to find you elsewhere.

gillian, i hope you are gifted with multiples one day. it is a blessing, but if you think you can make it so they don’t ever cry, please let me know how you did it.

Hi! I’m a new reader, I’ve been lurking around your blog for a couple of weeks now and wanted to finally say how much I love your writing AND maybe even offer advice on the sleeping. I have an almost 10-month old daughter and I have to say that a kind of Ferber method works for her. However, two things I have learned is that 1) no two babies are the same 2) it will only work if you and your partner are on the same page. It might be a couple of hard nights, but babies are smart and he’ll catch on! Just make sure you guys are both on board – nothing worse than arguing about what to do about your crying baby at 4AM (my lovebug’s preferred wakeup time). If you’re really not prepared to wake up in the middle of the night anymore, you’ll be able to do it. Also, I agree wholeheartedly with the baby monitor suggestion – you’ll be able to hear if he’s really distressed. Voilà! Thanks again, love your blog.

[…] One of my favorite mommybloggers recently wrote about her six-month old son still waking in the middle of the night (from what I can tell, he’s only waking once- at 3am). She wants him to stop waking up so that she can get a good night’s sleep. She’s a working mom and also has a two year old, so her situation is much different than mine- I’m a stay at home mom who works from home doing odd things like sewing slings. The thought of dealing with a toddler and a baby at the same time literally makes me not want to have another one because of how tired I’d feel all the time. Seriously. […]

There are so many different different parenting philosophies out there – you have to just follow your own instincts. If your instincts are telling you to get up in the middle of the night and feed your baby, then do it. Trust yourself. If, however, your instincts say – stay in bed, and you are getting up anyway, then you have a problem…

I emailed you about sleeping issues. I’m too chicken to discuss such hot topics in public :P

No name, no email because I’m at work, but I am a Grandma and raised two sons. When Riley whines, try what my daughter-in-law does with her 3 yr old. Look him directly in the face and say, “Use your words when you speak to me, and no whining, or I can’t talk to you.” If he stops whining, great, if not just turn and walk away. Repeat as necessary. :-) And you thought the terrible 2’s were bad?

I too used the Weissbluth book, and it worked wonders in about three days. I still did get up with her once a night until the week she turned 8 months–and then checked with the doctor to see if she was really hungry–and my pediatrician said no, her stomach is big enough now to get through the night. So we let her fuss one night for a LONG time–but that was the only bad night. Two nights of minor fussing here and there and then BAM. Out for 10-12 hours everynight.

Take a look at the book, it seriously helps.

[…] Some Soup I told a little story, it sounded well-rehearsed. « Vacation Week Recap Girl Fights September 3, 2008 So I’ve kind of been getting into it lately with this crunchy Mom fromNova Scotia. It all started when she commented over on Sundry about how letting your children cry is child ABUSE. You can’t read her first comment as it was removed, but she followed it up with her own post on the whole CIO issue, and, well I couldn’t help putting my 2 cents in. We obviously have fundamental differences on just about every theory and manner of child-rearing, but it’s somehow fun to shake the dust off my beliefs and just put them out there and see what other people think. It seems to be the whole point of blogging no? […]