I am in desperate need of advise. I have a 10 month old boy who has never really slept through the night and I am starting to go crazy. He will sleep through occasionally and we try to figure out if we did something different that might be the magic thing, but usually, there is no explanation for why he sleeps or more often, does not sleep. I did the Baby Whisperer schedule with him up until he was about 3 or 4 months old and then he started daycare and I no longer had as much control over his day. Note: Our daycare is great and very accommodating to different schedules, they just have many babies to accommodate and the room is always busy so naps can be hit and miss and sometimes feeding get put off 15 minutes. No big deal. I can't give you a EASY schedule at this point because it has been so long since he has had a super rigid schedule, but here the basics.
He wakes up between 7am and 8pm and has a bottle (he has decided he is too cool for bottles, so he isn't always taking whole feeds anymore). He usually eats between 3 and 5 ounces. He eats oatmeal and yogurt around 9 or 9:30 at daycare (or home on the weekends. He eats two jars of baby food and some finger foods at around noon. Has another 3-5 ounce bottle at 3:00ish. Eats 2 jars of baby food and some finger foods at about 6pm. Finally, he has 5-7 ounces of bottle before bed at 7:45.
As far as naps are concerned, they have never been great. Even when we did EASY "hardcore" he would nap from 30-45 minutes tops. Now, we usually get one good nap (1.5-2.5 hours) and sometimes a couple of catnaps in the car to or from daycare. Most of the time the big nap is closer to 1.5 hours, but sometimes we get a big one.
He plays hard all day. He is super mobile and super busy, so when he is awake, he is non-stop.
So at night, he wakes up anywhere from once (rare) up to 5 or 6 times with an average of 2-3 times. We haven't fed him over night since he was 4 months old. He doesn't wake up for food. Here is the kicker. MOST of the time, all it takes to get him to go back to sleep is to go in, find his pacifier, pop it in his mouth, and turn back on his ocean noise. He likes to be left alone to go to sleep so shush-pat has never really worked. He won't go to sleep if we are standing right there. We try to give him a minute or two to soothe himself back to sleep or find his own pacifier, which happens sometimes, but most of the time, he just tosses, turns and fusses/whines until one of us goes in.
So, have we accidently created a crazy prop dependent monster? How do we break the cycle and get him to sleep through? Please help. We are so tired. Thanks in advance for taking the time to read and respond. Please let me know if you need any other information to help.
