when did your DD/DS stop their frequent night waking?

[sloane]

my DS is a frequent night waker (on average every 1-2 hours) & has been pretty much since birth. we had a wonderful month where he'd sleep for 4-6 hours for his first stint at night & then wake every 2 or 3 hours but since he worked out how to roll at 3 months it's all gone a bit haywire! DS is BF, feeds to sleep (although he seems to be slowly growing out of it) & feeds back to sleep overnight. he & i co-sleep.

i don't expect him to sleep all night yet (although i would, of course, love him to!) but i need to hear that there is light at the end of the tunnel! it's an amazingly emotional journey - some days i'm fine with it & on a bit of a high knowing i'm doing okay with broken sleep. other days it's a massive pity party & i feel completely hopeless & exhausted

so...would anyone like to share with me when things started to improve for you & whether you intervened (and how & at what age) or whether it all just happened naturally as they were developmentally ready to sleep longer stretches?

i've put this in the gentle parenting forum because that's what works for us. i don't like CIO or CC & i really don't think it would work with DS because he gets distressed really quickly & is very difficult to calm if he does get like that.

[Ginger]

my ds1 seemed to stop the frequent night waking once he started to walk (13 months). we didn't intervene in any way, it just kinda happened by itself.
i'm hoping the same thing happens with ds2
hang in there!

[allycat06]

My DS is a frequent waker too, so I'd love to hear what others have to say. Sometimes he goes all day without a nap and still wakes up 4-5 a night
I'm hoping the walking thing works!

[Heaven]

Oh damn, my DD has been walking for a couple of months and it hasn't helped She's 12 1/2 months now and still waking frequently. I hope it's not too much longer but I'm going to try night weaning now that she's 1.

[~Kim~]

With DD it was about 12months i think. She just did it on her own.
DS is another kettle of fish, and I'm just waiting him out.

[Sterla]

My DS started sleeping better around 12 months (which is when he started walking). He now wakes 1-2 times a night, which is definitely manageable! I didn't change anything - he did it all on his own.

[sloane]

thank you everyone for replying.

it sounds like it often just rectifies itself which supports the theory that they sleep when they're ready & you can't force it to happen.

heaven & allycat - i hope your little ones start sleeping better for you soon. and kim - i know you've had some nightmares with your DS (yeah, i stalk threads about crazy sleepers ) & i hope he sleeps better for you soon.

for those of you who've come out the other side - were you feeding back to sleep? sometimes i get myself in a knot over whether corey will ever sleep for longer stretches if i keep feeding him back to sleep. although i can tell from some of the feeds that he really was hungry/thirsty.

heaven - sorry, one more question! with the night weaning - were you looking at following the dr jay gordan suggestion for night weaning? i really like his suggestion & i'm keeping it in mind for a few month's time.

[Spring Angel]

About 12 months DS just seemed to change overnight in terms if how much attention he need during the night. It was so nice because he was feeding 3 hourly for such a long time.

It got even better by 2 and now he takes himself off to bed. He sometimes needs cuddles during the night now but it is mostly when he's had a bad dream.

HTH
Spring

[Campari]

My DD was a seriously frequent night waker too, and always fed (BF) back to sleep - sometimes co-sleeping, but more often in her own cot. With minimal intervention (we were too tired to try any techniques and definitely didn't want to CIO / CC) she eventually slept through at 16 months. We had a horror stage at 12 months where she was waking & feeding hourly, but then between 13 months and 16 months it gradually improved til she was sleeping 7-7. so, yep, sometimes the tunnel is long but there will be a light at the end!

[Heaven]

Yep! We're going to try the Jay Gordan one, I will let you know how it goes.

[sloane]

coooool! i loved his 'pay the baby' concept. so true - if you get more sleep you gotta keep your promise to do more stuff with them. good luck, i'm looking forward to hearing about it

spring angel & campari - thank you both. i'm feeling much more positive & reassured from all the lovely responses, it's always so good to hear you're not alone

[Miss Piggy]

My DD was a seriously frequent night waker too, and always fed (BF) back to sleep - sometimes co-sleeping, but more often in her own cot. With minimal intervention (we were too tired to try any techniques and definitely didn't want to CIO / CC) she eventually slept through at 16 months. We had a horror stage at 12 months where she was waking & feeding hourly, but then between 13 months and 16 months it gradually improved til she was sleeping 7-7. so, yep, sometimes the tunnel is long but there will be a light at the end!

