Q: We have just taken our 17 month old out of her cot and into a low bed and we have had more problems since doing this. She used to sleep 11 hours at night, only waking twice a week but sometimes for up to 2 hours. Where we would go to her and try and settle her, we don’t do controlled crying. We took her out hoping this would stop, but it has gotten worse.
It now takes us from 1-3 hours to get her to sleep at night, as opposed to 15 minutes and not needing to be in her room. If we let her stay up as long as she likes until she is ready it is 10pm and she doesn’t catch up on her sleep by sleeping longer that morning or the next day. I have little problems putting her to sleep during the day.
We follow the same routine day and night when going to bed, her meal, milk, reading books, then in bed to sleep. She now sleeps for only 9.5 hours at night, rather than 11 hours and she wakes usually 6 hours after she falls asleep and we have to take her back to her bed to resettle her.
We are at a loss on whether to continue her in a low bed or return her to her cot until she is a little older.
A: I would suggest several strategies for this and it is up to you which one you feel would work the best for your family. One way to make children sleep in the low bed is to make it attractive enough for them. You can put attractive bed covers and allow your child to move in and out of the bed so she can see the benefits of the low bed (freedom of movement). Also make her understand that she is moving there because she is getting older.
Another immediate way for you to get some sleep is to put your child back to sleep in the cot only at night. Continue putting your baby into the low bed during the day to slowly get her used to it. You may decide to put your child on the low bed at night a few weeks later when she is more ready. Another factor to consider is that as children get older they do not need as much sleep anymore. At your child’s age it is recommended that she sleeps for about 13 1/2 hours a day.
This may lessen the pressure on you to get her to sleep longer and be calm when putting her down. As long as she gets close the recommended hours of sleep throughout the day you should not worry if she is not sleeping as long at night. If she gets 9 ½ hours sleep at night and 2×2 hours naps during the daytime your child is getting enough sleep. When your child gets upset or tired during the day it is a sign she is not getting enough sleep.
Is the result same if you put your child down at night instead of your husband? The baby just may be clingy to mum at the moment rather than the transfer to the low bed being the problem.
I’m having my first baby in October and I’m planing on using a floor bed after she grows out of the bassinet. However, I am concerned about how hard it is on your back to pick you baby up from the floor bed. I had a herniated disc last year that I had to get operated, so I have to be careful when picking things up.
I tried the low bed from the beginning, and my son was rolling around on the floor out of his bed by four months and preventing himself from going to sleep on his own (when we finally got over the feed to sleep and carry to sleep options by 5 months- he’s a big boy)
I came to the conclusion I actually wasn’t doing him a heap of favours by leaving him on the low bed to settle when it took 2 hrs so trialled a cot in the form of a port-a-cot. Settle now takes under 15 minutes, and he’s really clear on what he’s supposed to be doing-sleeping, not wandering! It has been about 3 weeks now so might try again on floor bed soon to see what happens…
Has anyone tried to move from a crib to a low bed at 11 months? My daughter goes to sleep with out props. BF to wind down but is awake when I put her in the bed- says “nigh nighâ€. I want to try the low bed but I am unsure of how it really works- any tips?
I too believe that observing your child is the best solution. My second son is almost 6 months old and can put himself to sleep. At first as soon as he yawned we would wrap him for sleeps. As the weather in Australia made this too hot to sustain we now put him in his cot as soon as he yawns or rubs his eyes. He does gizzle a bit sometimes but he then goes off to sleep quite promptly. If he starts to sound in anyway distressed we go to him and try and reassure with our voice, then a hand on his back and failing that we give him a cuddle to settle him down. We then try again a little later.
With my older son i did not have a full nights sleep for 15 months and i was exhausted all because he needed a breast to sleep. After we got help to change his settling technique he became a brilliant sleeper! It made our lives so much better in so many ways! A tired mama, dada and babe is never good! But i would suggest in my experience the older they are the harder it is. As my mother always says “start as you intend to go onâ€
One thing all the experts suggested was get your other half to put babe to bed as they can smell your milk.
I am very new to the Montessori Teaching’s and have been very interested in the low bed problems. We are yet to decide if we will do this or not.
I have just worked out how to put my little one to bed without the breast! He a fully breast fed six month year old (he never took a pacifier either) and has two sleeps per day one at around 10am and one around 2pm.
It has been difficult for him (and the family) to break this lovely sleep association and you MUST be VERY kind and patient with yourself (what a lovely way to go to sleep!). I wonder what the consequence of keeping feeding to sleep does. Maybe it is not worth the stress it takes to do it? But if possible try this type of method for at least 1 sleep during the day for as long as you think is helpful. (BTW I am not a fan of controlled crying and I only tried it once.) If you get the day sleeps sorted then the night will be easier – so I am told!
I aimed to replace the “breast association with sleep†in the short term with something else – I tried walking/rocking. But strictly speaking this is still a “sleep associationâ€.
When he wakes in the morning ~7:30am I BF feed him and give him some solids. He is not weaned yet nor do I want him to be. At 9:30 am if I am not sitting with him already – I sit with him, talk to him in a low voice and have low energy activities and stimulation. This is wind down time.
It is CRITICAL that you know your baby’s tired signs. If he is getting tired I start to cuddle or stroke him a bit. Then when I know he is tired (starts to stare) but not over tired (crying) I pick him up – go to his room, put on the classical radio channel, draw the curtains and pick up his comforter (toy rabbit). These are his sleep cues and you need to be consistent EVERY time.
