My son is 11 months old. He is waking up at least 5 times a night. It is actually better than it was. It use to be that he would wake up 10- 15 times a night. After doing the p/u, p/d for about three weeks there was finally a little progress. He now wakes up only 5 times a night- still way to much for anyone in our house to get a healthy amount of sleep. I know it has a lot to do with accidental parenting, but we have so much of it, i don't know where to go from here. Here is some of what were doing wrong: 1) he is still nursing at least once at night- he wakes up so many times that i reserve one of these times to feed him so we can all go back to sleep quicker 2) he takes a pacifier when he sleeps 3) at around 5 a.m. we started bringing him to bed with us so that he wouldn't wake our 4 yr. old- now he wakes up at 4 a.m. and won't go back to sleep easily in his bed or ours- yikes!
Also he is teething. We have so many issues, i don't know where to begin. All i know is that we all need sleep. Before he cut back to about 5 night wakings, i was getting only about 4 hours of sleep a night and he was getting only about 9 hours of day and night sleep total... we both got sick (colds) as a result. There has been improvement due to p/u, p/d, but I don't know what to do now?
Right now this is what an average night for us looks like:
7 p.m. bed
10:30 wakes, cries. hubby lies him back down, replaces pacifier (i know this is bad)
12:30 same as above
2:30a.m. wakes, cries, i go in and nurse him
4 a.m. wakes , cries. and we've been trying different bad habits (what sleep deprivation will do to you) such as bringing to our bed, nursing again, rocking him in rocking chair. he doesn't go to sleep at this time replacing the paci. he may finally doze off for 30 minutes or so doing one of these things. but basically my hubby and i take turns getting up for the day with him.
We have so many sleep issues, i don't know what to tackle first. Is my situation helpless? Am I destined for sleepless nights for the rest of babyhood?
I read the baby whisperer with my daughter as a young infant and all of the ideas and methods worked like clockwork. I don't know if i need more help this time because my son was a good sleeper and started sleeping horrible at about 7 months.
If anyone has advice I would greatly greatly appreciate it.