WWYD about DS's sleeping?

[candr]

DS is 6m and not great in crib at night (goes down for naps in same place with no problem). He is bf and BLW. He has dinner at 5.30ish and I am making sure he has protein (have been told it sits in tummy longer so makes them feel full longer), bath, wind down bf at 7.00 and falls asleep by 7.30. He will then sleep 20 min and wake and can do this 3-4 times before finally falling asleep. He still wakes 3-4 times during night and often ends up in our bed by 5am.
When he wakes after feed we take it in turns to rock back to sleep which can take from 5 to 30 min. Sometimes if he has had proper screaming fit (with DH as doesn't really cry with me but I do more bedtimes than DH) I give in and feed to sleep again. Would you keep going with the rocking or leave him to cry it out? He will properly scream and has made himself sick before so should I let him cry a bit and then rock or go to him as soon as I hear him grizzling?
Am getting desperate as still feel I have very little evening time and am so tired from the night wakings. The longest he has slept has been 9pm to 2am and that was a one off it seems. This has been going on for ages and I don't know how to break the pattern.

I have an 8mo, bf and blw also. I also have a 3.3 yo.

It's hard!!!

IMO the best thing to do is cuddle and feed. Do whatever you need to maximise your sleep (I co-sleep) They grow out of it eventually (ds1 was the same and now he sleeps beautifully on his own from 7.30pm 'til 8am) I followed ds's lead and he showed me when he was ready to self settle etc.

It is a stage. It will pass. There is so much going on. Learning to sit up, crawl, teeth, separation anxiety, illness. it's flippin' hard. path of least resistace - am typing left handed - conked out baby on my right arm- luckily I'm quite good at feeding myself strawberries and meringues left handed too!

At least I know it passes - tho' I do keep having to remind myself!

I have a 15mo. I would co-sleep and feed to sleep on every waking. DS woke quite frequently at 6mo, it would change when he was growing/ learning something new etc. At the mo, he has a feed to sleep at 7ish, usually asks for another around 11ish then often goes til 6ish, and will sleep again after that. We get up around 8ish. He moved gradually towards that pattern himself.

Here's a link to an anthropological perspective on this (short and easy to read)

www.kathydettwyler.org/detsleepthrough.html

Do you think he needs the night time feed, or are yu just using it to get him back off to sleep?

If it's the latter then I would do something about it - but not let him cry it out. There are plenty of solutions out there which can teach DC to self settle - from a really gentle approach (see The No Cry Sleep Solution - although this will take longer to implement) to Controlled Crying (not everyone is a fan though).

When DS was 5.5 months and had dropped his night feeds we did some sleep training which was a cross between pick-up-put-down (baby whisperer) and CC. Worked well for us and DS was self settling and sleeping through by night 3.

We co-slept out of necessity when DS was younger, but it got to the point where I wanted to sleep properly rather than the super-light sleep I got when DS was in bed with us.

It's a difficult decision though!

I think there are plenty of bf and BLW 6 month olds who are still bf plenty in the night. 6mo is still so little.

DD fed at least once in the night until she dropped it at just over 11mo btw. When she was your DSs age, I always used to feed her at 10pm when I went to bed in the hope of getting a few hours sleep before she woke again, and she would usually have at least one more feed at 3-5am then go back to bed until 8am. Sometimes she would wake/feed more.

It did get better pretty quickly and it does pass, I'm just saying do you need to re-evaluate your expectations?

How much solids and milk does he have in the day?

Sounds like he might be overtired by 7pm if he's waking several times shortly after going down? When is his last nap before bedtime? What are his naps like during the day.

There are generally two approaches - wait and see and be led by him (like stottiecake) or start structuring his days and nights (feeds and sleeps) to see if this regulates what's going on at night. Generally speaking, fully weaned babies shouldn't need night feeds (after 10/11pm) although some continue for a little while and it tends to be breast fed babies that continue feeding at night simply because it's far quicker and easier than bottle feeding!

I really wouldn't do CC until you've addressed his routine etc - I personally find it a bit cruel and can't bear the crying.

Thanks for advice, he seems to be dropping most of his daytime bf and prefers it when he wakes up rather than feed to sleep and even then often won't have much. He has 3 good meals a day (food) too. He actually took some fomula fro DH tonight and I topped up so will see if it helps. So far asleep by 7, up at 7.15 then a few shouts but all quiet by 8pm. Am trying to shhh in crib without picking up but if he cries properly rather than grizzling am giving cuddles. Hopefully he will learn to settle and will apply this during the night too.
Sparklyboots, I found the article interesting and mae me realise I need to stop stressing just cause everyone else has a sleeping baby, after all in other countries they think what we do is cruel and I try to think how babies are raised elsewhere to make me see that they are able to do it differently and sometimes better ie BLW.

Whilst I wouldn't dare to question the author of the article on her research, I do find the idea of comparing how primates raise children to the modern world, impractial. Primates may be able to co-sleep and breastfeed throughout the night for 3 to 4 years, but they don't have to go to work in an office do they? Generally, they laze about all day snoozing.

Yes, this research is worthwhile, but instead of telling mothers to accept it and give up your sleep, we should be working out ways of merging the behaviours of the animal world and the human world in a way that actually works for humans on a day-to-day basis.