# Only wants his mom at bedtime..."cry it out" in dad's arms?



## tanyato (Aug 27, 2011)

my 5 month old son sleeps with my husband and I. He definitely knows who his dad is - loves him, smiles for him when he sees him etc. During the daytime, my husband can put him down for a nap without any issues. It's night time that's a problem. We do our bedtime routine (diaper change, massage, husband plays guitar and sings while he nurses) and then I USED to be able to pass him over to my husband and he'd bounce him/rock him to sleep but recently (in the last month or so) our baby wakes up when he's passed over to his dad and cries. Really hard. inconsolably, until i come back and calm him down by nursing him and then he goes to sleep. My husband USED to be able to go comfort him back to sleep when he needed it (between baby going to bed and us coming into bed a few hours later). but he does the same thing when my husband goes in - wakes up more, cries cries cries.

We want my husband to be able to comfort him at night and put him to bed but baby would honestly cry forever if I didn't eventually come in and "rescue" him. What's up? He obviously has a preference for me at night time, but why just at night? And i don't always nurse him back to sleep when he wakes up after going to bed. Sometimes i just go in, bounce him and put him back down - no problem. If my husband tried to do it, he'd definitely start crying more and it wouldn't end (well I guess it would EVENTUALLY end...)

When this first started happening, we'd still have my husband try and put him to sleep, go in to comfort etc. But I was always having to come in to take over anyways, and I hated hearing baby cry so much so now it's at the point where I'm the only one who does anything sleep related with the baby. Means I can't even go out for a little while in the evenings because if he needs soothing back to sleep, we're hooped. And some evenings I end up spending 10 minutes every 30 minutes soothing him back to sleep. It's almost more work than taking care of him all day!

Might be good to know that he's EBF and has had a bottle of expressed milk like twice. And he didn't really take it so we didn't really bother much with that. Also, we've tried the "hand off" to my husband when baby's been in various stages of sleepiness and they almost always result in him waking up when he realizes he's not with his mom anymore. oh, and we put him to bed in our bed but we're considering getting a crib and putting him to bed in there and then bringing him to bad later, when we go to bed.

Has anyone else had this? Did baby grow out of it? Should we just persevere with husband trying to put him down? It would basically mean having him "cry it out" in my husbands arms....I don't know how I feel about that and would it even be effective? Would he eventually get used to my husband putting him to sleep again? But it would involve so much crying which I really don't like. BUT this is his DAD we're talking about here. Not some stranger. And it's not like we're sleep training him by leaving him to cry alone in a crib.

Advice? Personal experiences? Thanks!


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## katelove (Apr 28, 2009)

Not specifically for sleep because I feed our LO to sleep but she has definitely gone though some very mummy-centric periods. And she is strongly bonded to DH. We tend to just follow her cues so during her mummy periods then I do tend to have the bulk of the care. They've never lasted long although it can be tiring while it lasts. I just tried to get my breaks when she was happy with DH.

I personally think that at 5 months there isn't much to be gained from persisting with your DH trying to settle him. If it's necessary for you to be away for an evening then they'll battle through and it'll be one bad night instead of every night being a bad night KWIM?

Just keep repeating "this too shall pass"


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