Our daughter woke up every night around 3 or 4 am until she was 10 or 11 months old, and she was in her own room. Just a reminder that babies are not all great sleepers, and it may not have anything to do with your arrangements! We tried seemingly every strategy to break our daughter of her nightly wake-up habit but finally the only thing that really worked was just waiting it out.

Nightwaking is normal. I have a 9 month old who is still waking 2-3 times a night. I don't agree with letting a baby cry-it-out. (what is "it", anyways?) I think it can break trust; I also think it is something that doesn't work as well as people act like it does. It helps to think about it as a milestone that will be met when baby is ready. One waking a night really isn't bad.

My friends and I have a mantra: "this too shall pass".

If you are desperate for sleep though, you might consider bringing her into bed with you. She will likely stop fussing and crying, and you and your husband won't wake up as completely as you would were you to take her to the living room.

Our son did it the same thing, and that is what we did -- everyone slept fine.

You could try putting the crib in the living room for a few nights (or just putting her to sleep in the pack-n-play) and letting her cry it out. 9 months is definitely old enough for that. But even once she learns to sleep through the night on her own, she may still wake up in your room. Our twins were (for the most part) sleeping through the night at 6 months, but when we took trips and they had to sleep in the same room as us, they always woke up. But I still think it's worth trying a few nights in a separate room.

Our 2-year old sleeps in our room with us (tiny apt). She has her own mattress on the floor. We had the same problem for the longest time, we finally had success when we did a modified version of 'crying it out'. We think she just didn't understand that she could put herself to sleep and she kept relying on me. We followed our same process of putting her to bed, tucking her in, kisses, and walking out the room. At first, she would get up and come to the door, we'd escort her back to bed, tuck her in, give her a kiss, walk out. After a few times, she wouldn't leave her bed and would do a fake little cry until she finally gave up and would lay down. Then during the night, she'd wake up for whatever reason...so, we'd get up, tuck her back in, give her a kiss, and she'd fall back asleep. After a few nights, she was sleeping through the night.

Then we went on vacation and it got all screwed up. We're doing the same process over again, and it's working, but she's throwing more items into the mix now (now she likes to claim she has a dirty diaper or is hungry, etc.) But we're sticking with it, and so far it's ok.

We have gotten so frustrated in the past that we've tried letting her cry it out. You're right, it does NOT work when child sleeps in your room. And I still don't believe it's healthy for a child as young as yours. We felt AWFUL. Especially when she could see us right there. That's why we felt the acknowledging her with a kiss was better. It let's her know we're there but it's bedtime.

I'll chime in.... our son has always been a REALLY good sleeper. it wasnt until he was 10 months... that the 12 or 1 am wake up started to be a problem. he's not waking up because he's starving... it had become a routine.. change him, bottle & rock him then drop him back in & he'd sleep. We changed the routine... no more bottle, it was a diaper change, and he'd go right back to sleep... and then after another few nights of that... we switched to the overnight diapers... and we DID let him cry it out. Not full throttle right off the bat. We went in the first few nights, and patted him & told him it was time to go back to sleep... and then after a few nights we didn't & he went back to sleep on his own. I would say it took a good two weeks.

check with your pedi. Ours informed us that this was the norm and our son would need a feeding durring the night untill he turned one. He was formula fed ( i never produced milk!!!). But at one he no longer needed the feedings and we used the CIO method three nights later he sleeps through. Also is there a place you could put her down to sleep outside of your room? Even a hall closet or small space that the pack n play fit? let that be her room? White noise helps our son sleep. Good luck.

Our daughter is 14 months; her crib is in our bedroom (1-bedroom condo) and she still wakes up several times a night. She actually was sleeping through the night until I went back to work at 8 months, and then she figured our that, hmm, Mum's not always there during the day, but she's always there at night. So now she spends about half the night in her crib, and half in our bed. We're just living with it for now. I agree bbt, letting her cry when she can see you right there is just too awful.

Can she see you from her crib? If so, it may help to get some sort of divider screen between her crib and your bed so that the first thing she sees when she wakes up in the middle of the night isn't mom and dad. It may be easier for her to roll back over and fall back asleep that way.
Good luck! Hope you find something that works!

Our daughter is fifteen months old and still waking in the night a couple of times a week where we have to get up with her. She does know how to put herself to sleep, sometimes she wakes, sits up, looks over at us (where I'm pretending to be asleep), and lies back down and goes back to sleep. And of course she puts herself to sleep in the evening. However, at other times, such as last night, she wakes crying and really needs to be comforted. (Bad dreams? We don't know.) We're about to close on a house where she'll finally have her own room, and we'll see what happens then. Probably nothing different until she grows out of it.

