Mumsnet Talk

Any advicecfor my restless 5 month old who wakes constantly,sometimes has a suck of milk but an sure just cries for no reason. And hoe do you keep a dummy in?

You can't keep a dummy in. Most 5 month olds are still having night feeds, so it may well be that. Both mine were still waking every two hours at night (at least) at 5m.

Oooh watching with great interest, although nothing helpful to add (sorry) my 6 mo wakes every 3 hrs like clockwork and the sleep deprivation makes it hard to do all the things I probably should!
So I'm hand holding and sympathising until a more useful mnetter comes along!

Right here handholding with you! Mine is up every 2 hours without fail. I am back at work in less than a month and dreading it because of my poor sleep.

I am back at work, god help my customers!

Going through a really bad phase with my 5 month old, the onl way I can get her to settle and sleep is co sleeping. Have you tried it?

My son is 8 months old. To begin with he was sleeping brilliantly although he dropped the 'wrong' feed very early on and slept from 7-2 or 7-3, had a feed and then slept until about 6 or 7.

Then the past couple of months he has been waking at 1 then 3 then 5 and I was at my wit's end! I had read every article online, had let him cry, had fed him/not fed him, given him more solids/less solids, you name it i'd tried it! And then last week his top teeth came through and since then he has slept like a dream from 7-7.30! I can't believe it and I can feel the bags under my eyes disappear!

Don't give up hope. It will get better. As my auntie told me - do you know an 18 year old who still needs a bottle at night? No, so it will end at some point!

Agree that is is perfectly normal behaviour at this age and you just can't keep a dummy in. By twelve months half of all babies still wake, no matter how they are fed or looked after and by 7 months bfing mums actually get more sleep on average than there ffing peers.

There are some things you can do though so don't worry too much. The main ones being go gpto bed earlier and have lie ins when you can.

Google askdrsears 12 alternatives for the all night nurser and askdrsears 31 ways to get your baby to sleep.

I think Cymraes123 may be right, although I need support fr other things with my son, sleep was something I managed to crack (at night anyway). My son slept through the night from 2 months and still does. I put him down at 7pm, he normally falls asleep around 7.30-7.40, then wakes at 8am. We stopped the dream feed when he was 4 months because he didn't want it and we were just disturbing him, so since then he did a solid 12 hours each night until.....

teething set in but we mainly got around it with calpol before bed each night, worked a treat. The bottom teeth weren't too bad, nor was the left front tooth but the right front tooth OMG caused soo much trouble and took about two months to come through. It really disturbed his sleep pattern but calpol really helped and let us maintain the structure we'd put in.

Since he cut the last tooth he sleeps through 12 hours again and is now nearly 11 months.

Ermintrudel do you mean you gave Calpol every night for 2 months?

Lol, no no, it took almost two months for the last tooth to come through (or maybe it just seemed that long) and in that time he still had good nights but on occasions but when he had the bad nights and couldn't settle or kept waking, we found calpol and calprofen worked at treat.

The inflammation of the gums during teething and pressure on the gums due to the teeth and inflammation is really painful for the baby and calprofen reduces the inflammation, giving them a break from it and helping them sleep.

Jilted that's a really interesting thought - about bf-ing mums getting more sleep at 7 months than ff-ing ones. (Certainly I would concur!) Is that anecdotal or is it a statistic?

Think its on kellymom sleep studies, so proven. At that age I seemed to get far more sleep than any of my ffing friends too.

My 6mo has been similar, but two nights ago he randomly dropped his 11pm feed and slept from 9.30 til 4.30, then woke a couple of times and finally we got up at 7.30. Last night he needed his 11pm feed again but only woke at 4.45 then up for the day at 7.30.

I'm hoping this is the start of a new era of sleep!

So no advice really, other than I've taken to napping with him during the day so I'm not so totally exhausted all the time.