First, I don't know if this is the best place for this or if it should move to the toddler bed since DS is almost 1.
OK, without making this too long, brief history: DS has never had longer than a 6 hour stretch at night, and there have only been a handful of those. He co-slept half the night until just a couple months ago (I know its not BW, but it was how I managed to get enough sleep to be a mom during the last year). We moved twice this summer, lots of traveling--just utter chaos, really. So in the last 2 months, I've gotten him out of our bed and I stopped feeding him at night except at his first waking which I 've always done instead of a DF since he woke so often.
Problem is, he's still waking up. Here's a rough schedule--its not exactly the same each night because his first waking varies from 10-11:15 most nights, but then after that, he's been doing pretty similar things each night--4 hours, then 2 hours. So here's a sample night:
7:30 bed
10:45 wake/BF
11:15 back in his bed (I sometimes fall asleep here, so he'll be out of his bed from 30-60 min.
)
2:45 wake, replug paci
4:45 wake, try to replug paci, often doesn't work
So at this point, the rules I've made to keep us on some sort of consistant "routine"--
*he can't come to our bed for snuggles until 5 a.m.,
*can't eat again until 6 a.m.. What happens lots of nights is around 5 (or whenever he wakes after that), I bring him into our bed and try to get him to go to sleep with his paci. If it doesn't work, at 6, I feed him and often we both pass out until 7 or so.
He's really hard to get back to sleep if its just before 5 (or after 5 for that matter, which is why I gave up on keeping him in his bed at that point--I don't want him to wake up DD with all the screaming). And really, I wouldn't even mind that so much if he'd just sleep straight from the feeding until early morning.
So, since its consistant timing, mostly, from one waking to the next, should I try wake to sleep? Or does it have to be the exact same time on the clock for that to work? And is there any hope with how messy our morning is, and the paci, or do I need to fix all of that before I can hope he'll give me an eight hour stretch? I know that we have a ton of problems going on--it sounds so much worse when I write it all down, but really, he goes to sleep like a dream most nights, and he goes back to sleep after that 2:30/3:30 waking pretty easily most nights (although we do have the night where he cries out every 15 min. for the next 2 hours).
Thanks for reading--I know its long--I just want to try to answer all the questions I can think of that are going to come up. Probably still missed some stuff.
I'd love any advice that can be offered. I'm so ready for a real night of sleep--DD took 1.5 years, but since I taught DS to go to sleep on his own from the beginning and he takes perfect naps, I NEVER thought I'd still be doing this at a year.
~Kim