My advice is to give your baby the chance to go back to sleep, but if it seems obvious that she's very awake, get up. There's not much else you can do with her sharing your room, and moving the baby into another room for half the night makes it into too big a deal, IMHO. You want to get her back to sleep as quickly as possible, so she might not even remember it the next night. And hopefully she will grow out of it. Our daughter's wakings do seem to be getting less frequent as she gets older.

We have a two-bedroom house and two daughters: an almost 3-year-old and an 8-month-old. This is far from ideal and *definitely temporary*, but for now, the girls sleep in the bedrooms, and my husband and I camp out in the living room. Our pediatrician said it's normal for babies to wake up hungry until about 9 months old, so we are waiting for that magic moment when she doesn't need any milk at night and can sleep through on her own. Until then, the three of us sleeping in our tiny bedroom is just too disruptive for all. Our baby knows we're there, and it's torture for her when she wakes up and we don't go to her. By herself in the bedroom, she has learned how to fall asleep all alone from being totally awake at bedtime, and also to find her way back to sleep when she wakes during the night (except when hungry...). Once she can sleep through reliably, we plan to move her into her sister's room and reclaim our bedroom. Again, not ideal, but we are looking at the larger picture of getting her to be a really solid sleeper on her own, and so far, it seems to be working.

I agree with the comment of getting a temporary divider screen (that she cannot reach.)

I strongly recommend against bringing her in your bed (then none of you will get good sleep!!!)

I also disagree that "one waking a night really isn't bad." Your instincts are right in telling you that she IS capable of sleeping all the way thru the night. But since she wakes every night like clockwork at 2 or 3 then her clock is stuck. She is waking out of habit and she knows the routine will be the same (daddy takes her to LR.) You have to change the routine and be consistent with it EVERY night for 3-5 days MAX. Your husband has to do it too! Keep her in her crib (why move her??) Daddy gets up, says NOTHING not even a sshh. Rubs her back or tummy, quietly makes sure she does not have a poopy diaper (pee is ok), calms her for a bit with touch only and then walks away. She will cry!! (less and less each night) Because you have changed the routine. Do this every night exactly the same and I GUARANTEE she will stop and sleep thru the nite.

So I live in a 2 bdrm and my 13mth old has her crib in our bedroom but sleeps in our bed (because she wouldn't sleep through the night and we found she sleeps for longer periods of time with us in bed). She wakes up 1-2x a night and often will just drink her bottle and go right back to bed but sometimes will decide that she wants to play or jump in her crib anywhere from 1-2.5hrs until she's ready to go back to sleep. We've come to learn to live with it. She has never slept through the night and I tried the crying out thing for 2 nights and couldn't do it.
Every baby is different and I learned that you figure out what works best for you and your family and go with it. Eventually your baby will decide that she will sleep through the night. We've learned to live with it! sometimes if we get really tired my husband and I will take turns sleeping in late.

when you figure it out, let me know so i can do it to myself. i'm 29 and i still wake up at night.

I don't know if this will work for you but it worked for my friend's son who I babysat.

Instead of picking the child up when they wake, just a lay a hand on them until they settle and fall back asleep. With this kid in particular he would have rolled over on his stomach so I would lay a hand on his back and rub a little until he fell back asleep which only took 2-3 minutes and then rolled him back over onto his back for safety. Sometimes he would fuss a little when I walked away but he didn't wake back up. After a few weeks he just would fuss a little and then settle again.

Picking him up only woke him up further and made it harder to get him back to sleep.

Not being able to see you may make all the difference!

When my daughter wakes in her own room, she will fuss herself back to sleep after about five minutes. But when we share a room with her, she invariably glimpses us through the corner of her barely opened little eye, wakes all the way up, and screams until we pick her up and bring her into our bed.

Next time we have guests take over the nursery and have to move her in with us temporarily, I'm going to try the screen idea.

I won't comment on the "cry-it-out" debate...but here are things that help when we're traveling and share a room:

1 - TOTAL darkness. Room-darkening blinds, no little lights, nothing. When we've been in others' guest rooms that were only semi-dark, our son wasn't sleeping as well; I heard him rolling around all night (even more than usual).

2 - white noise. We have a rather noisy little air filter that we've started taking with us everywhere. We all sleep better.

3 - screened from view of mom and dad's bed. This isn't always possible, but our pack n play has a screen on one side, that we always face toward us. A room divider screen is even better.

If you're concerned about your child's sleep habits, by all means, talk to your pediatrician. Being well-rested is just as important for children as it is for adults (maybe more, even!)...our little guy is noticeably happier during the day when he sleeps well.

