Re: frequent nightwakings

I slept very poorly last night. And many many nights before too. DS again wakes up every 30 minute to 1 hour every night recently. Last night (i.e. in the early morning) I just left the bedroom and did some computer work (and left a thread here) and rested on the sofa, and let DW alone sleep with him on the family bed but stay wider apart. Now at this moment (local time 10:15 am) he has been napping for an hour on the same bed (but had I napped with him he might have already waken up in the 30th minute deep sleep--REM sleep transition screaming). You know how exhausted I am. This situation has been persisting nearly 11 months and my study is being adversely interrupted. CIO-minded people may think that as a "DH" I am totally "qualified" to propose the harsh solution, but I won't, and having understood deeply the temperament of my lo (and having known the experience of others) I am quite certain that CIO won't work for high need babies except threatening the trust we have developed.

Having said this, NCSS [No-cry sleep solution] is still our goal, albeit not at this moment, when issues like teething and nose congestion are still abound. We did have occassional small "victories" in the past (DS slept a 2~3 hours stretch).


You may postpone your sleeping plan for your lo until she has recovered from the illness. Tense babies can't sleep. I guess for some high need over-sensitive babies like DS [probably your lo too] the core problem is the proximity (i.e. sleeping distance) between the parents and the baby - too far away s/he will have nighttime separation anxiety, too close s/he will be easily triggered (assume that s/he is not ill). We may have to experiment with alternative sleeping arrangments (when all other physical/environmental/medical/... causes of nightwaking are cleared or at least controlled), but definitely CIO is not in our dictionary.

I hope this helps! Oh, DS is waking up! Sorry I haven't spellchecked!

A final note: From my experience I think that it is very difficult to attribute sudden frequent nightwaking to solely one cause (sometimes this could be highly misleading thinking leading to a bad conclusion). Your DD's problem may be as much medical as psychological. Just my little reminder.