To those who are against controlled crying...

[BigGreenBaskets]

...how would you honestly deal with this situation?

Baby is 5 months, breastfed. At night will only go to sleep by being fed. Rocking, patting/shushing, putting down awake etc- all result in screaming. We already use constant white noise all night and room is pitch black so sleep conditions are as good as they can be.

Once he's fed to sleep, he can be gently transferred to the bedside crib. Will sleep for between 25-90 minutes before waking up (basically can't link sleep cycles because of feeding to sleep association).

This is all night every night. Wakes up crying, the only way to resettle is to feed. Again and again and AGAIN.

We're all exhausted. Baby doesn't get enough restful sleep and obviously neither do I.

Few other points:

• we've tried cosleeping, he isn't interested, just wakes up after a few minutes. Seems to like his own space just needs feeding first.

• CAN self settle at nap time. Very rarely makes it through more than one cycle so naps are only 25-40 minutes but goes to sleep for them on his own no problem after nappy change/cuddle/song etc. This doesn't work at night.

• please don't suggest I sleep in the day. Naps are so short by the time I've fallen asleep I'll get 15 minutes. I need them to get things done. Getting a friend or relative over for an hours nap once a week will make no difference.

We had the same issue with DCs1&2 and managed about 3 months of this sleep before sleep training, which worked within a few days. Everyone on here seems to be against it, and if there is another way to get more sleep I'd love to know. It feels like we've tried everything.

Not everyone on here is against it, plenty of us did it. If it worked for your other kids and didn’t cause problems why not do it again?

If you know it worked so well with your other DC, what are you looking for people to say? Why do you need an alternative?

My DS still sleeps similarly to yours at a year old. I won't sleep train because I don't agree with it; my personal view is his sleep will improve in its own time. In the meantime, I still manage to work everyday (Mon-Fri) and function as I need to. The human body is amazing at adjusting to less sleep, though it took a number of months before I stopped feeling exhausted all the time.

I think you either need to make your own peace with sleep training again (presumably you have some reservations or you'd have just done it, knowing it worked before), or ride it out.

Will he nap on you for longer?
'Sleep breeds sleep' is a good mindset to get into. I wonder if he napped for longer if he would sleep longer at night?

My baby has been very similar so he always napped on me (sitting or in sling). We also transferred him to a floor bed so I could lie next to him to feed back to sleep when he stirred with minimal fuss. Now he's 9mo and has gone through a recent sleep regression he is sleeping in longer chunks and can be put down to nap.

This stage is hard, but it doesn't last.

My DD wasn't sleeping well and it turned out she had LOADS of trapped wind. Worth considering maybe?

I'll tell you what I did in the EXACT same sleep hell as you....I put up with it until they grew out of it. Now I genuinely don't mean that to sound sarcastic because I can tell how it might be read like that. I tried the pick up put down method, controlled crying where I went back in at short intervals and a few other minor tweaks that kinda worked sometimes but nothing really worked. My first 2 kids just naturally slept through at 4-5 months old. My 3rd and 4th have been much worse. The saving grace for 3rd baby was a dummy to be able to replace the breastfeed to sleep with but the 4th....he's 2.5 and only just stopped the feed to sleep one and STILL wakes up loads in the night to be settled back down!!!

If it's worked for you before then just do it again?

Does he have any other symptoms of silent reflux? That was exactly the pattern of my sons sleep and he had it. Needed medication but also sleeping not totally flat helped. With reflux it can be a vicious cycle as feeding helps temporarily but then when they lie down it makes the reflux worse.
Just an idea

I'm all for sleep training, it's not like you don't back in ever! Just leave them for a little while to see if they can help themselves.

But a couple of things I wonder about trying - what would happen if you woke him up after his feed, just so he's stirred and then you put him down sleepy but awake? Then he'd self settle for the last bit and break the feeding to sleep cycle gradually?

With his naps, do you let them just be short? I'm sure you'd all feel better after a good long lunchtime nap! Maybe concentrate on nailing that one? So resettle when you need to so he gets in the habit of having a long nap then? It might take a while but it might be worth persevering. I've never tried it but I've heard people suggesting to give them a little nudge just before they are going to naturally wake them up, that'll reset the sleep cycle. But like I say, I've not tried it myself.

Good luck!

