Sleep consultant success when baby falls asleep ok

[LetTheBirdsSing]

Posting here for traffic as I’m desperate. I have a nine month old baby who can fall asleep in his cot independently. At bedtime he’s given a bottle of milk and put down awake. For naps he’s just put in his sleeping bag and put down awake.

Will quite often do a decent first stretch but then wakes up at anything from 10pm to 3am. Has a bottle of milk and will quite often be put down without tears but start crying anything from 5 mins to an hour later. He can then be up for 2-3 hours and I just can’t settle him off to sleep any sooner. Often wriggles around in my arms if I try to hold him but will scream if I put him back in the cot. Often seems quite ‘wired’ and will coo to himself or blow bubbles after a while.

The last few nights he’s finally fallen back asleep between 5 and 5:30am, but then is wide awake by 6:30am latest.

I cannot sustain this physically or mentally. I also have a 2 year old who is up for the day from 6am onwards and doesn’t nap so I have no opportunity to rest during the day.

Does anyone have any success stories of using a sleep consultant to deal with long night wakings if it wasn’t linked to the baby not being able to fall asleep independently at the beginning of the night?

Baby has been fully formula fed for the last two months. Doing fine with solids. Has been crawling since six months and probably not far off walking. Has a morning nap of 1-1.5 hours at 9am and a similar length nap at 2pm. Perhaps I need to cap the afternoon nap?

Bedtime routine starts at 6:15pm and he is usually asleep just before 7pm. I’m a bit limited on being able to make bedtime later as the 2 year old is most definitely ready for bed by then.

I am not open to bed sharing with the baby, for various reasons. Just mentioning that as I know it works for lots of people and might be suggested.

@LetTheBirdsSing nine months was a tough time with both my kids as they woke continuously. My eldest walked around nine months and his brother a month later. Don't know if it is down to a development milestone, but it got better after a few weeks. Sorry no advice as mine didn't do long stretches at night until over age 2. Hang in there.xxx

Thank you, that’s good to know. Part of me is wondering if I can try to ride it out til Christmas to see if it passes by then. But I am struggling with exhaustion and I am already struggling this year with the isolation that Covid has brought.

Even before these long wake ups started, his sleep has been very inconsistent. On a very good night we might get one night feed and he would settle back off ok, but often up 2,3 or 4 times and often awake for the day at 5:30am. He almost always has pooed at that time.

Have you tried getting him up in the morning and not letting him have that morning nap? I appreciate that you may well need the break by that point!

By that age I think my dc were down to one sleep a day - afternoon nap - so up most of the day otherwise. If he gets less day sleep then he may sleep longer at night. He might be grumpy for a few days while you establish a new routine. Schedule out what would work for you in terms of sleep patterns then wake him up to fit in with the routine you would like.

Interesting. It’s not so much the break I need the morning nap for (although it’s nice to be able to shower with only one them around to keep an eye on) but I thought he was a bit young at 9 months to drop down to one nap. My eldest dropped to one nap at 14 or 15 months so I guess I was thinking it wouldn’t be til he’s a year old...but who knows!! It’s definitely something to think about, thanks!

At 9 months he still needs a morning nap, but imo the morning nap is too long.

I would aim for
7am awake
9am nap 45 minutes-1 hour
1pm nap 90 minutes-2 hours (up no later than 3)
7pm bed

Personally I would do a feed at 10/11pm if he's not ready to go through the night yet.

Make sure his room is warm enough at 2/3am, and assuming he can roll over by himself I'd sleep him on his tummy.

Have you considered some gentle sleep training, I don't think there is any need for a sleep consultant.

I would limit the morning nap to 30 mins and the afternoon nap to 1.5.

Sleep training doesn't have to be harsh or distressing. We started at 7 months and it really transformed the amount of sleep we got. Wakes dramatically dropped to 1 per night then no wakes at all within a week or two.

If you are going to commit to it you can begin using the methods for the daytime naps then set aside a weekend for you and your partner to do it at night time too. It needs to be a joint effort.

Sleep is really important for for your sanity and well-being and I truly believe babies do need to 'learn' how to sleep.

@lemorella what kind of sleep training would you do on a baby who already falls asleep independently?

Usually if a baby can sleep independently, then being awake for long periods at night is because they are sleeping too much in the day.
Cut back naps initially and if that doesn't work, then maybe adjust bedtime and wake time too.

@mooncakes

I'd advise the pick up put down method or a short period of letting a baby self soothe before going in to comfort, so they can learn to go back to sleep.

I certainly wouldn't be telling any mother to put their baby to sleep on their tummy which has been proven to increase the risk of death by SIDS and is not recommended by the Lullaby Trust.

