Tips for Getting a Baby or Toddler to Sleep Through the Night (Mom-to-Mom #17)
January 1, 2009 by Angela White, J.D., breastfeeding counselor
Filed under Mom-to-Mom, breastfeeding, mothering, sleep, toddler nursing, weaning
For this latest installment in the Mom-to-Mom question and answer series, I hope you will leave a comment to help a mom struggling with something familiar to many us — getting a good night’s sleep! Even if you don’t have some suggestions, I imagine you have some experience and empathy! Read on for my summary of top tips and past articles on the subject.
I remember feeling a little betrayed by the attachment parenting experts who basically said, “Deal with it. This too shall pass,” a lot frustrated with the exhaustion, and a little baffled by what to do about the problem. I was not willing to let my nursling cry-it-out, but I was not sure what else might work. Here is the question from reader Jennifer L.:
I met a mama of a 17-month-old in the park today and of course, “The question” came up. She looked at my 14-month-old and asked in a fair, even tone, “Is yours sleeping through the night?” Even without knowing this person, the sound of victory rang through clearly in her question. Her daughter was sleeping soundly and happily due to their hard work “sleep training.” Their daughter is happy and cheerful all day and goes to sleep easily thanks to the “Sleep Easy Solution.”
My daughter only has four teeth, and I imagine 10 are in the process of breaking though, but this has been our hypothesis for the last 5 months and we’re kind of worried the others might not pop through until well after she starts kindergarten. At any rate, she is still waking up at least twice a night or more to nurse. She still needs me to put her to sleep and she has (gasp!) the habit of falling asleep while nursing.
After talking with this mama at the park, my daughter and I rode home on our bike as fast as we could to read every review of the “Sleep Easy Solution” and then we had to re-read everything that came up when I ask Google to search for “Will my toddler *ever* sleep through the night?” Oddly enough, Dr. Sears and family always come up first and I often want to blame them that we’re in this boat to begin with. I read the articles out loud with hopes that my daughter will pick up on the idea that we’re brainstorming ideas to help her sleep.
I really liked your article on getting your child to sleep through the night, and I guess I want to hear about more mommies who managed to survive lots and lots of nightly nursing sessions. The thing is, sometimes she wakes up and cries and nursing doesn’t immediately put her back to sleep. She often wants to practice bouncing on the bed at 3 am (it’s the new thing you know!). Or she just has to cry because she’s so tired and can’t sleep.
My husband is confident that she’ll just learn to sleep through the night on her own. At tired moments, my confidence wanes. I want the easy solution. I want her to be well rested and 30 minutes of everyone crying-it-out for two days sounds very appealing sometimes–if we could all get some sleep afterward. Do 15-month-old toddlers need milk 3-4 times a night?
It figures that as I write this, my daughter is sleeping fairly well for her nap today (we magically made it over the one-hour-wake-up hump without me having to intervene!) and she slept fairly well last night. Her sleep is just so all-over-the-map that I wish I could bottle whatever it was that let her sleep 8 hour stretches and recreate it more often. As it is, it seems that we get a good 8 hour stretch about once or twice a month. And then, I am the one who wakes up at 2:30 am wondering where my nursing cub is.
Your daughter is older now–does she sleep though the night and did you continue nursing her at night for as long as she wanted? Dr. Sears suggests that babies still tend to wake up at night to nurse until sometimes between 2-4 years old. Zoiks! Sometimes I feel like I am nursing a gymnast and other times it’s like nursing a kitten (at least I only have one kitten!).
Thanks for any insight–
~Jennifer
Turns out I have written a lot about sleep over the years. Sadly, I am no expert. Reading back through my posts, what I can tell you is that I mainly kept up with the two night wakings until my daughter turned two, and then we began night-weaning. We had success off and on — if my daughter got sick I would gladly nurse her in the night to get that extra milk and antibodies into her. I also want to note that once children have night-weaned, they continue to wake occasionally for various reasons: to go to the bathroom, because they’ve wet the bed, because they’re sick, because they want someone to comfort them back to sleep, because they’ve had a bad dream or night terror or they’re sleep-walking.
As you can read in the co-sleeping section, our sleeping arrangements have changed over the years, and continue to do so. Right now, the 5-month-old sleeps with me while the 6- and 4-year-olds sleep with their dad. It works for us (and I should probably elaborate on that in another post)! Rather than have you wade through the archives, I have organized the articles on sleep. If you only have time for a few, read the starred articles.
