We were shocked! Our brand new baby was sleeping through the night! Woo-Hoo! But a few months passed and soon, my baby stopped sleeping through the night. How do you help your baby sleep through the night again?
What do you do when your sleeping baby starts to wake up multiple times a night? You’ve taken her to the doctor and nothing is wrong. You’ve waited for this phase to pass and it doesn’t. What now? Well, this has happened with each of our kids, at one point or another. They would sleep for six hours straight and then they would start to wake up every three hours.
Here are some ideas to help when your baby stops sleeping through the night:
- Consider a growth spurt. They usually last about 3-8 days.
- Consider the weather: Has it changed? Is your baby hot? Cold?
- Check the lighting. Try adding (or removing) a night-light. Try room darkening blinds.
- Use a noise machine or a fan.
- Avoid changes from panic. When your baby starts waking and you add in changes like a bottle or turning the light on, we delay the phase from passing.
- Make notes of everything that your baby does. Do this for three days: every feeding, nap, playtime, dirty diaper.
- Is your baby overtired? An overtired baby or toddler will wake more.
- For an entire hour, before bed, turn off all bright lights, electronics, etc… talk in calm voices, sing songs and read books.
- Are you cluster feeding before bed? Have you tried dream feeding your baby? This worked wonders for us!
- Burp your baby more during the day. Gas will cause tummy aches, so try to get it all out during the day. (If your baby won’t burp, hold him up for 25-30 minutes)
- If your baby is waking to eat, but you know that he isn’t hungry, try substituting the drink for water (check with your doctor first). I did this and it worked on the first night.
- Ask your doctor about SILENT reflux. This is more common in babies and you won’t see spit-up, so you might not even think about it.
- If your baby has learned a new skill, like crawling, walking or pulling up, he will probably try it in the middle of the night.
- Keep doing what you were doing. Don’t change up his bedtime routine. Your baby needs consistency now more than ever.
- Start with what you want to go on… if you start rocking your baby while you walk around the room to get your baby to sleep now, you will be walking around and rocking a (much heavier) 3 year old baby to sleep. (I always rocked my babies… until they were drowsy… and then put them to sleep).
- Your baby may have trouble self-soothing. Try giving your baby a pacifier (again, remember that you may need to keep this up, so don’t start it if you don’t want to have to break it in a few months). We started a pacifier with our daughter at 6 months and she was done with it by 9 months. Our son, however, was still taking one at two.
Check out the Coos to Snooze ecourse – it is a brilliant system designed to get your baby sleeping and what’s more, if it doesn’t get your baby to sleep, you get your money back.
Remember that your child will eventually sleep through the night, or will not need you all night long. It is hard to be so exhausted (trust me, I know!) If your baby is older, check out this post on why your toddler is waking up many times a night. If you found this post to be helpful, be sure to stop by our Facebook Page to see more parenting posts like this.
