Need help to get kids to sleep better

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I’m 5 weeks pregnant with our third. I have a two year old boy (25 months) and a 10 month old girl. Rigt now it’s taking way too long to put both of them to bed. For the 10 month old I have to rock her while giving her a bottle and wait until she’s asleep before I put her down for naps and bedtime. If shes sleepy shell fall asleep with in 10 minutes. If shes fighting it shes looking at 30 minutes to get her down. At night she wakes 3-4 times a night. Shes teething heavily right now and has been for probably 2 months. She also about halfway through the night ends up in our bed because I’m too tired to try and get her to go back down in her crib. I know it’s probably a mistake to do that but being in my 1st trimester I’m exhausted. . My two year old wants us to stay in his room laying on the floor until he’s asleep before we leave the room. Not even sure how that got started. He usually gets up 0-1 time a noght. But now with the third on the way, I’m wanting to gradually get these kids to fall asleep better and more on their own and also sleep through the night. I’ve got probably 7 months to do this. Letting them cry it out Is a poor option for us given the way our house is built and such they would just wake each other up which would make this worse. So relatively cry free suggestions would be much appreciated. We keep a regular schedule with them.

So I’m looking for helpful hints for my kids from all you veteran mothers and fathers out there.

Thank you,
Tired
 
Oh sweet one! You must be absolutely exhausted!! I only have one child and I am currently pregnant with our second, but I have had great luck with this first child in terms of sleeping. In part, it is because she is naturally a good sleeper–she is going to be 3 in May and still naps for 2.5 hours every afternoon. I have to wake her up after that much time. Otherwise, she would keep going. And I have an idea that, given how difficult it can be to wake her up and how moody she is after being woken up, we will have our hands FULL when she is a teenager. But I digress.

I don’t think it is ALL because she has a predisposition to want to sleep a lot. I remember back at about the 8 month point where I was getting pretty fed up with being up with her every couple of hours, and I was so tired of bedtime taking almost an hour. I had to rock her and feed her until she was completely out. If she woke up at all when I was putting her down, I had to start over again. She had to be SO out that she wouldn’t even know I was laying her down.

I’d like to suggest a book for you. I used it as a reference, and it was so incredibly helpful. I didn’t think it was working at first, because the plan they propose takes a lot of willpower and work, but it really did help us. It is called The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways To Help Your Baby Sleep Through The Night.

I’ll link it here: amazon.com/The-No-Cry-Sleep-Solution-Foreword/dp/0071381392/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363228793&sr=8-1&keywords=the+no+cry+sleep+solution

After a few weeks of working with this plan, my little girl was going to sleep on her own. Don’t get me wrong, I still had (or maybe wanted?) to do the night time routine of rocking with her, praying with her, nursing her and putting her to bed. That didn’t change. But what changed was I no longer needed to worry about her waking up when I laid her down. If she woke, this taught her how to soothe herself to sleep without just crying until her little body gave in to the inevitable. It also reduced the number of times I had to nurse in the night. Often, she would wake up and I would offer myself to her more as a means of comfort than anything. And she would nurse a little bit, and be back off to sleep. But after working with this book, there was a period of time when she would still wake up at the regular intervals and just giggle for a few moments before putting herself back to sleep, and after a while she just stopped waking up in the night time.

I know I sound like a commercial for the book, but I really do recommend it. It was great.

My prayers are with you. Congratulations on the newest little bundle of joy! How exciting!!
 
I know it’s early yet, but tell them that they will treasure every second of sleep they can get once they reach college age…

Seriously, I am nowhere near a parent, but I do remember being a very difficult sleeper. I’m not sure how helpful this will be at their ages, but being in a relatively warm room and having soft music playing (like soothing classical) was a big help in getting me to nod off.
 
All children are different but you as a mommy, you have the intuition. I knew nothing about children, i didn’t even think that i would have one ever. Anyway, finally after my child was about six week, i finally relaxed and start to use my intuition. I also combined some info from the “Happiest Baby in the block” and now he has “Happiest Toddler in the Block”. Great investment.

My intuition told me, not to let her cry, because cry was her way to communicate with me. So i just tried to figure it out. I would do the A, B, C, D steps and redo them but sometime, i would get suspicious and i would try to figure out the why “Plastic of her diaper touching her skin”, car seat too tight, close not comfortable, sore leg, etc… Only the intuition would help me about this. Short story she started doing her night at six weeks.

I let her sleep with us in bed but i would set her on top of the sheet at the bottom of our feet for safety (so we don’t roll on her). Later, we put her in her crib, and later, i place a matrix on the floor with a gate around ( she would move so much at night that she will turn like a clock, lol…). I always kept a baby monitor in her room so if she would make any sound, i would go immediately, this way she would get the message that it is ok for her to have her room since mommy is there when i need her.

It is appropriate for children to sleep with you up to 5 years old apparently but mine, was about 15 months when she had her room. Again, my trick was to go in her room as soon i would hear the monitor for anything.

Your children are young and they need to feel safe, if you followed others advice to let them cry so they don’t get fussy, it could be the reason why they aren’t feel safe and don’t want to do their nights.

I hope you figure something out, all the best!
 
I’m pregnant with #4 and well have had various levels of sleeping difficulty or easy with each one. #3 has been EXTREMELY difficult in getting to sleep through the night. Actually, for the past 4 days he has slept through the night which makes a total of 8 nights his whole life sleeping through the night and he’s 29 months old right now (he’s also been my cling-on). Unfortunately the 4 year old is now waking once per night a few times per week because of nightmares 😦 So our solution right now (and one my husband and I were wondering if it’s the right solution) is to have all 3 sleep on the floor in our room because they seem to sleep through the night the best this way (at least this week). Because #3 is on a sleeping streak I don’t even want to start trying to get him to sleep in his room until next week, which means #2 who shares a room with him will not want to sleep without him which means #1 doesn’t want to be the only one to sleep in a room by herself. Right now I don’t care that they are in my room because I have finally been able to sleep through the night at least once in the past 32 months (my third trimester of #3 I didn’t sleep through the night ever). Unfortunately I begin my third trimester on Monday so I am expecting this to be the only week I will sleep through the night (with the exception of last night when #2 woke up with a nightmare that he was burning 😦

The sleep thing really is all trial and error, at least in my experience.
 
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