Check out the archives of www.askmoxie.com or post your question there.
:o)

My daughter is 2, sleeps in her own room on a different floor from us, and still wakes up around 4am- every night. That is just who she is. My son on the other hand slept through the night at 4 months- and he was in the same room as us.

She'll sleep through the night when she is ready to, there really isn't anything you can do.

There are lots of useful comments above, but I've got one more suggestion: What type of bed is your baby sleeping in in each setting? One of my children (the charming # 3) woke repeatedly every night in the crib in our room until age 11 months, but slept great for naps or any other time she happened to fall asleep in the pac-n-play. I was crying hysterically to my husband daily due to lack of sleetp. Finally we realized it was because her crib had slats. Slats let pacifiers and her "lovey" (a small doll) fall out of her bed...the mesh sides on the pac-n-play did not. Also, she didn't mind knocking her head against the side of the pac-n-play like she did the sides of her wooden crib. As soon we started to put her to sleep every night right into the pac-n-play, she slept through the night almost every night. Almost a year and half later, she just moved into a bed this week! Anyway, I hope this advice this helps someone out there.

To get my son out of my bed and into his own I had to give him his own defined space that wasn't containing and is super comfy. So the screen might help and maybe a nice matress pad.

Babies and adults wake up hungry at night. A nice bedtime snack will keep her stomach full.
At nine months one night time feed isn't much however a bit of sops or rice cereal an hour before bed along side the breast or bottle won't hurt.

I feel your pain... we are so tired.... My 9 month old still wakes up 1-2x most nights. Sometimes she'll cry a bit then get herself back to sleep but if she wakes up at 3 she can be up screaming for hours if we let her (which we can't because she shares a room with her 3 year old sister). We tried bringing her into bed with us and it made it worse. I've tried nursing her, not nursing her, patting her, ignoring her... The one thing that has helped us is to make sure she has two naps during the day. If she naps for an hour in the morning and afternoon she often sleeps until 5:30, nurses then sleeps til 7am. I would also try the screen. When our daughter sees us it usually makes her wake up even more. Good luck and I hope you can help her get a full nights sleep.

If relocating her to the pack-n-play is working and she is able to go back to sleep on her own, why not try it when you go to bed instead of when she wakes up. Move her at your bedtime out of the shared room for a while and see if she still wakes. She may resettle her self better or you may be able to with stand a bit more crying and see what happens. It is unrealistic to put her to bed in the living room, but we have moved our sleeping kids about the house depending on the night waking situations and they just fall immediately back to sleep. It might at least help you get a few nights sleep for a while.

There are compelling reasons to NOT CIO -- I recommend Kellymom.com for more info. Even the proponents of CIO (Ferber etc.) do not recommend any form of extinction sleep training under one year of age.

Also, at nine months, she is developmentally doing a LOT -- sitting, crawling, standing, working on language etc. and that will often cause her to wake at night, and may well want a snack if she is eating less during the day. If you've gone back to work, your baby may be reverse cycling in order to fit in a nursing session at night -- something that may also be important for your supply. There are lots of reasons a baby wakes at night, many of which are just as valid for a baby as they are for an adult, including the 2am drink of water. I find that if my little guy wakes up, the best way to get him back to sleep with all of us fussing less is to just nurse. Is there a specific reason why you stopped nursing in the night?

I recommend the book "No Cry Sleep Solution" by Elizabeth Pantley that may be able to get the sleeping to a point everyone can live with. I honestly don't think the arrangement of your rooms/living space will address what is essentially a parenting issue.

I heartily disagree that this is a feeding issue. It sounds like your 9 month old just needs the opportunity and sleeping arrangements that allow her to put herself back to sleep (an important skill, as mentioned several times by others above!).

My 16 month old has always been an excellent sleeper (through the night at 2 months and 12 hours a night a few months later). That having been said, we find that solid night sleeping comes and goes in cycles. We have had rough times when he's learning a new skill (sitting, crawling, standing...), teething or when we are in a unfamiliar place (recently he is either unwilling or unable to sleep anywhere but home!).

However, Anson's sleep is highly affected when he has to sleep in the same room with my husband and I. Currently (temporarily), we are staying with my parents after relocating for my husband's job; when my college-age brother came home for the holidays, we moved my son's crib into our room to accommodate him. Without fail, Anson was up at least once a night, standing in the crib, wailing while staring at us in our bed. We didn't have another room to move him into and had to deal with this the hard way (rocking, moving him to our bed, etc) which I would not do normally. I had to keep him from waking the rest of the household. I still don't know if we were waking him with our sleep noises or if he was unable to get back to sleep on his own knowing we were in the same room. I just know that for whatever reason sleeping in the same room is never an easy situation for us.

