Please Help-son Is Doing My Head In

[*Chels*]

OK heres the deal
My DF works at 5am til mid afternoon then does night shift 7pm-11pm
DS is 18 months
I give Riley dinner at 5-5.30pm then he has booby for an hour or so and falls asleep.
I put him to bed and he wakes at least 4 times,cryingSometimes he just wants boob,sometimes I can go lie with him and he goes back to sleep.
He sleeps in our bed.I brought him a toddler bed which he started off in well(considering he never wanted to sleep in a cot)
I want to get him in his own bed.I dont mind co-sleeping(ok I love it)but DF needs a decent sleep considering he only gets around 5 hrs a night,and I want Riley to get a decent sleep too(and me!!)
I have tried putting him in his bed and doing the supernanny thing and sitting besdie him maKing no eye contact
But nights are the only time I get to myself so I want to relax and not spend 2 hours getting him to sleep only for him to come into our bed at midnight
ANY SUGGESTIONS??????????PLEASE!!!

[QTB]

my DS is the same age (almost!) hes just been thru a stage of waking up in the night a million times... i tried everything to get him to sleep thru...

daycare suggested in the end to cut down daytime sleeps cos maybe he was sleeping too much so waking at night.... i knocked out one of his daytime sleeps (he was having 2) so now he sleeps 12-2.30ish in the arvo and goes to bed at 6pm max.... hes awake early (6.30ish) but that doesnt bother me cos im up then anyway.

if Riley is still having 2 sleeps maybe try dropping one? Brayden is now sleeping thru again (thank goodness!)

Good luck, i know how frustrating it gets!!

[*Chels*]

Thanks for you reply.Riley has never been a good sleeper.He has one sleep a day(thats pretty much always been the way)
So he usually either has a sleep then lunch or the other way around.He can sleep anywhere from 45 mins to 2 hours.
I find if he has a decent sleep during the day hes not soo ovetired come a night

[raisingwhirlwinds]

Hi Chels,

Unfortunately when young kids stir in the middle of the night they expect to have the same conditions that were there when they went to sleep. If those conditions aren't there, rather than rolling over and going back to sleep, they will wake fully. Unfortunately if you are still feeding him to sleep then you are the main condition he expects to be there....... I guess this means that you need to decide how important it is not to have to wake up heaps, whether to make some changes to your routine, or to wait until he grows out of it.

If you enjoy co-sleeping then it would probably be really hard for you to think about the possibility of removing the breast feed and replacing it with a different bed time routine, but that might be what it takes.

Best of luck with whatever you decide to do.
D

[shanz]

yep my suggestion was to cut out the feeding to sleep. I watched a show with one of those sleep experts(maybe Pinky,or Tizzie) and they said the same thing. that if they are fed to sleep when their body tries to transition from one sleep cycle to the next it wants the same thing to happen as happened last time.
We did this with our son. At around 6 months. Instead of going to a nice quiet darker room to feed to sleep we would stay around noise and light. Sometimes he is only just awake. But now we can put him in his cot fully awake and he will put himself to sleep. And sleeps between 10 and 12 hours.

[punkbaby]

I am not sure if you have tried this for as long as i did, i know you mentioned it but it worked for dd when she was going through a I dont want to go to bed stage alone

as tired and grumpy as i was i found if i persavered she eventualy gave in and now sleeps all night, she is in a cot though but if she wakes up now very rarely do i have to go in there, i just call out and say its ok sweety, go back to sleep, she goes night night mum! all is good! naturally if she was in need of something she would say she is quiet good like that

Bascially at first i just sat with her, then sat away from her etc, then did the door thing, it took about ten days...yes it was hard but I am so glad i did it, no more rocking to sleep yay!!!
it might be worth the lack of sleep for a few days, thats all it can take sometimes :) DD is find if she has an early nap too before 1pm i find otherwise i dont have a hope of getting her to sleep thru!