I did the baby whisperer and it worked for us. Turned out he had a milk allergy and was in pain, so its worth looking at relfux as above.

This is a very familiar story to me. We did end up co sleeping but only really because it saved me getting out of bed, it didn’t make much difference to his sleep or need to feed. I did try sleep training though he was probably a bit older than yours by that point. It did seem to work a bit in terms of getting him to nap but it didn’t stop the night time wakings. And as soon as he was poorly and needed more comfort/more frequent feeds we were back to square 1 anyway.

One thing I would say is that when I was going through this it felt like sleep training was something that was lurking there in the background, promising to provide the solution but that it felt as if it was an absolute last resort and could only be done when I was absolutely broken and there was no other option. None of that is true, you can actually try it at any time, but the other part isn’t true either- it doesn’t necessarily work. In hindsight I wish I hadn’t bothered, I just felt bad and didn’t even get good results.

Again, in hindsight, I think something that did help me was the removal of the concept that this is a problem that could be solved by something I could do. I too spent hours trawling the internet and reading books about what the problem was. Mine were exactly the same as yours, I just felt that if I could solve the problem of linking sleep cycles then it would all be fine and I could have a life again. But it turns out there wasn’t a magic trick, there was no special combination of actions or interventions that would make a difference, I wasn’t doing anything wrong, it was just the way their sleep was until it wasn’t any more. I didn’t bother sleep training my second and lo and behold, his sleep was pretty similar to his brother’s, but I felt a lot less guilty about how I managed it and spent a lot less time trying to solve the problem.

That was a lot of writing for no solution to your problem I’m afraid. It’s shit and it makes your life feel rubbish there isn’t always a solution other than time. Try to be kind to yourself.

Ds1 was just like this! I didn't sleep train but at 6 months he suddenly started napping longer and stretching out his nighttime stints. I always put it down to a developmental change as I didn't do anything that I hadn't tried before (white noise and co-sleeping were a constant from 8 weeks).

could he be waking in pain? he sounds exactly like my reflux baby, the feeding is for pain relief, reflux is nearly always worse at night too.

Wouldn’t it be easier to break the feed to sleep association rather than controlled crying? I used the Pantley pull off in No Cry Sleep Solution. It’s not a miracle 3 day cure but I breastfed two babies and both fed every 2 hours or so till I slowly broke the feed to sleep association. I then did a combination of v gradual retreat and patting and then slowly reducing this till eventually they could fall back asleep with just the feel of my hand on their back and then with nothing at all.
It took about six weeks all told but it was relatively painless, there was almost no crying involved. I also did slightly different things with each baby as they were clearly different personalities and needed slightly different methods- DS2 for instance fell asleep easily but would get furious in a way that DS1 didn’t. DS1 took ages to sleep but could be left to grumble a bit longer and that helped to connect sleep cycles as well.
I co-slept for the lunchtime nap when I was on mat leave and that worked very well. He woke up, fed and went back to sleep and so did I.

I just co-slept and fed on and off all night and do that now with number 2 who is now 9 months.

It might not be what you want to hear.

Dummy?

Your baby is only 5m and breastfed. My dd was the same. Feed her. She is growing. It will pass. Or try formula. It's gruelling I know. I remember sobbing when my eyes had to open again and all I needed was sleep.

Was also coming on to suggest the possibility of reflux and/or cow milk protein intolerance. My son has both. Once we got medication and hypoallergenic formula (or cut dairy from diet if breastfeeding) it resolved itself within 2 weeks and he began sleeping 9 hours straight (we coslept). Good luck!

Yes sleep train. It sounds horrendous. You don’t have to be black and white. Just start being a bit rubbish. Leave him for a minute of two extra. I would also give him a dummy. I think they are great. You have two other children and yourself to think about. You have to take context into account. He will be fine.

He’s 5 months old so still absolutely tiny, presumably hasn’t even weaned yet. I wouldn’t expect much sleep at 5 months, that usually begins when they start to eat solids... I think you’re expecting too much from a very small baby tbh.

I think he's on the young side but I eventually resorted to controlled crying with my eldest (he was nearly 2) and it def worked. Def did not with youngest and it's been a long hard road, he's finally much better at 4. When they were very young though I had some success with the pick up put down method - worth googling.

Btw hang in there promise it does get better eventually. But I know it's vvv tough. My eldest nearly broke me with his (lack of) sleep.