My top tips in a nut shell:
- *** Don’t CIO.
- Talk to your child about the plan, no matter how young your child is. If the child is older, have him or her help come up with ideas (choosing a favorite toy to snuggle, picking a special sippy cup for water in the night).
- Change the bedtime routine to: nurse, brush teeth, jammies, stories, sing/rock/snuggle to sleep. Repeat the sing/rock/snuggle to sleep if the child wakes in the night.
- Have mom do the settling. Maybe it’s worked better for some to have dad do the bedtime routine and/or handle the night-wakings (and if you’re one of them, leave a comment! Some call this “Crying in Daddy’s Arms” or “Fathering Down”) but for me, my children felt more safe and loved and less abandoned by me if I did the comforting. I couldn’t bear to hear my child cry with her dad, and my husband did not appreciate when I’d rush in to “rescue” my child when he had been working so hard to settle her.
- Try using a particular song for settling your child, and then sing that same song again when your child wakes. Or use a tape player or “white noise” radio (very helpful if it has a sleep setting that will turn itself off).
- If it’s not working, then stop and wait another month or two. Be flexible and allow for nursing at night when the child is sick or teething.
Newborns:
~ My current experience with my 5-month-old in Sleep, Elusive Sleep
~ Moms of babies 12 months and younger can vent their frustrations by taking the researchers’ Infant Sleep Survey
Toddlers:
~ *** Starting the process of Getting Your Child to Sleep through the Night, written when my daughter had turned two
~ Celebrating 6.5 hours of sleep in Sleep, Glorious Sleep, when my daughter was two years one month old
~ a little humor to help see you through: “The Perils of Night-Nursing”
~ Toddler Swaddle, written when my daughter was two years two months
~ Progress report at two years three months old
~ *** My three steps to successful night-weaning without tears when my daughter was two years three months old.
~ Okay, I would still nurse her in the night if she were sick…. A short musing about my then 2.5-year-old waking two times a night to nurse
~ A brief bit of encouragement in “Let Me Reassure You,” written when my daughter was two years 11 months old.
Co-Sleeping:
~ SIDS, Breastfeeding, and Co-Sleeping
~ Poll Results about Breastfed Infants Sleeping in Cribs or Co-Sleeping with Their Parents
~ News debate about the relative danger/safety of co-sleeping
~ *** Advice on Weaning from Co-Sleeping without Crying-It-Out (Mom-to-Mom #9)
~ A brief history of my and others’ co-sleeping experience in Musical Beds and the Attachment Parenting and Breastfeeding Family
~ Study comments on how co-sleeping affects maternal mental health
Leave a Comment
What has your experience been with nursing and sleeping? When did you start night-weaning? When did your child start sleeping through the night (define that however you want, just let us know)? What are your tips? What worked or didn’t work?
We night weaned by son at 2 years old and then completely weaned 6 weeks later when I went on an 8 day trip for work. This helped a little with the night wakings, but not as much as I thought. When he turned 3, we stopped laying down with him to get him to go to sleep and just sat by his bed and then eventually in the other room. He’s now 3 years and 3 months and sleeps through the night sometimes and is up 3 times (but settles very easily) other nights. I too thought there would never be a good night of sleep again.
Thanks for your comment Lori! Your insights are helpful! I reminded me that co-sleeping with our older children has helped get everyone a better night’s sleep. When my husband had to travel on a business trip, I was in charge of settling my 6- and 4-year-olds, and re-settling them in the night, and I didn’t realize just how often they were waking for one reason or another. Usually just a bad dream that required a pat on the back, or a request for a sip of water. My husband is great about handling those. I was not quite so gracious when I had to get up for them AND for the baby. I could hardly wait for him to come home again!
My DD started sleeping through the night (more than 6 hours) at 5 weeks. I think what helped us was keeping her awake during the day after she nursed. I also woke her during her naps; making sure she ate ever 2.5 hours during the day. She learned night/day pretty quickly. I’m going to do a post about this sometime on my blog soon.