I think you have to figure out a way to give your daughter her own sleeping space. In my opinion, CIO can't work with parents in the same room. If you read the books, the whole point of CIO is that they learn to fall asleep without you in the room. Perhaps moving her into the LR when you retire to bed, as one commenter suggested, is your only option for now.

This is such a controversial subject and I don't think there is a right or wrong way. Here is what I think based on my instincts. I have twin 8 mos olds and they wake 1-2 times a night. I don't think its normal for babies under a year to sleep all night. Babies sleep in different cycles all the way up to their toddler years. I don't like to put such high expectations on my little ones since it will stress me out if I think about it. I believe sleep through the night usually means 5 hours, not 12. I think waking up once a night is awesome for a 9 mos old! I am breastfeeding so I believe its quiet normal for night feeding since it digests so quickly.

I do believe that it is a good skill for babies to learn to fall asleep. But with any skill, all babies have different paces for learning it.

Our family lives in a loft apartment with no separate rooms. Our son has gone from sleeping in a co-sleeper attached to our bed, to the co-sleeper a couple feet away, and finally (at about 8m) to his own crib on the other side of the room. At 11 1/2 months, he still wakes sometime around 3-4am and wants me to nurse him back to sleep. Usually, I find it easier to do that than to hear him cry for me until he falls asleep on his own. Some nights, he ends up back in his bed but he usually ends up in ours until morning. Neither my husband nor I mind this.

I agree that the issue is more about sharing the room than about your baby having a sleep problem. It must be really confusing to be able to see her parents sleeping so nearby and ignoring her cries. A room divider is a great suggestion. Or maybe set up her crib in the living room for a few weeks and see what happens? I have draped a light blanket over the side of his crib to block the view and any light. (Obviously, only do this if your daughter can pull a blanket off of herself if she pulls it down.)

And as far as the CIO method is concerned, I only let my son cry himself to sleep if I'm certain that he's really ready to sleep. There's none of this business of crying for 30 min in my house. We've weaned him off of his initial 12am waking/feeding because it was obvious that he was just at a sensitive time in his sleep cycle and could fall right back to sleep if I let him do it himself. Eventually, we'll wean him off of the 3am waking/feeding.

Read "The No-Cry Sleep Solution." It's a nice, balanced view of baby sleep training.

Good luck! And remember that when your daughter is 16 and you have a hard time getting close enough to touch her, you'll look back fondly on the days when she wanted you close...

Our ten month old sleeps for a few hours in his crib and typically wakes up once in the night. When he wakes up my husband will sometimes try to rock him back to sleep (if it's still relatively early), but usually we bring him into our bed. I can usually tell if he's going to fall back asleep on his own or if I'm we're going need to pick him up, depending on his cry.

Once he joins us everyone falls back asleep right away and stays asleep until morning. Works like a charm for us. No fuss. Having a king sized bed helps.

If we have our second child we'll likely continue room-sharing with our eldest son, but will set up a sidecar arrangement so everyone has space.

I kinda miss my baby on the nights he doesn't wake up!

I agree with LSwanson on putting baby to sleep in the Pack and Play when you go to sleep. We were in a 1 BR with our infant son's crib in our room and the Pack and Play in the living room until he was five months old. When he was sleeping in the crib, I could not sleep b/c I would wake up with every little noise and snuffle. We started putting him to bed in the crib and then, when we were ready to go to sleep, moving him to the Pack and Play. He did not wake up during this transition (we turned off all of the lights). When he did wake up a few hours later, it was b/c he was hungry and I would feed him.

We moved to a 2 BR when he was about 5.5 months old. Now, at 8.5 months, he sleeps through the night or, if he wakes up, he can put himself back to bed with the aid of a binky. We put all of his binkies with him in the crib in an array around his head so that he can find them if/when he wakes up.

A screen would also be a good way to go b/c oftentimes, if baby can see you, she is not going to go back to sleep.

My son is 1, still breast feeding and he co-sleeps. We live in a studio (closing on a house soon!) and letting him spaz out in the crib literally three feet from us was unrealistic- no one would get any sleep! We'll have a tough time transitioning to a separate bed, we know, but if your daughter can go to sleep in her crib she should be able to stay there through the night. We've already had to break some bad habits- right around 9 mo. he started waking 3-5 times a night and it was because I would immediately scoop him up at the first fuss and feed or comfort him back to sleep. So I slowly cut out the feedings in trade for rocking and the rocking in trade for back rubs... you get the idea. Strange as this sounds, the process usually means more tossing and turning for everyone at first but with a few days the results are remarkable- at least that's what I've found. Make double sure that she's getting as much sleep and is good and full before bedtime too. Consistency is always the key! Be strong and a nightmare of a week could turn into months of blissful full nights. :)