Peaceful Nights » 7 - 12 Months

QUESTION: My 9 month old baby recently got quite sick (gastro and tonsilitis) and ever since he’s been a nightmare to put to sleep. Now when I try to put him down (day or night), he starts arching his back (nearly folding himself double) and screaming.  It started while he was sick, but the doctor has checked him out and he’s fine now.  When I hold him upright he calms down, but the moment I lay him down in my arms he arches and screams. When I put him down in his cot from an upright position, he’s happy and starts playing. But the moment I hold him in a lying position in my...

QUESTION: My son's 91/2 months old. He used to sleep pretty well at night and used to fall asleep easily but recently he struggles to fall asleep by himself and cries for ages before eventually falling asleep. He'll then wake for a feed during the night and then battle to fall asleep again. He never used to struggle so much. He is teething at the moment. His first two bottom teeth have popped out. I give him pamol to help soothe the pain and discomfort, but he still struggles to fall asleep. My partner and I have been trying to leave him to cry it out and then check on him periodically. I just...

QUESTION: I would firstly like to thank you for your wonderful books, they have been a great help with parenting so far. I have a 7 and a half month old baby. She is not a good sleeper, for a few months she wakes up every evening around 12/1am, when she was 6 months I went to a local nurse and she advised me that breast babies drink much more at night and that I should continue feeding when she wakes up. She is nearly 8 months old and the habit continues. She is eating 3 meals a day and drinking daily four hourly. How do I know if she is still hungry and how much a breast baby should drink? ANSWER...

Q: I wrote to you when my baby boy was 7 month old saying he was a bad sleeper. Your advice was to get sleep sense and coach him to sleep. Well it worked for a while but lately now that he is walking, despite at least a 1km walk in the afternoon (which he runs through in a matter of minutes!) and sometime 10minutes in the swing he does not sleep through. He sleeps at 7pm easily in his own bed, (sometimes wakes us at 10pm, all we need to do is go to him shush him back to sleep), but he always wakes up after an 8 hour stretch (which is at 3am). At 3am he refuses to go back to sleep in his own cot. If we...

Q: Hi there I am sure you get thousands of these e-mails so I am probably number 1001. I desperately need advise please. My husband and I are so tired and it’s even started affecting my job and I’ve even been addressed by my boss about my “attitude”….. Since 6 weeks my baby has not been in a good sleeping pattern. He is now almost 10 months. He wakes up so often at night and after I returned back to work it just got too much for us so we resorted in putting him in bed with us so we could all just get sleep. So basically this is our routine: During the day at day care he would sleep for an...