Sleeping through the night is considered sleeping between 12 am and 5 am without waking. I am no longer nursing my 19 month old daughter (we weaned at 6 months and 2 days), but I remember those nights of nursing every 2 hours round the clock for the first 4 months. My daughter slept, but would only sleep if she were being held (I suspected later that she had reflux, especially after using a wedge positioner helped immensely). Then she would not go to sleep on her own until she was about 5 months old. We were on vacation, and she woke up at 5 am for her first morning nursing session. I nursed and was exhausted, but baby was awake. I laid her in the bassinet and laid back down, hoping to get a few minutes of shut eye before she was up screaming for me to help her get to sleep. I woke up 2 hours later, scared to death thinking that something bad had happened because so much time had passed, but she had put herself to sleep! She started getting better at sleeping at all times (she was a horrid napper too) and now sleeps from about 7:30 pm to 7:30 am, most nights (occasionally she wakes up, and starts bouncing around in bed too!). Anyway, we ALL wake up at night for some reason or another- we may just not remember it as we don’t usually have trouble falling back asleep (we change positions, fix the covers, kick the cat, etc). The problem is not the waking, its the help that is needed to get back to sleep. The best advice I got was to put the baby to sleep awake (but drowsy, not energized). If you night nurse, and she falls asleep, wake her up a little before you lay her down (try changing her diaper- worked for mine). Do your cuddling, singing, etc ROUTINE after nursing. And having a routine is very important. I sing to my daughter before I lay her in her crib (co-sleepign and room sharing stopped at the same time as the weaning) every night, and I sing the same 3 songs in the same order. My mom, who didn’t know our routine, was babysitting one afternoon, and tried to get my daughter to sing “You are my sunshine” with her, and she freaked out, because she thought she needed to go to bed and wasn’t tired! You can also try “forecasting”- telling your child that its almost time to go back to bed several times beforehand, so that she knows what is coming up- this REALLY works well with my daughter, and she will walk herself down to her bedroom and wait by her crib. something like, “When you are done eating/nursing, Mommy is going to change your diaper, and you are going nite-nite” (or however you would say it). So, in a nutshell, 1. Put baby down to sleep awake but drowsy, 2. ROUTINE, ROUTINE, ROUTINE and 3. Forecasting. And it will take a while to change 17 mos of habit. Give it at least a month of real consistency (don’t start anything new if you think there is going to be a change coming up). That’s the ONLY benefit of CIO, most of the time, it seems to work quickly (I tried it, and it was horrible- it made her so much more clingy and sensitive, I really think its success depends on the personality of the baby and the parents- laid back babies and parents would do better than sensitive babies and parents). Hope this helps!
Lori T, how old is your daughter now and does she still sleep through? Your comment reminded me that my daughters’ sleep varied depending on several factors: growth spurts, new developmental stages (wanting to practice babbling or crawling for example), teething, illness etc. So what worked at one age or stage might need to be re-implemented or changed for the next age/stage. I can see how not having the nursing to sleep association is helpful. My first insisted on nursing to sleep but my third has reflux and often prefers to be carried to sleep (which is another association but an easier one to handle I think).
Jennifer B, good point about the forecasting. I have always done that too, even talking about the plan earlier in the day.
Thanks for your comments!
My daughter is now 9 months old, and yes, she sleeps from 9pm-9am every night (I stay home, so I can let her sleep that long– and me, too!).
Since she started sleeping through the night, she has only awoken 3 times. Once when we were traveling and twice when she was teething, and each time, it was around midnight. The first time, I nursed her, and it took awhile for her to go back to sleep; I kept nursing, putting her down, she’d wake up, I’d nurse, etc etc. It took like over an hour. So, when she was teething, I didn’t nurse her, and she went back to sleep within 5 minutes. Putting her in her crib awake has helped.
Reading everyone’s comments so far, I don’t know how we lucked out to have a child who self-night-weaned at 7 months. She just started sleeping longer and longer stretches, and if she did wake up, she didn’t want to nurse. (She has also been off the growth charts, so I knew she was getting plenty of milk during the day.)
We co-sleep, and even when she does wake in the night, she does not ask for milk. We are teaching her sign language, so even before she started talking, she knew how to ask for it. But I also do not offer milk if she wakes.
I do not function well with lack of sleep, so I am very thankful that she is a good sleeper. I think the bedtime routine has been a huge factor in this success. We do have a special lullaby that I sing only at night that helps to settle her. But now at 19 months, she often doesn’t need a lullaby anymore.
I am not militant about schedules, but focus on keeping the same routine, both for bedtime and naptime. Meaning, naptime doesn’t have to be the same time every day, but we do the same routine leading up to naptime. Bedtime is a little more set. We generally start bedtime routine at 7pm.
I think another key to having a good sleeper is that I don’t get uptight (too often!) when she acts up or misbehaves at bedtime. I know she’s tired and cranky, so by staying calm, I help her be calm as well. Kids are so intuitive and can pick up on your mood.
