Hello, My son is 27 months old, and has only begun sleeping longer than 2-3 hours at a stretch in the past couple of months. His more settled sleep patterns followed the emergence of his last molars. In those first 25 months or so I tried many things and interviewed every mother I could find for ideas! Here are a few that had some effect for us: 1) Put child on double mattress on floor in his own room, nurse him to sleep there. When he wakes, go to him there and just fall asleep again in that room. Dad gets to stay in his own bed and mom gets to just fall asleep again rather than stay awake till child is settled and then get up to go back to bed. In our family I also was dealing with a dad who felt I should be forcing the issue more than I was comfortable with. By making it possible for him to just stay in our bed it removed a bit of the pressure, which helped general ambiance in the household! 2) Before I tried to deny nursing at night I tried limiting during the day (i.e. the neh nehs are busy now, they are driving/eating/shopping/etc.) It is worth a try, it would sometimes work at night, though it was very inconsistent, and I didn't feel it was appropriate with my guy to really force the issue. He seemed to really *need* that nursing at night. I suspect his teeth were pretty uncomfortable. 3) Hard to put this in words, but the most powerful coping tool I had was what I refer to as floating down stream. There were many periods where my son was waking every 1.5 to 2 hours through the night. I would reach a point where I thought I was going to lose my mind, then I would meet a cool mom who sympathized, or go to a LLL toddler meeting and meet a bunch of them!, or somethign would just snap in me and I would say, "whatever, I'll just deal." Inevitably, INEVITABLY!, my son would then enter a period of sleeping a bit better! He is an extremely sensitive barometer of emotion in our household and I am convinced that part of his waking was tied to my frustration with it. 4) I never really tested this, but a friend insists that the key to making changes in night time patterns is to take baby steps towards the goal and to give each step a minimum of 2 weeks to become habit. I hope that the mom finds a good support group, LLL toddler meetings have been great for me, as have various playgroups in our area. It's really difficult to accept this (I know, I've been there!) but the most powerful way to manage this difficult period is to try to stop seeing it as a problem, and just accept what is until it isn't. Good luck! Please convey the best wishes of a mom who has been there to the mom going bonky right now! Karen Lowell, somewhat rested mom! *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html