This pretty much sums up my experience with my DS, except he was 18 months when he started to sleep through. He sleeps now for about 11 hours at night.
He sleeps (and always has) for about 4 1/2 hours during the day and i was thinking that that could be related to him sleeping less at night, but his day sleep hasn't been affected at all.
As a PP said it just goes to prove that they will do it when ready

[goddessofdawn]

OH my goodness, I know this thread is a few months old but I am SO heartened to read about all the lights at the end of your tunnels

I too feed my 8.5 month old DD to sleep, and back to sleep when she wakes 1-2 times a night (sometimes 3 times a night, but that's been less often these days).

I just had her 8-month checkup with the child health nurse, who advised me to night wean her before she turns 1 year old... otherwise it's much harder.

So it is possible that they just stop waking up for feeds during the night, all on their own???

[sloane]

hi goddessofdawn

i was really happy to read people's stories as well! now we're a few months on and my DS turned 1 a couple of months ago. i've only just started to try & night wean - i wanted to wait until he was 12 months/i thought he was ready.

at about 11 months he'd become less consistent on the feeding to sleep & so i decided he was ready for me to gently break this habit. i didn't really take note of how long it took, but it was only a few days before he stopped feeding to sleep & i could put him down sleepy but awake - a state that i had thought just didn't exist for him! i still continued to feed back to sleep overnight because i thought he needed it (emotionally) & i was too tired to try & break the cycle.

we haven't quite come to the end of the nightweaning - i've chosen to try the jay gordan approach - but i can't believe the progress we've made. while the wakings haven't really reduced in number (but i don't expect that for another week or two), he can be patted back to sleep instead of 'needing' the feed. i can't comment on whether babies become more difficult to nightwean as they get older as DS is my first but i don't believe he was ready at 8 months & i do believe he's ready now & that's why he's responding.

i think it is possible they stop waking for feeds on their own but also think it depends on the baby. with my DS, i'm not sure that would have been anytime soon & i know it was habit/emotional because the few times he's stayed with DP's mum in the evening, we've had to wake him to pick him up & take him home & he'll have been asleep for 4+ hours (where at home he'll wake 2 hourly).

i think the other thing to consider is that even with nightweaning, i have to be prepared that my DS may continue to wake overnight, he just won't need a feed to go back to sleep.

anyways, sorry for the essay! hope it works out for you, whatever you decide to do - it sounds like your DD is going in the right direction if she is waking less than she was (i.e. 1-2 times a night rather than 3) so she may well get there soon on her own

[goddessofdawn]

Thanks heaps Sarah, it's great to know that things are improving for you!

Yeah my DD slept for an 8-hour stretch last night
Lately she has been sleeping for at least 5.5 hours, which means only two calls for room service a night.
So I hope she continues to improve.... Meanwhile I will keep doing what works!

[~Kim~]

goddessofdawn me thinks it's been a while since your MCHN had a night feeder .....that just doesn't sound like great advice to me.
My little guy is nearly 17 months old and only recently night weaned. He did it with only very gentle encouragement. Sometimes I still get hungry at night and they have much smaller tummies than me. DS still wakes up on average 4-5 times between 11pm when i go to bed and 7am...but I'm so used to it now. So night weaning isn't guaranteed to help them sleep through either IYKWIM?

[onthefly]

We night weaned at 14 months. It did not improve the night wakings.

In answer to the original question, DS stopped the very frequent night wakings at around 18 months. Since that time, he sometimes sleeps through and sometimes wakes, but only 1-2 times usually, unless he's sick.
Absolutely nothing we did made any real difference to the wakings. All we could do was find ways to surive. When he was happy and comfortable, he slept well. When he wasn't (ie, most of the first 18 months of his life) he didn't.

Goddessofdawn, night feeds at that age would be pretty much par of the course. And 1-2 wakeups a night is good! Sounds like she's close to sleeping well all on her own

[Indadhanu]

Jazz stopped at 18 months. She was waking more than 5 times a night and it was exhausting! At 12 months we started using the NCSS and also an amber necklace, which both seemed ot make a huge difference. She went down to about 2 maybe 3 wakings a night which was pure BLISS! At 13-14 months we moved her fro co-sleeping with us to her own room, onto a floor bed (ie. double bed mattress on the floor lol) and she dropped down to to one wake-up a night about two months later (so she was about 16 months old). Then at about 18 months she seemed to grow out of it. We tried with no success to night wean at 14 months when she went to her own room , so didn't persist, and she and she just stopped at the beginning of the year when she started sleeping through. She has slept through since then, with only a few exceptions if she has been sick or eaten food with preservatives or colourings.

My own personal opinion is that it's harder to night wean them if they aren't ready. In my mind, that has nothing to do with age.