Sorry, my sleep deprived post wasn’t very clear. @mooncakes you’ve hit the nail on the head of what I’m asking- is sleep training going to make any kind of difference to a baby that can fall asleep on his own with no bother? Most of the stuff I’ve read about sleep training is aimed at getting babies to fall asleep by themselves (without feeding to sleep or rocking etc), the idea being that if you can crack that it’ll reduce any night wakings that aren’t due to a tangible reason like hunger, pain or illness. So I’m wondering if I should bother trying to do some kind of sleep training OR is it the daytime routine that’s causing problems.

Interesting about cutting the morning nap short. I’d sort of thought that it was too long an afternoon nap that could make or break the night time sleep but a longer afternoon nap makes sense in preparation for eventually dropping down to one nap.

@lemorella I’m definitely up for sleep training. Well, no, that makes me sound really enthusiastic for it, which I’m not...and I know it’s a very controversial topic...but my priority is the overall wellbeing and happiness of my family. I am struggling on the amount of sleep I’m getting and I’m ok with sleep training if it results in me being a more well rested, mentally healthy parent.

The reason I mentioned a sleep consultant is that I like having someone to tell me what to do so that I can just follow a plan and stick to it.

Tummy sleeping- he’s always been put down on his back but always rolls on to his front to sleep and from memory as long as babies are strong enough to roll themselves then that’s deemed perfectly safe. I think the issue is with younger babies who don’t have the neck control to be able to roll over or adjust their position and can end up suffocating if placed on their front. But I will go google to check I’m not spouting Incorrect info.

A healthy 9 month old who is rolling is fine to find his own position - they're usually more comfortable on their fronts.

Sounds like you have done really well to get him falling asleep independently. He probably just doesn't need 2-3 hours of naps plus 12 hours at night so I'd tweak his routine and see how that goes.

Just giving this a bit of a bump to see if anyone has else experience of the same sort of issue and would be able to share what, if anything, worked for them. Have had some more really mixed nights including some with two hour wake ups in the middle of the night. Just don’t know how to handle them. Sometimes holding him calms him down a bit, but he gets very upset if I try to put him down, other times he would just be crying his eyes out in my arms. Some of the time he’s awake he’s absolutely hysterical squealing crying....I honestly don’t know what to do. He just finally seems to get so tired that he will eventually conk out after a couple of hours.

Anyone? Another two hour wake up ongoing. I have given up and left him to scream. Done calpol, changed nappy, stroked back, played lullaby, cuddled. Nothing has worked. I’ve had less than 3 hours sleep, my head is pounding and in a few hours I’ll be up looking after both of them with no breaks again. Can’t sustain this.

Sorry op, I have no helpful advice but currently going through a 2 hour middle of the night wake myself. Its tough I'm dead on my feet, hugs

It seems that 6.45 is far too early for him to go down. Have you tried waiting until 9ish or so to see if that makes a difference?

Hi OP, I used a sleep consultant to deal with my ds's long night wakings when he was 12m. He would go to bed lovely and self settle. But wake for 2hr stretch in the night. Then be up for the day at 6am. I also had an elder Dd so I feel your pain. She basically advised putting him to bed earlier, and doing cry it out for night wakings. It actually worked really quickly. And the cry it out part was not bad at all, could hardly actually call it cio. I think by going in and trying to get him back to sleep we were actually feeding the problem. And the early bedtime helped him catch up on levels of sleep debt. We used to find for a long time that if he went to bed later, he'd be up on the night.

sleepdreamsbaby.com/

This is who I used @LetTheBirdsSing

My eldest is 19, youngest is 10 and this is really interesting to see how the consensus has changed. In my day we would have said:

At 9 months he doesn't physiologically need a night feed. Swap it for water. It's less worth waking up for.
Do what we used to call "low grade comfort". Be very boring indeed. At night the light doesn't go on, you don't pick them up. You lay them back down, put your hand gently on chest or tummy, avert your eyes and gently say 'sleepy time, shush now", then "sh sh sh" etc. Each time they pull up you repeat this process. You can add in a soother. The thing that worked best for my "up for hours" child was white noise (it was waves crashing ) and I persevered with getting him to take a dummy which he finally did at about 8 months and we had one clipped to his PJs on the shoulder. (My other kids all learned to take a dummy between 5 months and 12 months, and they were a huge help). This is all to teach the difference between day and night. In the morning when you come to wake up, be very different; lights on, open curtains, sing "the sun has got his hat on"....so the baby can instantly understand that this time I have woken up it's still night time, go back to sleep, but this time it's morning time.