Although we only have one child, I do know that every child is different. Don’t compare what your child is or is not doing to any other child. It’s not fair to you, because you start feeling as if you’re doing something wrong. Parenting takes two - the parent and the child. And generally you have to learn as you go!
Oh my gosh, reading the original mom-to-mom was like reading a diary of our own sleep situation 3 months ago. We co-slept with my daughter from the day she got home from the hospital. At five months old, when I went back to work part-time, I started on a reverse nursing schedule because she really wasn’t taking bottles (pumped milk). In September when she turned one, she was still waking every two hours to nurse, plus I was still holding her for at least some portion of her naps. Here’s what helped me:
First, we night weaned her. At first she woke up like 3x a night and I would comfort her and offer her some water if she was thirsty. Then after two or three days she didn’t ask to nurse, but she was still getting up at least twice. It occurred to me that maybe my husband and I were waking her up, so we decided to try her crib. She was already used to sleeping in her crib for naps, so I started to rock her to sleep and then putting her in the crib asleep, on the first night waking we would bring her into our bed. We did that for two weeks. Then we moved to putting her down before she fell asleep, and rubbing her back soothingly. I was amazed that she didn’t cry but I guess by now she knew that at the beginning of the night she slept in her crib. Anyway, three weeks ago we started having dad come in when she got up and put her back to sleep (I was way too much of a stimulating object to help in the middle of the night). Right before Christmas our DD slept from 8:30 to 5:30! And she’s repeated it more often than not!
Oh and I forgot: I got rid of one of her naps, it may have been a little early for it, but it really really helped her (and my sanity). Now she sleeps 2 hours on her own, and 1 hour cuddled up with me. I don’t mind that hour, I love the closeness that I have with her.
That’s my saga, hope it helps. I really wanted to co-sleep more, and I used to read blogs that said: “my child sleeps better without me” and I would be all “yeah right” about it, but it is true for my DD, she sleeps so much better in her own crib!
Thanks everyone for the great ideas and insight. We do have a very consistent nightly routine, but we need to work on switching the night nursing with story time or something else because she is falling asleep nursing. She goes through phases of good sleep (not great, but we do regularly get 5-6 hour stretches and sometimes a rare 8). Our daughter definitely sleeps better when she is not in our bed.
Last night she fussed and cried for a bit and put herself back to sleep, but it was for only about a half an hour. She is trying. We’re trying to really encourage a lovey of some sort, but she has nothing to do with them (my hair and boob are evidently lovey enough for her!).
Even reading the statistics are depressing. Something like only 4% of kids her age still wake up more than twice a night. Even late teethers sleep through their teething woes? Should I just expect her to be able to handle it at night and not feel like I need to comfort her each and every time she wakes up?
Thanks for all the thoughts.
So, I think you should do what feels right. I don’t believe the statistics one bit. People are under-reporting.
My opinion is that there’s a reason for the crying, and soothing her is never the wrong idea. I don’t allow even 5 minutes of “wait and see.” She needs contact she gets contact, it’s really all about attachment, and feeling safe. Is your daughter sleeping enough with her naps and bed times?
Again, I think you have to use instinct about the crying. See how much the night weening hanges things and go from there.
I think when they’re teething, that they do wake up. The difference is that some babies can put themselves back to sleep because they’ve learned to self soothe and the ones who haven’t learned how to fall asleep w/o help cry longer.
I would say at your baby’s age that you should give her a good few minutes before you go in to comfort her, and she might take that time to console herself to sleep.
I disagree that babies learn to self soothe. Letting them cry does not teach them to soothe themselves, it teaches them to give up hope that someone will respond to their needs.
Kelley, I also do not allow any “wait and see” — I can’t tolerate the crying and my heart tells me to go to my daughter. Attempts to cry it out often result in far more than 5 minutes of crying, and can even lead to the child vomiting from being so upset. I’ve read too many stories of moms who regret attempts to CIO.
I also do not believe the statistics mentioned about night-waking. Parents think they’re the only ones who have babies who wake in the night, and they are shy to say so.
Right now she has a cold and is pushing out teeth, so the last two nights have been very miserable. She is back to waking up about an hour after she falls asleep (asleep at 7:00) (up at about 8), then waking about 5-6 hours after that (between 1-2), and then she is waking up very sad at 5 and wanting to nurse on and off until 6 and then she sleeps until 7 on the dot. She is waking up about 1 hour, 20 minutes into her nap and I’ll nurse her back to sleep or until she’s made it to two hours, which ever comes first. It’s feeling like a newborn stage again, but I don’t have that happy-new-mama-adrenaline to keep up the enthusiasm of seeing her so many times at night. :-). We’ve decided to wait until she goes back to her more normal night waking rhythm (or at least when the cold/teeth don’t seem to be bothering her so much) to attempt night-weaning.
