anyone else have a baby in a constant growth spurt (and did it ever calm down?)

[averagemum]

My ds is 4.5 months, and we seem to have no pattern to his wakings at night at all, except that he wakes LOADS. The only constant is that he goes to bed at 6.30ish and will sleep til 10ish, then after that it's every hour / 2 hours / sometimes if we're lucky a 3 hour stretch. We have no constant feed times, and it's been like this since the beginning. We have a calm bedtime, I feed/rock him to sleep at first but after night feeds can put him down awake, so I know he can self-settle (sometimes). I try really hard to have constant nap times in the day (he gets about 3 hours in sling / buggy as if I try the cot he wakes after 30 mins). So... anyone else had this? And did it ever get better? I'm knackered and just want to get my optimism back really...

[lovelymama]

Here's a reason to be optimistic...! Your DS sounds like mine at 4 months. Had to rock him to sleep for EVERY nap - took ages and I hated it. He would self settle to sleep at night when I put him down at 6pm but never in the middle of the night and I always had to BF him to sleep at least 3/4 times in the night. Our nights are much better now, although he still wakes once or twice but at least we don't have to feed him anymore as he's now 8 months and not hungry in the night. As for the naps, I was just persistent - kept putting him down at the sameish time every day so that his body got used to the sleep rhythm. Eventually I got so sick of rocking him, I just put him down and walked out of the room. He only cried for a little bit and as he was tired, he would fall asleep. At first it took 20 mins of tired crying - I did feel a little guilty but as it was tired crying, I knew he wasn't in pain etc - he just wanted to go to sleep. Very quickly, the crying reduced to a matter of seconds and he started napping for longer. Keep going. After about 5 months, night sleeps generally get better so you don't have too long to go.

[averagemum]

Just what I needed to hear - thanks LovelyMama. At what age did you give up the rocking? My ds only really ever cries when he's tired - sometimes for a few seconds in the pushchair for exaample before he falls asleep, and I've wondered if it would be the same in his cot but haven't dared try it yet!

[lovelymama]

I think it was about 5 months. I was just so sick of spending so long rocking him. My hands got so sore from pushing his little rocky chair up and down!! He would then wake up after 30 mins or so and i'd have to rock him to get him back to sleep. The real turning point was that my little one was so tired during the day because his quality of sleep was awful because he kept waking up and needed help getting back to sleep - I knew that by rocking him to sleep I was actually being more cruel than doing some sleep training (i.e. a bit of crying). Please don't expect mega quick results - if you get the courage to put DS in the cot (or a comfy, reclining chair like the Chicco one we have - best thing I ever bought), don't expect results straight away. Be firm with DS and let him know what you want him to do by giving him a sleep cue. Mine was taking DS to the nursery window, spending a few mins with him looking out at the trees talking to him quietly then closing the blinds and curtains so he could see what I was doing, then put in cot. Quite quickly he understood that blinds going down = time to go to sleep and he started nuzzling in to my shoulder when the blind went down to show that he was ready to go to sleep. I think sometimes we know that it's nap time but babies don't understand when play time ends and nap time starts so they need a bit of help understanding what we expect of them.

Wow, I think this must be a very boring post for you to read, I just wanted to share with you what it took me about 3 months of internet surfing and experimentation to work out! Good luck with DS and don't forget to be firm and consistent!