what do you do with your babies at night?

hello,

i've done this before with my now nearly 4 year old girl, but it is hitting me hard at the moment... my 1 year old boy has been a reasonably good sleeper, nothing crazy just a typical baby, good days and bad... he has self settled from a young age... he usually wakes once in the night for a bottle, not a huge deal... however lately i have been having bouts lasting 3 or 4 hours in the middle of the night where he just won't settle...

he has issues with constipation and i found switching him from cows milk back to formula has helped, as he was often up in the night due to needing a poo, and it generally making him unsettled...

i am not sure what is continuing to cause it, i think maybe something in his diet, but i suppose thats not really my question... my question is more on how to deal with it... the only thing that will appease him is for me to carry him around for seemingly hours on end while my eyeballs are popping out of my head. i have a playschool dvd he loves, and he did used to sit on my lap and relax and watch that in the middle of the night, which was good for me as it meant i could rest too, but lately if i even attempt to sit on the couch, he goes mental and cracks it and arches is back and screams causing me to have to walk around carrying him.... and he is a BIG BOY. heavy.

what do others do with their babies when they are up in the night with something distressing them... am i mad to even consider putting a dvd on to distract him or get some rest...? its not realistic for me to carry him around trying to settle him, what else can i do? i have tried leaving him in this cot, he cried for an hour last night then i gave up... i have tried him in my bed, which did work at one stage but now no good, he won't lie down just cries and tries to get out, i have tried rubbing his back in his cot etc, and have tried laying on a mattress in his room....

the only thing that works is the charade of me getting him up, walking around the lounge for a while, maybe putting a dvd or some music on, then trying him back in his cot, where he cries, then we repeat the process several times lasting a few hours until finally he settles miraculously in his cot having me done nothing different than the previous few attempts... i gave him panadol last night at 2am, he eventually settled at 4am, i can't conclude definitively that it helped or not...

so yeah back to my original question, what do you do with your babies when they won't sleep in the night? i really need some tips or advice. i know it won't last forever, but in the meantime how do i deal with this...?

thank you :-)

We went through a phase where this happened nightly just about, for 2 months. If I was having a good night then she'd come into my bed and I just let her kick or whatever until she was ready for sleep again. If I was having a bad night, I handed her to her dad and he would bring her back to me when she was showing tired signs.

The last few nights its been quite humid in out house rooms cooling no less than 25 degrees.

Last night she was awake from 12 - 3 after waking every 2 hours from when we put her down at 8. She was also up at 6.30am. I had her most of the night but come 6.30 I had had enough of being kicked or rolled on or snuggled into ..... tooooo hot. So I took her in to her dad (oh yes he gets kicked out most nights)

I DID discover yesterday that two of her molars have cut, one top and one bottom. I had no idea she was teething again so that explains the two months of crappy nights.

Its uo to you how you do things.

I prefer to still be resting as much as I can while miss carries on. DH prefers to sit up and interact with her. I put it down to a massive growth/development spurt.

You cannot MAKE them sleep so as soon as you resist the urger to battle over sleep the better. If sitting up watching a dvd helps, do that. If reading a story for 2 hours until you really see those tired signs, do that.

There is no one perfect solution.

Good luck hun and remember, this too shall pass.

Nae x x

Ds has done this a couple of times too. I have either sat him on the floor and just let him play while I've passed out onthe couch or I've laid down with him on my Chest and watched infomercials til he dozed off again.
Not much help, sorry, but know you're not alone!