Any idea how to make Beans sleep?

[janeyo]

my second child had really bad reflux and slept on his front almost from day one. My choice after reading loads of hyped up statistics, and now at 2 he still curls up on his front. He could not sleep on his back so we didn't put him on his back.

[FionaH]

My heart goes out to you, my youngest never fancied sleeping much either. If you can avoid it I really wouldnt go with getting him off to sleep with a bottle as he may want one every time he wakes up! That was younglings trouble and his record was being up 12 times in one night!!!
How I didnt murder him from sleep deprivation I will never know.

It gets better though, he is 16 now and I cant get him out of bed at all

[di]

But does he still wake for his bottle Fi?...has given me an idea how to get your own back,,,if he sleeps so soundly it should be evr so easy to get a dummie in his mouth & oops,next thing you know you've got a rather good piccie to threaten him with!!!

Wayne...you are a good man!I can assure you,LW will thank you for not humiliating her by taking a pic!
I was up all night with Ash...he had tummy ache & runny tummy...even just after the one night,it's left me feeling like carp!So,even though it was hopefully a one off...today I feel your pain!
I'm sure it's possibly a really obvious suggestion that you've either tried or decided you don't want to,but have you tried a dummy?I'm sure when mine woke up for a feed they weren't necessarily hungry,just needed the comfort of sucking to get back to sleep?

[jackie j]

My boys didnt have a dummy I was one of those parents who wouldnt get one and they were ok, My daughter had one almost from day one as she had a habit of pulling really hard on her head ( only way I can describe it ) a dummy stopped her from doing this. She slept soundly and we were really lucky, she would find it herself when she was older even in the dark, but it was only for sleeping. She was one of those babys at 6 months who would wake at 8am ish, and have a long sleep in her cot during the day and still be in bed by 7pm and sleep all night, if she did wake there was a good reason.
These babies are few and far between lol.
If you could get him to go to bed awake and let him drift off you will find he probably will sleep longer. We had a few toys in the cot and these helped but its not playtime so restrict how many he has. You mentioned his cot, did you buy a cot bed as they are slighty bigger than normal cot size.
In a few years or hopefully months you will look back and say remember when bean didnt sleep, how on earth did we manage, and the first time he does sleep through you will wake up with a start wondering if he is alright.
As I said before they all have different sleep patterns.

[lizzylemon]

Poor you and LW - it's a really difficult time when sleep is so out the window as it impacts on everything else in life.

I don't normally agree with the strict thing but I do for sleeping patterns - it's the quickest way for little ones to learn. Same for us: repetition. Just until he gets the hang of it at least :-)

These things worked for us so please feel free to use or ignore as you see fit:

Removed all items / toys etc from cot (bambina was struggling to stay awake to watch mobile go round)
Put to bed at same time each night (initially watched for sleepy signs, rubbing eyes, ears, yawning to get a feel for her natural sleep time and used that as starting time = 7pm )
Simplified bedtime routine: food, clean up (not bath), fresh nappy, cot
Bottle of milk when in cot to get bambina asleep
Then I'd do a dream feed about 15 mins before her normal wake up night feed time (say 10.15 as Bambina would still be asleep so I'd slip new bottle of milk into her mouth and she'd feed but not wake up. No getting out of cot, burping or anything. Milk in, bottle out, mummy / daddy bed!)
We did this every night and then one night I noticed I was struggling to get the bottle in her mouth on a regular basis and so I just stopped the dream feed and she didn't wake up.

She started waking at about 1 year old and my doctor just told me to ignore it and promised within a week she'd stop crying. He was right.
It was really hard but I turned the sound of the monitor off as I found it easier to watch the lights jump around than hear her crying and if it went on too long, with all lights off I literally cracked open the door, peeked in and then shut it again providing it was OK.
I was also told to give her warm water instead of milk if she woke in the night as she needed to learn to comfort her self, so I did that too.

She goes to bed at 7pm still (and will until she's 30) most night but now there are toys in her cot and she happily plays before bed or when she wakes up and we regularly sleep till 8am.

Good luck, you will get there. XX

[HeyWayne]

almost forgotten how tired u get with a baby - I suppose we just went with the flow - any change of routine, like going to grandparents always unsettles them, is he teething? is he breast fed or on the bottle ? I used to top mine up in the end with formula as the breast milk just didn't seem enough - especially with the boy- greedy thing he was!

He's on 5-6 bottles a day (though he doesn't finish them) and has solids for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

LadyWayne gave up on breast feeding a while ago as he just wasn't getting enough (bearing in mind he's the size of a "normal" one year old now).

We may have turned a corner last night (don't want to count me chickens or owt). I gave him a bottle last night and he went up to bed at about 7. Gave him his dummy (which up until now he's not been interested in) and he stirred a couple of times but slept through pretty much until 5:30 this morning!

Whoop whoop.

LadyWayne's great!

[Flummery]

Hate to tell you this but it depends a lot on the child. Daughter slept through the night from about 8 months. Still breastfed (as well as solids) till a year old but settled down nicely after last feed. Son - treated exactly the same, used to wake every 2 hours or so till he went to school! He would not settle in the evenings. Eventually, desperate for sleep ourselves, we waited till he fell asleep downstairs - often standing uo leaning on a sofa! - and carried him up asleep. Then we got our heads down - it was usually about 9 o'clock but we needed it. You learn to cope.

[HeyWayne]

8 hours uninterrupted sleep last night!!

Woop woop!

Little dude was happier than ever this morning (he's pretty much always happy anyways), and he'd had a few sleeps round at the child minders'.

[Hans Mum]

congrats on a full nights sleep, it makes things seem soooo much better if you;ve had some kip.....hopefully he's turned the corner, is LW back at work yet??

[HeyWayne]

is LW back at work yet??

She went in for a "full" day yesterday - just as a tester. She starts back in November 3 days a week, then 4 days come the new year.

[Hans Mum]

that's flown by hasn't it....she wont be looking forward to leaving your little (big) man