We were also told that when a baby doesn't sleep well at night they are possibly overtired and to extend rather than reduce daytime naps, as they get "wired" on sleep deprivation. Mine used to do I reckon about an hour from 9-10 ish then a longer afternoon nap, 2-3 hours. I used to drive them around until they fell asleep lol.any an afternoon I sat reading a book in the carpark of a shopping centre somewhere!

I hope this eases for you. I have been there and it was not fun. Good luck and maybe try some of these "old timer" methods?

I think your nap times are fine. I'd also agree with the PP on differentiating between daytime and nighttime naps. So nighttime, bath, bottle in room with dim lighting and daytime with curtains open?

I wouldn't pick up in the nighttime when he wakes up - just do shhhuuush/pat and retreat. Other than that, I'd just ignore him.

@RosesforMama that's not at all dissimilar to advice now 😁 I think it's just confusing when they are up for hours in the night, everything you read / hear about puts so much stock in self soothing, it's like the holy grail, so when you have a little one who does self sooth but then is up for hours in the night, it makes no sense! When I was in this boat (mine are 3 & 6 now) I couldn't find any advice about this problem. Its a non-classic issue but classic advice still worked for us, even though I honestly didn't think it would.

If he’s crying at night then is he in pain? Stomach issues keeping him awake perhaps or teeth?
I don’t do sleep training. Always just put mine in bed with me. Will he settle in bed cuddled up to you?

Op if you want to post about your nap timings etc I'm happy to have a look and see if I can think of anything helpful. I would aim for more sleep not less overall, in all likelihood your little one has run up a sleep debt and it's a release of cortisol stress hormone that's causing this night waking. I honestly think you need to try to leave him to it, possibly do an early morning nap, an early after lunch nap, and a well early bedtime 6pm perhaps. Then stop fueling the night waking. It's not your job to get him back to sleep, you can't do that for him. In all likelihood by trying to help you're inadvertently making it worse.

Ooh thank you so much for all of these perspectives. I’m feeling rather woolly headed this morning but will try to work backwards to reply to your helpful messages...
@Chipsahoy bed sharing isn’t something I’m willing to consider. I’m a SAHM, I’m with the kids all day and I NEED for my sanity to have some physical distance at night time, so that’s a line that I draw...though I appreciate it works well for lots of people. I try calpol but doesn’t seem to make a difference on the nights I give it. No obvious signs that it’s tummy ache but he always does a poo in the morning on waking up....this is the case even on those nights when we don’t have these long wake ups though.

@Indecisivelurcher very interesting, thank you. When you say “cry it out” are you referring to leaving the baby to cry indefinitely? Or going in at regular intervals (controlled crying)? I have on a couple of times left DS in desperation after trying everything I can think of and needing to take a breather. Like last night. We leFt him a bit and then DH went in. He dropped off fairly quickly with DH in with him but I think it’s more that after two hours he conks out because he’s worn himself out.

I have been wondering if I need to try a controlled crying type approach. In the room every five mins or whatever. And just brace myself for doing that for 1hr plus if I can stomach it. It’s hard to be consistent at 2am when you’re just so desperate for them to sleep.

@RosesforMama I think a more low key, consistent approach like you’ve described makes sense. I need to do the thing of differentiating morning better. I’m often trying not to wake his brother when I get the baby up for the day but that’s definitely something I can work on. We have white noise on all night already 👍

I’m so confused as to whether he’s getting too much sleep during the day or not enough. Part of the problem is I can have a night like Monday where he woke up at 3am for a feed, went straight back down for another 3 hours. Then last night woke up at 12.50, gave a feed and then he was up for 2 hours. Don’t think his day tome routine was much different so why does his night time behaviour vary so wrong?? Surely, if I’m getting something like bedtime or nap lengths or times massively wrong then they would affect his night sleep every night. Crikey, driving myself crazy trying to figure this out.

@cactusisblooming I can’t imagine trying to keep him up til 9pm I’m afraid. His wake time before bedtime would be massive and he wouldn’t end up getting enough night time sleep that way. We are an early rising household so it would be practically impossible for him to sleep in til 7:30 or 8am. Also, no evening for me just feels hideous. Maybe something to try if all else fails

@laudemio oh so sorry to hear that. How old is your little one? Has this been going on for long for you?

@LetTheBirdsSing sorry sorry sorry, I muddled my terms up, I mean controlled crying with interval checks!

I'd suggest not giving him milk in the middle of the night. He will have to digest it, possibly giving him some discomfort, and if he's fully weaned he doesn't need it. Try a little water (not too much or he'll soak through his nappy!) then back in cot. Good luck op, my second nearly killed me with his crap sleep