I then carry him across me with his rabbit (try a scarf, your t-shirt or a cuddly) and then I walk slowly around the house and sing lowly “Old MacDonald†with enough animals (the same order as one of his night time books). It’s very repetitive. I go in an out of rooms (light and dark) and usually he is looking around but not moving and starts to stare a bit. He is settling and not crying. I do not avoid eye contact like some methods. I was prepared to carry him for ~30 minutes – this might be harder with a bigger/heavier baby.
Then when I think he is drowsy (5-30 minutes) I will go back to his darkened room (his eyes will start to drop as we enter from light to dark) and put him in his cot with his rabbit. He will roll naturally away from me and sleep. If he doesn’t – I try to pat his back, if that doesn’t work I will pick him up and walk a little more in his room – usually only another 2 or 3 animals at the farm.
Now I know being rocked to sleep is still a “sleep association†but it has allowed me to put him in bed without the breast.
This worked for me because when I would go shopping with him in the trolley or the pram he would grow tired looking around and sleep without the breast. Maybe by observing your baby when/if he sleeps without the breast you will pick up tips like me?
Now, I’m no nurse a mere engineer by trade who has read a stack of sleep books.
Part of Montessori philosophy is for the child to learn to fall asleep without any aid but simply because they are tired. And at a young age they will always need sleep and take advantage of this! Aids such as the dummy/pacifier, rocking, patting, bottle, etc. can make it easy at first to get them to sleep ( and at times that is all that you want!) but in the long run it is a quick fix but not teaching the child good sleeping habits. The earlier you start the easier it will be in the long run for sleep not to be dependent on any sleeping aids and therefore trying to wean them out of it at a later stage as well is not needed.
We didn’t use a low bed for my eldest but did have sleep problems. I notice a lot of you are saying you breast feed until they go to sleep. This may be you problem (it was ours). Children learn to settle to sleep in a certain way and if they wake up they need the same thing to settle. So if you put them to sleep with a breast or dummy (pacifier) when their sleep cycle ends and they wake (as all of us do) they cannot put themselves back to sleep but need a breast or dummy.
Interestingly, the very night I wrote my earlier post when my son was 13 months old, he decided to go back to his bed of his own accord. I quite quickly went to his room and told him how very good he was and said the good nights that I would normally do. He stayed there and went to sleep! I was ecstatic. Perhaps he realised that he wasn’t going to win, I’m not too sure, but it was a big turning point. At the end of the day, it has to be their decision to go to sleep.
It just got easier and easier from then on, although admittedly he has gone through a couple of phases since then when he would cry and it would be hard to leave him but by being consistent these phases were relatively short-lived, just a few days.
I wouldn’t worry about breastfeeding your daughter to sleep, it’s better for her to get the sleep she needs. However it won’t last forever, as they grow up they stop falling asleep at the breast and then you have to come up with a new strategy anyway. My son was 16 months when I weaned him off the breast and for a long time I had been using it as our “wind down†time but it had to end somewhere. You will work out what is best for you.
Eventually as your daughter gets a bit older and a little bit easier you may be able to just lie next to her until she falls asleep. My son is now 20 months old and whereas I was the only one that could ever put him to sleep in the past, now it could be his father, nana, aunty, anyone he knows well. We can now just do our night-time routine, say good night, close the door and he will not complain at all.
I just want you to know that it gets easier, bit by bit, and I truly believe that all of the hard work you are putting in now will come back to you times two with the relationship that you are building with your daughter. We will still have our difficult times, but consistency goes a long way and we must have faith and trust in ourselves and what we are doing.
I am so thankful to know I am not alone in the struggle to get my baby to sleep in her low bed.
The only way I am able to get my 10 month old baby to go down is to breast feed her to sleep. This works fine in the day but some nights she finally falls asleep at the breast only to wake as I put her into her bed. She gets very upset but I have to just leave her and walk out. If I leave the door open or ajar she just opens it and crawls out to us (this can happen anything from 5 to 20+ a night) so if she is awake when I leave the room I have to shut the door. She then sits there and screams for what seems like an eternity. I go back in every so often and put her back into her bed but this just happens over and over again. Eventually she goes to sleep again at the breast (I think from pure exhaustion).
Does anyone have any luck putting their baby down without feeding them to sleep? I really feel like I’m setting myself up for problems later on when she’s a toddler as I can’t feed her to sleep forever. Also, the way things are going there is no way I would ever be able to have anyone else put her to sleep (her Dad, a babysitter etc).
I don’t want to go back to the cot because I know of the benefits of her being in the low bed but some nights when I’m at my wits end, it seems like the only solution.
I have a 13 month old son who has been in a low bed since he was about 4 or 5 months old. I too have great difficulty getting him to sleep, but that has been pretty much from day one! He currently sleeps anywhere between about 9 -10 1/2 hours overnight and normally has one daytime sleep usually of about an hour and a half. For the daytime sleep I breast feed him to sleep, and I try the same at night but if it doesn’t work I tend to leave him to cry a fair bit as I feel he needs to understand that it is sleep time and if I keep interrupting him he will never get himself to sleep! Usually he will cry at his gate and every ten minutes or so I will take him back to bed, then I often end up sitting next to him until he falls asleep (in order to keep him in bed and to help him get to sleep). This process usually takes about an hour or more. I have been using this strategy ever since he was born and it is still not working but am not sure what else I should do. Perhaps a cot would help? But then I expect I would face the same problem when I next want to put him into a real bed anyway. Sorry I’m probably not a great help, but I think we all just have to do our best when it comes to getting our babies to sleep, confident that we know our own child better than anyone else does.
PS. I love the low bed, when my son wakes he comes into our room in the morning or during the day out to the living room where I am. I think that’s just great to give him that ability.