Hi Ladies!

I hope you all are doing well! I sometimes creep in here to see what's going on and get "my fix," heh heh.

I know I am no longer a daycare provider but I greatly respect all of your experience and so I am hoping you all will indulge me for a minute and help please?

I have been off the last year on maternity leave with my new little boy. He has been a dream and a super easy baby for the most part. I have felt very fortunate to have such an easy baby. I think this has been where my issue has been though. Since he was always a good sleeper, I never did much in the way of sleep training. He would sleep large blocks at night and wake up for a bottle 1-2 times a night. I didn't mind until lately as I prepare to reenter the workforce.

I started sleep training him so that people other than myself could put him down, (I wasn't nursing him to sleep but he would go down really easy for me and no one else really) but also so he would stop waking in the night. So I weaned him first by just giving him a couple oz of water when he would wake, this help tremendously. He woke less and would go right back to sleep most of the time. Then I started putting him down awake at bedtime (we would do a short cuddle and I would put him in his crib.) He screamed bloody murder for over an hour then settled. He slept through the night the first night and I thought we had success. Things went down hill from there. He screams every night and every nap time for 1-2 hours before finally falling asleep. He started waking at 3 am and then screaming for 2+ hrs in his crib. Last night I put him to bed a little earlier because his naps have been sucking and he actually only cried for 5 mins but then woke at 12:45 am and wouldn't stop screaming. I gave him a bottle out of desperation but he continued after and didn't go back to sleep until 4 am. He was up at 6 am for the day. I am tired and can't think straight.

He is also trying to phase out his morning nap but isn't all the way ready yet so he is just a tired mess. Sometimes it takes him so long to settle for a nap that he doesn't get one because of school pick ups.

I feel like our schedule is a mess and I need some guidance please...like I said, I can't even think clearly anymore. I have 2 other kids that I drop off and pick up from school so this also effects when he can and can't have naps. :(

Hang in there!

It is always so much harder for families of good sleepers when they are no longer good sleepers!!

Have you considered that maybe his current screaming isn't related to the attempts to night wean him. Could he be teething, an ear infection? Something completely unrelated but timed to be hidden due to your attempts to change his night routine?

Poor you !!!!
it just takes time as you know from your other 2 children but it is hard !!!

With one of our kids, Dad had to take over bedtime and night waking completely. It didn't take her long to figure out that Mommy wasn't going to respond to her screaming and nurse her, and she started sleeping through the night within a couple of weeks.

Thank you for those that responded. We have had a complete 180 and he is not only going to bed without crying but he is sleeping through the night! I think posting things just helped me to see that there had been a little progress after I wrote everything out.

He was a lot tougher to train than my girls. They had their hard cries when we first started but then once they did it, it clicked quickly.

Now we just need to address his clingy/crying when I leave the room, heh heh