The few things that are hard to hear are about how well my husband and I slept when we were young. We were formula fed, put in cribs and slept peacefully in rooms next to our parents’ rooms. It worked out great. We were also fairly mellow, easy going kids. Both sides of our families assure us that it’s something we’re doing to her (not putting her in her own room, not crying-it-out, letting her *manipulate* us (that one really gets me hair up!, etc…).
Despite night wakings, she is generally well-rested and happy during the day. Fortunately, they can’t find fault with our day-time child-rearing. She doesn’t melt down or get fussy; she plays independently for long periods of time; she eats well; she is self-initiating potty training with enthusiasm and zeal. My husband is probably right that like all other things she is learning, she’ll eventually learn to put herself back to sleep.
Things do need to change though. For her sake, I think we’re going to try changing the bedtime routine to have nursing come earlier. She’s 15 months today and I am finally feeling certain that she doesn’t *need* milk all night long!
It’s amazing how fast they grow and change.
Every time Jennifer posts I feel like it could have been me writing. I was really tired too, or rather I was worried. I was worried that I would never get a decent nights sleep, and that she wouldn’t get to a point where she could sleep alone. On top of it all, the questioning about if I’m doing it right, if I’m somehow keeping her up, if I should just go ahead and try CIO. I’m right there with you. I think it was 14.5 months old that I felt the “ok, I don’t thinks she’s actually hungry or thirsty at night.” Parallel stories, just one month ahead
Now that G is sleeping better, I look back and know that it was all her, and that my instincts were spot on.
Keep going, you can do it! And you’ll be happier in the long run. I’m so proud of my husband and I for not caving into CIO methods or “sleep training.” Really, I believe that in the long run it’ll pay off.
The most important part, for me, is that G gets enough rest and sleep, that she’s alert and ready to learn. If that means holding her for the rest of her nap, or soothing her, I’m all for it. Sleep, and lots of it, is a pivotal factor in cognitive development, so my focus is getting her as much as she can get, however she best can.
Good Luck! Keep us posted
Thanks Kelley for the “been there, done that.”
It helps keep things in perspective. The funniest/most realistic article I’ve read about sleep is on a blog at:
http://www.sweet-juniper.com/2005/09/sleep-wars-round-one.html
It’s exactly how I relate to all of the baby sleep books/advice out there. I definitely don’t let her cry when it comes to bedtime/night waking stuff and I feel that in some ways she is happier during the day for it.
It does get easier. If any newer mommies are reading this blog and wondering if meeting the night time needs gets easier–it certainly does. My daughter used to take what seemed like forever to fall asleep and now the night time and nap time rituals are short and straight to the point. She nurses, falls asleep and I go about my day (except in this two steps backwards month where I only get to go about the day for a shorter bit of time–but it’s definitely better than before! :-)). She also rolls away from me when she is done nursing, which I feared would never happen (this is where supportive friends and family come in handy to give you the raised eyebrow, “Never?” look. On good days I can convince myself that she’s not going to be nursing her way into kindergarten and then on to college.
Oops, up from the nap already…Time to go lay down with her. She’ll only be this small for such a short time. Someday we’ll all hear, “Mommy, leave me alone, I am trying to sleep!”
In reference to: “I disagree that babies learn to self soothe. Letting them cry does not teach them to soothe themselves. . . .I also do not allow any “wait and see” — I can’t tolerate the crying and my heart tells me to go to my daughter. Attempts to cry it out often result in far more than 5 minutes of crying, and can even lead to the child vomiting from being so upset. I’ve read too many stories of moms who regret attempts to CIO.”
–We don’t let DD cry it out. She might babble, stand up, or let us know in other ways that she’s awake. We just wait to see if she’s really awake or if she’s going to go back to sleep before we get her out of the crib. And I don’t know all the terminology, but to me, it seems like my DD self soothes herself back to sleep– w/o crying.
Lori, I know what you mean about self-soothing. I think it is a learned skill and some kids seem to learn it faster than others, for whatever reasons. I hear my daughter trying to soothe herself back to sleep sometimes. She makes repetitive sounds or sighs loudly a few times, rolls around a bit and then (hopefully) falls back to sleep.
