Trying To Get 6 Hours Of Sleep

Following on from my previous post about Bad Habits, I’d like to elaborate on point 4 “He wakes up every 2 hours at night when at sleep”

I feed him milk around 11 pm where he goes to sleep. From then he wakes up ever 60-90 minutes and wants to feed again. He’s not hungry he just want to suck a bit of milk and go back to sleep. If I don’t feed him he starts crying.

As you can see, this pattern is very tiring for me. I don’t get much sleep during the night and I can’t sleep during the day. So in the long run I just get exhausted.

I expressed my concern to the health nurse who visits us regularly to monitor my son’s health. She said there is only one way out of this bad habit – BREAK HIS HABIT. Be persistent, don’t feed him and eventually he will get used to sleeping through the night. The nurse said not to feed him earlier than 6 am, if he sleeps at 11 pm.

So a month ago, during a weekend (Papa has to go to work) I let him cry for milk. An hour went by… and he is still crying. 2 hours went by… and he is still crying. After 3 hours he finally got tired and cried himself to sleep. Early morning came, and the same thing happened. He cried and cried until I got up and fed him as soon as the clock got close to 6 am. I felt heartbroken – refusing my son his milk.

The next few nights he cried, but this time he cried less and less between his “naps”.

After around 4 days, he finally managed to sleep through the night.

I thought to myself, you can be proud of your self. You have fought a difficult battle and won. I would be looking forward to 6 hours of sleep, when he started to cry again. However, this was a different kind of crying, not like the previous crying.

He was teething. Because his gums were hurting, I didn’t want to let him cry for himself, so I started giving him milk again to help him fall back to sleep. And we were back to square one.

Now after a few weeks, I can see a small “rice” grain on his lower gum, showing the top of his new tooth.

If/When the teething is over I’ll do a new attempt of gaining 6 hours of sleep again. In the meantime I’ll be using bonjela (see image).

Specially formulated to bring fast soothing relief from the pain of teething. Suitable for babies from 2 months.