It's almost 11pm and Josiah hasn't been in bed yet!! I tried laying him down 3 times (he was asleep in my arms all three times) only to have him start arching and getting stiff. After several burps he seemed to feel better, but is now wide awake! On a good night (maybe four nights out of a week), he sleeps for 3 hours in his crib, then nurses/sleeps in bed w/us for about 4 hours then is up for an hour or so before falling back to sleep for another hour. On nights like this, I can't get him to lay in his crib or swing...he is burping and spitting up so much!

My question is..Is this as good as it gets? He will be 6 months next week, and has never slept more than 4 hours. I keep him upright for at least 45 minutes after his last bottle, his crib is inclined and he sleeps on his tummy. He does take all his SHORT daytime naps in his swing, but good grief, he's outgrowing that! I would really like to wean him off these 4 hour nurse/sleep sessions at night (I feel they are habitual at this point...although I do think part of it is comfort also).But I still am able to dose during these times so am reluctant to force the issue....not to mention too tired to!

Any suggestions on how to get this kid to sleep? I am exhausted all the time, and the lack of sleep has given me awful headaches...not to mention that kids have a grouch for a Mommy!:cry:

I used the crying it out method w/my girls at some point (they were all great sleepers!), but am nervous about trying it with Josiah....how will I know if he's crying because he needs to burp,or is in pain,or just being mad about being in his crib? You would think that after 4 I could figure this out...I HATE GERD!!:mad:

At Evan's worst, he would settle around 11 p.m. and we'd get a broken 2 or 3 hours of sleep her night, so having your ds sleep for so much of the night sounds wonderful to me. Having said that, perhaps a different med. would help him to feel more comfortable?

In answer to "Is this as good as it gets?", hopefully Josiah (since he's still so young) will be one of the lucky ones who outgrow this. You mentioned that he sleeps on his tummy. Maybe he would be more comfortable on his back, as many refluxers are. If he's not a vomiter, you might want to try the cry-it-out method, but only if you're comfortable with that and if you know his "pain"/"hungry"/"wet" cries versus his "wanting attention" cry.

I wish I had a solution. After 11 months of 4-6 night wake-ups with night feeds, we finally hit bottom and resorted to CIO and now we're down to 3-4 total wake-ups with 2 night feeds. As Catherine is still smallish, I think this is as good as it's going to get for a while.

Well, at 5 1/2 months, the boys finally started sleeping thorugh- YAY!! It was short-lived though. They are now almost 1 year old and lately I have been getting up 5-6 times a night to settle them. Stephen has finally gone back to sleeping through but Matthew is waking constantly... we are heading to the doctor today to look at increasing his meds as I am sure this is the root of the problem taht we are currently having. On a good night, I would be up 1-2 times.
(((HUGS))) sleep deprivation is HARD.

Thanks for the support! I always thought gerdlings slept better on their tummies (and all the girls were tummy sleepers). I think I will try back sleeping on a night when I am more rested, just in case he doesn't like it! He is not really a big vomitter, but he usually has to burp when I lay him down...he is really hard to burp after his last bottle because he always falls asleep.
Maybe the meds.? He is currently taking 15ml of prevacid once a day...his ped. has pretty much said she doesn't know what else to do, and her next step will be referral to someone else.
CIO...sometimes I feel like I know his wet/hungry/pain cries...sometimes I'm not sure! On the one hand, I hate for him to cry so much because of the gerd he already suffers from hoarsness frequently, on the other hand I need some sleep and I do beleive that some of his night wakings are just habitual.
After discussing w/dh, we have decided to wait until after the first of the year to try to force more sleep or wean. We are going on vacation the week after Christmas and hate to try to wean him before or during...on the plus side, I can dose off to sleep while he nurses.

Hey,

This was a huge problem for us as well. hopefully he will start heading up hill soon and you can get some rest! I dont have any advice because we suffered through it too, no sleep, up all night with them, keeping him from choking on puke...:-? So, frustrating. Just remember that it will get better!!!

At what age did Eli start sleeping better?

Parker started sleeping good at about 8 months about 10 hrs straight. I did the control cry thing, but it is a lot harder to so with a sick baby because you have to really listen to the cries and whether they are pain or frustration. He still didnt sleep during the day. At about 10 months he was up at night again and it is only now that he is back to getting a full nights sleep though does wake early.

Yes, and you have to be pretty confident that they won't be choking on their vomit while crying.

Oh, we've so btdt. Sleep deprivation is serious business. I know Ian was 8-9 months old by the time he was really sleeping from about 11pm to 6am consistently. He's 14 months now and we just dropped the 11pm bottle, so now he's sleeping from 7:30pm-7:30am (ish). He does still wake up 3 or 4 nights a week because of the reflux and I will sometimes feed him if I know he's not eaten well that day. I found the suggestions in Elizabeth Pantley's "No Cry Sleep Solution" to be helpful - but you still have to do whatever *you* have to do to get Josiah and yourself sleeping better. It's hard.

Thanks. I tried putting him to bed on his back, he slept....about ten minutes.LOL! Tonight has been a good night...he has slept for 3 hours in his crib, now he's had his night feeding and I am holding him upright, and praying for a burp before laying him down again. He usually will only sleep in his crib for about an hour now, then I put him in bed w/us. I am too tired at that point to try to settle him back into his crib.

Oh how soon I want him to start sleeping at least 6 hours! My mom has offered to keep him to give us a break....once he starts sleeping better! (What's the point then?) We had a good friend keep him one night for us last month. Ah, it was the longest stretch of sleep I've gotten in forever!