5.5 month old fighting sleep

[Riven1993]

Hello,

My baby is 5.5 months old now and the past week has been horrific.

We went through a slight regression at 4 months where he stopped sleeping as well but it was fine.

He has pretty much slept through from 9 weeks but has been going to sleep earlier and waking up earlier. He now wakes up at around 5:30.

He used to nap on me but now I can’t even get him to do that, as soon as I put his dummy in and start rocking, he knows what I’m doing. I can take him away to a quieter room, try different positions etc but it doesn’t work anymore.

I have tried to put him down in his cot and say ‘nap time now’ as we go up the stairs. I shut the blinds, put on his night light and mobile, ensure he is okay but he screams blue murder and gets himself so hot and worked up. I don’t like the idea of sleep training but I do let him cry for a minute or so but he’s already so worked up again, I can’t console him to then try putting him back down. I’ve tried white noise, lullaby’s, everything.

I have tried the pram which works for the odd 20 minutes but i can’t transfer him from there to bed seamlessly as he wakes up. When we are out and about again, he will sleep for 20 minutes or so but some days he is so over tired, I can’t get myself dressed in order to get out the house in the first place.

He’s going for hours on end without asleep, sometimes 4 or 5 and the fight to get him to sleep is relentless. I don’t mind where or how he gets to sleep.

I know it’s probably developmental and we’ve also been weaning him a little as he is such a big baby and has been taking 8oz every two hours.

Any tips welcome.

It’s worth noting I will be stopping the weaning too in case it’s his tummy (not that he was having a lot anyway)

What was your day like 2 weeks ago, when it wasnt horrific?

Really quite good and predictable. He is always happier in the morning.

He would get up at around 5:30/6, nap around 7:45/8 for around 45 minutes/an hour, then up for around 2 or 3 hours, with a big lunchtime nap that finished no later than 1ish. He’d then have a shorter nap at 3 which would sustain him until bedtime at 7, where we do bath, bottle, book and bed. Since the change, he’s had jabs (as the GP messed up his schedule due to staffing) and we had covid about a month ago. We did have an a&e visit for the reaction to the jabs, he was checked out by a doctor last Monday.

Bless him, it sounds like he's been through a lot in the last week or two. He must be feeling rotten.

If go back to 2 hourly milk feeds. For the time being, try for little and often naps, just like feeds. And have naps in something you can move - bouncy chair is ideal. Then you get repeating 2 hourly cycles of:

• Wake
• Full feed
• Wind and nappy check
• Floor time
• First cry - lift, cuddle and wind, put back down on for floor play
• Second cry = nap time (expect this to be 1h-1h30 from waking)
• Top up feed (what's left in the bottle) and wind
• Into bouncy chair, at your feet while you sit on the sofa. Dummy in. Use your foot to rhythmically bounce, even tempo at about hear rate.
• Just keep going. Keep bouncing and reinserting dummy as required. The rest/relaxation is good for baby even without sleep, but I guarantee baby will fall asleep eventually if you keep going indefinitely. Even bouncing, dummy sucking.

Wake and repeat. 2 hourly cycles while poorly.