# Can't figure out why 18 month old is crying at night, please help...



## vrclay (Jun 12, 2007)

Here's the background.

Our son is 18 months old and we've done some version of co-sleeping/bedsharing since he was born. We had been letting him fall asleep in our bed and then moving him to his crib. When he woke up during the night, we'd bring him to our bed and I'd nurse him back to sleep. He's spend the remainder of the night with us in bed.

I'm 15 weeks pregnant and we're trying to transition him into his own bed before the new baby arrive as there is no physical way to co-sleep with both children. Our room is just too tiny for anything more than the queen sized bed we have already. We've also had to wean him because I have a history of pregnancy complications. When he was 16 months, we started by giving a bottle when he woke up in the middle of the night when he would otherwise nurse. In hindsight, this might not have been the best decision, but I felt so guilty about taking him away from the breast, I wanted to give a substitute. We used up the rest of my frozen breastmilk at daycare I continued to breastfeed when he asked in the evening and mornings. Sometime around the end of January, he just stopped asking and that was it. But he still gets cow milk in a bottle and has dubbed my husband as "milk man" because he's the one to get up and prepare middle of the night bottles.

Our current routine is bottle at bedtime, fall asleep with mom or dad in our bed and then move him to his crib. This has been the easiest part of the process as we transfer him to the crib with no problems. He will usually wake up around 2 hours after he first falls asleep and we can rock him back to sleep and put him back in his crib. For the past 3-4 nights this has NOT worked. He cries and cries and the rocking, bottle, singing routine is not working. It's breaking my heart to not be able to figure out why he is crying. He's been getting his molars so we've given him Motrin at bedtime thinking that teeth pain might be causing the waking but that hasn't seemed to help. We've also tried bringing him into our bed when he is inconsolable, but he continues to cry. He will get calm, be almost asleep and then start crying again. It takes at least 45-60 minutes to calm down and go back to sleep.

My husband is getting increasingly frustrated and has suggested we should just let him cry until he goes back to sleep. No, no, no, I don't want to do this...

Has anyone had a similar experience? Any other ideas out there? Am I missing something?


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## teale (Feb 20, 2009)

Could he be allergic to the milk?

When we transitioned our son to the crib (he wasn't sleeping well with us at all), we did it in increments. We started out with just putting him in the crib for the start of the night, then when he woke up, it was a nurse, and back with us. Then we gradually increased it to when he woke up the second time he would come back, nurse, and back to sleep. He's been in his own crib for 2 months now, and does amazing. I hate that co-sleeping didn't work for us for longer, but that's the way it goes, right?

My other thought is that you may be trying to get him to 'give up' too much at once. He's had his night feeding taken away, and now you are attempting to move him into his own bed. It's probably all very scary for him, you know? Is there a way that you could possibly bring back the night nursings, and try to transition him to his crib that way? The comfort of you nursing him might do wonders and get him to not get to that hyper stage of crying.

Also? I always put a shirt of mine in with my son too. He loves it, and it helped a great deal when we were transitioning.


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## Mommy2Haley (Oct 25, 2007)

I second the inquiry into the milk. DD was consuming dairy products from 10 months on and didn't show actual signs until 16 months (I figured it out at 18 months). Looking back there were more signs that just didn't jive with "normal" definitions of milk allergy. That being said, it's worth looking in to!

Good luck with the crib; DD's is ornamental.


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## ASusan (Jun 6, 2006)

I would third the suggestion that you consider a milk/dairy intolerance. He can be quite uncomfortable with something in his tummy that isn't digesting properly.

DS' sleep gets disturbed when he ingests something he's intolerant of.


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