Is this my fault?

[Giraffe888]

I know this isn’t really AIBU but I’ve posted it in sleep and in here for more traffic as I’m desperate!

Can anyone offer any advice on our routine/where I’m going wrong?

My son is 7 months old and EBF. Our typical day is:

6am wake
9.30am 30 mins nap
12.30 1 hour nap
3.30ish 30 mins nap
6.20 start bedtime routine, asleep approx 6.50

He wakes hourly every night and some nights he is wide awake during the night for 30-45 mins or he is wide awake at 5am.

He won’t go back down in the night without going on my boob. I’ve tried shushing, patting, stroking his head etc etc and he just cries and gets more and more upset and I’m not prepared to leave him to cry.

I feel like it’s my fault as I must be doing something wrong.

Can anyone offer any advice as I’m desperate?!

Big hand hold here. My DS1 was the same and the sleep deprivation drove me crackers. It does get a bit better once they’re eating properly (I found) but for me it didn’t really shift until I went back to work so he had to go down to three feeds (6pm, 9pm and 7am). It’s tough, really tough but some DC just need less sleep (DS1 still needs far less than some of his school friends). DS2 has the same routine but only woke once or twice from three months so it’s probably nothing you’re doing.

It’s relentless when you don’t get enough sleep. And they are all different so what works for one doesn’t work for the next. Have you got any support from your partner? I found co-sleeping helped with DC1 but I appreciate that isn’t for everyone and you do create a rod for your own back. But I found that the better I slept the better I could deal with that. Good luck. And as to your question: no you are doing nothing wrong.

You're not doing anything wrong. He's just a baby and he needs reassurance from you to feel safe and relaxed enough to sleep. You must be exhausted. My so was similar and I found the way I got most sleep was to cosleep although I appreciate that isn't for everyone. The lullaby trust have advice for safe cosleeping on their website.
www.lullabytrust.org.uk/safer-sleep-advice/co-sleeping/

I remember having similar issues with DD at that age and we started giving her a bottle of formula in the the evening and it definitely helped to settle her. I wanted to EBF but in the end my need for sleep was greater!

Will he take a dummy at night?

Mine was the same. No advice I'm afraid (I stuck it out with vast amounts of coffee and cake and just about managed to hang on to my sanity) but hang on in there... she suddenly slept for 10 hours in 1 go at about 9 months and has been fine since. I know it doesn't feel like it now but he WILL start sleeping, and probably quite soon. If you have a partner who can take a week off work you could try night weaning if he's eating a reasonable amount (baby, not partner!) Might stop the waking if he realises he'll be getting dad and no boob every time. Wouldn't be fun though. And you're definitely not doing anything wrong...I know it doesn't help now but it'll be a distant memory in a few months time.

Your routine is almost exactly the same as ours, except we combination feed. We do exclusively use bottles though. So I don't think there is anything wrong with your routine in theory.

Do you feed to sleep during the day as well? To me it sounds like it could be a learned behaviour.
Ie. If I cry long enough I'll get what I expect, and I expect to be fed.

If you do feed to sleep for naps during the day then I'd look to break that association first so you can be confident he can get to sleep without being fed.

If it were me I wouldn't be willing to feed him in the night unless he actually needed feeding. Instead I'd be doing absolutely everything else I could to keep him as calm as possible without feeding. Bouncing, shushing, dummy etc.

You might not be able to go from waking hourly to no night feeds straight away of course. But I'd aim for 2 hours the first week, 3 hours the next week etc.

If there is another parent, the person not breastfeeding needs to do the shushing and patting etc. It’s hard for the baby to accept not having milk when it’s so associated with one person.

Is he having solids? I would progress that and move towards three meals a day quite quickly.

And yes to someone else doing some of the wakings. Does he ever go waken and go back to sleep without the breast?

We used to co-sleep but it didn’t make any difference and I was in agony from the position I had to lie in so he’s in his snuzpod. I have my hand or arm on him most of the night so he knows I’m there.

We did a few nights of no feed before 12 so when he woke before then my DH rocked him to sleep but it involved a lot of crying and I don’t see the point in replacing one sleep association with another?

@cochineal7 my DH gets up on a morning with him on his days off so I get a few hours in bed.

@SapphosRock I’ve tried a dummy a few times and he just still cries with it in 😂

@Curiosity101 no I don’t feed to sleep at naps, he’s rocked to sleep and the same for bedtime. It’s after his first wake up at night that he will only go back to sleep with boob

I try everything except boob but he gets distraught and I can’t face letting him cry like that.

@MatildaTheCat he does really well on solids but it’s made no difference as he’s not waking for food.