Lately though, she just wakes up crying and she cannot put herself back to sleep and I am not inclined to test how long she can go in the middle of the night before I decide whether or not to intervene. If I try to rub/pat her back, she just continues to cry and tries to climb in to my lap. If I hold her, she frantically makes her way to her source of all security–the milk supply. She is definitely persistent.
Just now, she woke up after only 30 minutes of being in bed. My husband and I still don’t have a good answer for these kinds of wake-ups since it’s been so long since we’ve dealt with them. She was so sad. I gave her a couple of minutes to see if she would calm herself and go back to sleep, but she just started crying and waking herself up even more. Then I go to her and after only three minutes or so of being awake and sad, it’s too difficult to console her without the breast because she’ll just keep crying even with us there. We gave her teething drops and nursed her back to sleep. If I had run up there right when I heard her, it would have been a 10 minute expedition and the calming after a “little cry” took about 30 and was more frazzling for all of us.
Another problem we have (more during the day) bis that we moved her straight to a platform futon next to our bed (our bed is fairly low already), so if she wakes up, she can move. Her sleep sack prevents her from crawling back in bed with us, but she sometimes wanders off her bed a bit. Our room is child-friendly, so that’s not a problem, it’s just that she doesn’t quite have the sense of bed space yet to put herself back to sleep in her bed. I’ve read of others who moved their toddlers straight from their bed to a toddler bed with success.
Hopefully she’ll stay asleep tonight for a bit longer. We’re in the process of making a sleep plan for when she gets over this cold. Your ideas are great! Thanks!
I think, for me and my daughter, there is a difference in “fussing” and “crying” it out. I don’t allow her to cry, but if she is just whimpering, I will wait a minute to see if she goes back to sleep. Often she does. Most of the time tho, there is no crying or whimpering at all- she just gets up and jumps around in her crib. She is actually rattling her crib apart, which really is scary. She has scratched the hardwood under her crib up so much from jumping around and shimmying her crib across her room!
My daughter has nightmares and night terrors on occasion. I wonder if this may be what the crying is about in Jennifer L’s case, sometimes? When my daughter has a nightmare/terror, she is completely inconsolable for 20-30 minutes. She had one the other night, and it broke my heart. She woke up again, still inconsolable, later in the night. Then she woke for a third time, this time, just stood up and played and jumped in her crib. I think by then the terror had passed and she just did her normal thing.
My daughter is also a late teether, and did wake up at night on occasion when teething. However, she usually was not fussy or upset. She just plays. I do have to make her lay down and try to go back to sleep, or she would be up for hours playing. I can’t sleep thru her jumping around, although my husband usually has no problem.
Funny story, the other night (the night terror night on the third waking) I went in to try to get her back to sleep, and she heard my husband snoring- she looked at me and said “Moo, Moo!” She thought my husband was making cow noises!
I definitely notice the difference between letting her fuss a bit and all out crying.
It is so hard to tell why she wakes up. It could certainly be night terrors or something, but then she’ll fart and be alright, or burp, or teething drops will work and she’ll calm down and go back to sleep. It’s hard to know if everything in the middle of the night is due to a medical problem (she’s perfectly happy and healthy during the day–not now, with her cold, but most of the time). I just don’t know.
Last night we had somewhat of a break through, though it was rough. She was nursing to fall asleep, but her nose was too stuffy for her to do it for as long as she needed (even with me using the ‘booger snarfer”) and she became somewhat frustrated. She was really tired, upset and unwilling to be consoled in any other way besides the breast, so I left it open as an option. I rubbed her back, sang her night-night songs over and over, patted her bottom, and tried to remain calm as she worked through her frustration and get herself to sleep some other way. She did it. After wiggling all around to find the perfect spot, and crying a lot, she finally cozied up next to my leg and let me rub her back to sleep. It was not exactly a pleasant experience for us since she was so very upset, but she did it. Each time thereafter at night, I nursed her for just a short bit (a sip of water kind of nursing session), and then I laid her down still a bit awake, but calm and she’d fall right back to sleep.
Transitions seem to come at points when I feel that I can go no further with a particular situation.
The “moo, moo” is pretty funny :-). It sounds like a childrens’ book title, “Daddies that Moo.” Mine woke up one night, sat up in her bed and babbled something that sounded like “oct-a-pus” very clearly and seriously and then laid down and fell asleep again. Octopus. Sure, alright, why not?