Sleeping

I have problems with my child sleeping at night. Have been to 4 sleep centres with no luck. Can't remember the last time we got to sleep through the night.
When my child is sleeping we have to walk on tip toe, TV down low, phone off the hook etc etc as she hears the grass grow.
Can anyone out there give me some ideas as I am willing to try just about anything so the 4 of us can get a good nights sleep.

How old is bubs?

I don't know how old your bubs is so this may be irrelevant! My daughter didn't sleep thru the night until a couple of months at about 19mths. I tried all the common approaches but nothing even helped! We then went on a trip to Tassie where she got to meet her 3 young cousins. She had such a good time that any sleep patterns that i did have went out the window, late nights no day sleeps etc.
The miracle to this story is that the day we got home she was so exausted she slept thru the night! As it took a week or so for her to catch up she had now created new habits and to this day she now sleeps 12hrs every night!
We believe that her waking up every 3-4 hrs for the first 18mths was just a habit as i kept trying to pacify her and she would expect the attention!

Your right. My son is a light sleeper and is 6 1/2 months old. He too wakes 3 - 4 times a night with me giving him the dummy back to go off to sllep. We do need to change the pattern they have developed but sometimes this is difficult. I have not yet changed his pattern and I know to do this it will take countless sleepless nights and patience. One day soon I will need to do this. Thanks for the advice.

Hi Smokey. My son is 6 1/2 months old and is also a very light sleeper. It drives my husband up the wall that we have to be so quiet. I'm going to try putting a radio on very low volume in his room just to muffle all the other noises around him so any other noise will not be so defined to him. I will let you know how I go.

Have you heard of white noise ? such as the noise of a vacuum cleaner or a fan. It provides a background noice for baby which can help them sleep without being woken up by outside distractions. You can record the vacuum on a tape or you can also buy white noise machines from homedics which also have other sounds on them as well. hope this helps .

My 11 month old twins got really use to going to sleep on the breast that they would wake up every two hours or so and want to go back on for comfort feeding. After nine months of waking up to the two of them every two hours we sort professional advice which included a hospital stay to get them on to the bottle and sleeping through. The general philosophy was to feed them as much as possible to eat and drink through the day so all of their nutritional requirements were satisfied, allowing them to sleep through the night and to my amazement it worked! Be aware though that if your baby has been doing it for a while it may be baby's habbit rather than a nutritional requirements in which case you have to resist feeding during the night and just try and comfort them back to sleep in other ways, if they know they aren't going to get a warm bottle of milk they should stop waking soon enough. I have found excellent advice in a book called "Toddler Taming" it has a lot of stratergies!

my son was doing the same thing so i put a radio on timer in his room down low. if he would stir i would go and check him and put his bottle back in his mouth and put the mobile on and walk out. if he would then stir again i would not go back in there. The first time i did that i left him for fifteen mins and he went off to sleep. i have now been doing that for three months now and he knows when he is put in bed with his bottle and mobile on that it is time to sleep. it is a matter of trying different things and i found that it worked and i never have a drama now. hopefully this can be of an assistance.

Hi Smokey,

I know how you must be feeling. With our middle boy we couldn't even breathe in his room and he'd wake up! He never slept through the night until he was almost 3 and after having his tonsils and adenoids removed as well as grommets in his ears. With baby No.3, i left all doors and windows open when I put him to bed, and even left the tv going, and tried not to be so quiet so he'd be used to noise when he slept. He can pretty much sleep through the other two jumping around the house and the Husbands snoring!! Also no.3 has a dummy and when he wakes we just "plug" him up again and back to sleep he goes.
The radio idea's that other mums have posted seems to have worked for a few people i know.
Good luck smile

I don't know how old your girl is but my little boy started sleeping through at about 6-7 weeks old. He doesn't sleep much during the day - only naps. But the vacuum cleaner works very well and the dryer. They love the 'white noise'. It seems to drown out everything else. Once asleep he will pretty much sleep through anything. At night time when we put him to bed he will pretty much put himself to sleep if he hasn't gone to sleep sucking his bottle. I just put him into his cot and turn out the light and within a few minutes he will be asleep either by talking himself to sleep or very pathetic/half-hearted whinging. At first he liked to go to sleep with his dummy, but now shakes his head until the thing falls out if he has it in, so as soon as I see this I know he is tired and it's in his way, so out it comes and he quickly drops off. If the vacuum cleaner works or a taping of it, you can adjust the volume, you can pretty much make as much noise as you like and then turn it down and then off and they should stay asleep. I just let him go into a deep sleep before I turn it off as it can wake him up if I do it too quickly. It is very good for colicky babies and I use it during the day and early evening.

Hi Laurie. My name is sue I have 3 kids under 5 years old Matthew 4, Sarah 3 next month September 2003 & Jessica 10 months old. I live in NSW.
My e-mail address is susiesmile@optusnet.com.au I would love to get a e-mail from you. We can talk about anything



sue keeffe.
NSW

As the others i to know what its like. Emily will not sleep the night. We have had a few nights where she has gone from 10pm to 5am (bliss) but generally we wake 2+ times, we have tried music, not feeding at night (only resulted in her waking more). She is fed or rocked to sleep with a dummy and i have tried to let her cry it out with no success so sorry really no help but it is good to know that there are others out there.