He will go back down for the first few wakes with my DH rocking him

You've said he can sleep without being fed to sleep so there's no reason he can't do it at night other than he doesn't know any other way.

I try everything except boob but he gets distraught and I can’t face letting him cry like that.

It's completely up to you, but I can't see any way you can break the cycle other than to start stretching the periods between feeding him back to sleep at night. That will mean listening to him cry for awhile whilst you try and placate him with things other than your boob.

Like I said, I wouldn't aim to go from hourly to nightly at day 1. But I'd be aiming to stretch him to 2 hours before giving in. Then 3 hours the next week.

It also could just be habit that he wakes up every hour. And when he wakes up is rewarded with something he likes - rocking, cuddles, breast feeding.

Have you looked into any sleep training methods?

Absolutely not your fault and very normal, especially for a BF baby. Sleep deprivation is horrible. I was going to suggest co sleeping but I see you've tried that. Seems like he isn't joining up his sleep cycles and/or can't settle himself back to sleep between times. DD2 is 6 months and very similar, even down to nap timings. The thing that's helped us is moving her to her own room, I am now sleeping through some of her nighttime antics where she's awake or dozing but flapping her arms around etc. She settles herself after a few minutes but when she was beside me I'd have lifted her at those times. Could he move to his own room?

I've had this. At 6 months she was waking hourly, and we eventually realised that we were walking her up in the night so moved her into her own room. That improved things a bit. She started doing 2-3 hour stretches but, after a couple of months, it started taking hours to settle her.

I'm currently working with a sleep consultant with a no cry approach. It took a lot of hunting to find someone who's methods I agreed with. It's a slow approach making such tiny tweaks that I'd never have thought to bother but, three weeks later, she's only woke once in the night this weekend, and there have been no tears. From DD anyway... We've still got some work to do but I feel like a new woman. She's got a lot of good advice on Instagram if you want to check her out. She's careitoutsleepconsultant

@Curiosity101 I have but they all seem to involve crying! If I leave him laid in his bed and try and soothe him he just gets more hysterical.

@bananahood I keep thinking about it but haven’t as I can’t face getting out of bed every hour 😂 but I think that needs to be my next step

@ChaosMoon I follow her and I contacted her too. I unfortunately just can’t afford to pay for her advice 🙁

Mine was the same around that age. Went through a long period of waking every 40-60 minutes for at least 15-20 minutes at a time every night needing feeding back to sleep and then waking for the day at 0430am. It was torture.

He did eventually seem to grow out of the absolute worst of it around 8+ months though.

Once I got him more established on solids I just tried my best to feed him up as much as I could in the day (food and formula, he can't bf) so I could know he couldn't be hungry at night. Then I diluted his night bottles. When he turned 10m I switched his night bottles to water only and that seems to have done the trick. He still wakes up sometimes but I can usually just pop his dummy in and he's off.

Ah, sorry @Giraffe888. I was hoping some of her general tips would help. That explains why I was so impressed with your nap gaps...

He’s self soothing on the boob. My third did it too - he was breastfed till 14 months, the others weren’t.

It’s normal but exhausting. Personally I didn’t put mine to bed that early when there was no reason to be up in the morning, but I’m making an assumption there! He would sleep on me or in a Moses in the living room with me until I was ready for bed then we co-slept.

The only thing that stopped it for me was weaning off the breast completely. But if you don’t want to do that, I’d recommend a few days where your express and go out, leaving your husband to do bedtime and all through the night. He wants you because he knows you’re there.

I have but they all seem to involve crying! If I leave him laid in his bed and try and soothe him he just gets more hysterical.

To be fair going from always rocking/feeding a baby to sleep to laying in his bed and trying to get him to sleep is a big jump. And it's basically completely re writing his version of the world. In his version of the world the way you get to sleep is by being rocked / fed. He wont know any different until he experiences it.

But if you aren't comfortable with him crying then I'm out of ideas. I hate hearing my baby cry, but I figured that sleeping training him (which did involve some controlled crying) would probably be overall less tears than continuing on as we were (both me and him).

I guess it'll probably be right at the bottom of your list of things to try which is perfectly reasonable. But if you do run out of ideas I really would re-consider controlled crying.

My baby is 6 months and since sleep training (we didn't follow a specific method) - he now sleeps 11-12 hours a night and roughly 4 naps a day varying from 30mins - 1hour. We still have lots of cuddles (ie. he does know he's loved) and huge grins from him whenever we got to get him up from a nap/sleep. So I figure it can't have been that bad for him. Also every now and then we do co sleep which is nice and doesn't affect his ability to self settle in his cot.