Do you have a 10/11 month old....

Hi my ten month old still wakes at least once a night, and i think that is pretty good it is normal for a baby to still wake at this age and i dont intend doing anything about it i have learnt through experience she will do it when she is ready. my first DD slept through at 16 months and now at 2 1/2 is a fantastic sleeper.

However my first DD was a crap sleeper waking freqently still at 11 months so got a bit tough with her (it was really really hard) me and hubby made up some rules to follow which were as follows.

1. no feeding before 2am
2. if she woke before 2am then i went straight in checked all the usual gave her a cuddle and put her back down (and left her for ten minutes)
3. if still crying after ten minutes i would go back in give her a cuddle check the usual and put her back down (and left her for half an hour) she never not once made it to the half hour
4. the rule was after half an hour i would go in give her a little drink (not to sleep) and then put her back down for a further half an hour (but as i said i never had to do this)

we did this for three nights and she started waking once and occasionally not at all. there were times when she went backwards and we just went back to the rules - like i said this was to get her waking less not sleep through.

i found it easier to cope having a set plan to follow i probably cried as much as she did. hope this helps - good luck

My 10.5 month old still wakes twice most nights - sometimes more if she's teething, sick or particularly hungry (or for some other unfathomable reason).

She wakes about 3 hrs after going down and has about 100 ml of formula, then wakes anything from 2-7 hrs after that at which point I usually bf her (i do a mix of breast and bottle as I'm working). Sometimes I try to resettle without a feed and sometimes it works, sometimes not.

At the moment I'm just going with it, as I find 2 wakeups a night I can handle, esp. as the first one is usually before I've gone to bed. I'm pretty against the idea of leaving her to cry and I'm not convinced it will work for her as she sleeps best when she goes off to sleep in a happy secure manner. She also was sleeping through (like 12hrs) regularly when she was 3-4 months old, and I think she wakes now because she needs the food. She's only just started to eat a really good amount of solids during the day, and I THINK her sleep is getting better the more she eats (although sometimes its hard to tell).

I do have one or two "rules" that I try to stick to as well - like no feeding within 3 hrs of a previous feed, and I always wait 5-10 mins after she first wakes to see if she will settle herself. Sometimes she will just cry out once or twice and go back to sleep.

I did consider using a bit of CIO a week or so ago when she was very unsettled and it seemed like she was crying more and sleeping less by me going in and trying to cuddle/feed her off to sleep, as she would start screaming 5 mins after being put down. But looking back I think that was illness combined with separation anxiety, and she settled down after a few nights.

I'm interested to hear what other people do too! Sometimes I think we should be more pro-active about getting her sleeping through - but then I think that that would really be for our own convenience, not necessarily what she needs. And leaving her to cry goes against my instincts and I figure it won't solve anything if she's hungry anyway.

Chelle, he isn't awake for ages at all! Just has a good feed and will go straight back to sleep. I am back in bed in around 15 min. So I don't actually mind too much, I just worry that it is habit now and that I should be doing something to address it. Esp when I go back to work, it might not be as easy to function on broken sleep.

I always leave him 5 or more min to see if he will resettle but probably only does one in 10 times. Sometimes I try rocking him (but I must admit usually I am too lazy) and that might work one in 10 times too, however, he often wakes up again about half an hour later so I still end up feeding him.

I think he may be hungry, but is he hungry because he is used to have milk in his tum all night!

I think most 10 mos aren't having feeds in the night but some still do. Whether it is hunger or habit - who knows for sure - i personally think habit.

I do think you can get them to make up those calories during the day instead but it's whether you have the energy to put the effort in. That's the hard thing, you're too buggered to fix the night wakings due to all the night wakings. It's harder in the short term but then in the long term you won't be getting up in the night anymore...well not for feeding anyway.

Are you tired all the time? Or have you learnt to function on that kind of sleep? I don't think it would be a huge impairment to be up for 1-2 lots of 15 minutes, but then I'm up for way more than that and still functioning, (and working), so everyone is different.

Honestly, I think you need to stop reading books about what babies *should* be doing (unless you can convince your baby to read them too ) and just go with what you feel that he needs.

DS was having a dream feed at 10pm until 12 months - a 240mL bottle. I swear that was the only thing that kept him from waking in the night, might be worth a try?