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Q: We have just taken our 17month old out a her cot and into a low bed and we have had more problems since doing this. She used to sleep 11 hours at night, only waking twice a week but sometimes for up to 2 hours. Where we would go to her and try and settle her, we don’t do controlled crying. We took her out hoping this would stop, but it has gotten worse.
It now takes us from 1-3hours to get her to sleep at night, as opposed to 15 minutes and not needing to be in her room. If we let her stay up as long as she likes until she is ready it is 10pm and she doesn’t catch up on her sleep by sleeping longer that morning or the next day. I have little problems putting her to sleep during the day.
We follow the same routine day and night when goin to bed, her meal, milk, reading books, then in bed to sleep. She now sleeps for only 9.5 hours at night, rather than 11 hours and she wakes usually 6 hours after she falls asleep and we have to take her back to her bed to resettle her.
We are at a lose on whether to continue her in a low bed or return her to her cot until she is a little older.
A: I would suggest several strategies for this and it is up to you which one you feel would work the best for your family.One way to make children sleep in the low bed is to make it attractive enough for them. You can put attractive bed covers and allow your child to move in and out of the bed so she can see the benefits of the low bed (freedom of movement). Also make her understand that she is moving there because she is getting older.Another immediate way for you to get some sleep is to put your child back to sleep in the cot only at night. Continue putting your baby into the low bed during the day to slowly get her used to it. You may decide to put your child on the low bed at night a few weeks later when she is more ready.Another factor to consider is that as children get older they do not need as much sleep anymore. At your child’s age it is recommended that she sleeps for about 13 1/2 hours a day. This may lessen the pressure on you to get her to sleep longer and be calm when putting her down. As long as she gets close the recommended hours of sleep throughout the day you should not worry if she is not sleeping as long at night. If she gets 9 ½ hours sleep at night and 2×2 hours naps during the daytime your child is getting enough sleep. When your child gets upset or tired during the day it is a sign she is not getting enough sleep.
Is the result same if you put your child down at night instead of your husband? The baby just may be clingy to mum at the moment rather than the transfer to the low bed being the problem.
3 responses so far ↓
1 rhandcock // Jan 26, 2008 at 5:22 pm
I have a 13 month old son who has been in a low bed since he was about 4 or 5 months old. I too have great difficulty getting him to sleep, but that has been pretty much from day one! He currently sleeps anywhere between about 9 -10 1/2 hours overnight and normally has one daytime sleep usually of about an hour and a half. For the daytime sleep I breast feed him to sleep, and I try the same at night but if it doesn’t work I tend to leave him to cry a fair bit as I feel he needs to understand that it is sleep time and if I keep interrupting him he will never get himself to sleep! Usually he will cry at his gate and every ten minutes or so I will take him back to bed, then I often end up sitting next to him until he falls asleep (in order to keep him in bed and to help him get to sleep). This process usually takes about an hour or more. I have been using this strategy ever since he was born and it is still not working but am not sure what else I should do. Perhaps a cot would help? But then I expect I would face the same problem when I next want to put him into a real bed anyway. Sorry I’m probably not a great help, but I think we all just have to do our best when it comes to getting our babies to sleep, confident that we know our own child better than anyone else does.
PS. I love the low bed, when my son wakes he comes into our room in the morning or during the day out to the living room where I am. I think that’s just great to give him that ability.
2 Renee O'Regan // Aug 28, 2008 at 4:05 pm
I am so thankful to know I am not alone in the struggle to get my baby to sleep in her low bed.
The only way I am able to get my 10 month old baby to go down is to breast feed her to sleep. This works fine in the day but some nights she finally falls asleep at the breast only to wake as I put her into her bed. She gets very upset but I have to just leave her and walk out. If I leave the door open or ajar she just opens it and crawls out to us (this can happen anything from 5 to 20+ a night) so if she is awake when I leave the room I have to shut the door. She then sits there and screams for what seems like an eternity. I go back in every so often and put her back into her bed but this just happens over and over again. Eventually she goes to sleep again at the breast (I think from pure exhaustion).
Does anyone have any luck putting their baby down without feeding them to sleep? I really feel like I’m setting myself up for problems later on when she’s a toddler as I can’t feed her to sleep forever. Also, the way things are going there is no way I would ever be able to have anyone else put her to sleep (her Dad, a babysitter etc).
I don’t want to go back to the cot because I know of the benefits of her being in the low bed but some nights when I’m at my witts end, it seems like the only solution.
3 rhandcock // Aug 29, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Interestingly, the very night I wrote my earlier post when my son was 13 months old, he decided to go back to his bed of his own accord. I quite quickly went to his room and told him how very good he was and said the good nights that I would normally do. He stayed there and went to sleep! I was ecstatic. Perhaps he realised that he wasn’t going to win, I’m not too sure, but it was a big turning point. At the end of the day, it has to be their decision to go to sleep.
It just got easier and easier from then on, although admittedly he has gone through a couple of phases since then when he would cry and it would be hard to leave him but by being consistent these phases were relatively short-lived, just a few days.
I wouldn’t worry about breastfeeding your daughter to sleep, it’s better for her to get the sleep she needs. However it won’t last forever, as they grow up they stop falling asleep at the breast and then you have to come up with a new strategy anyway. My son was 16 months when I weaned him off the breast and for a long time I had been using it as our “wind down” time but it had to end somewhere. You will work out what is best for you.
Eventually as your daughter gets a bit older and a little bit easier you may be able to just lie next to her until she falls asleep. My son is now 20 months old and whereas I was the only one that could ever put him to sleep in the past, now it could be his father, nana, aunty, anyone he knows well. We can now just do our night-time routine, say good night, close the door and he will not complain at all.
I just want you to know that it gets easier, bit by bit, and I truly believe that all of the hard work you are putting in now will come back to you times two with the relationship that you are building with your daughter. We will still have our difficult times, but consistency goes a long way and we must have faith and trust in ourselves and what we are doing.
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