5.5 months 4am wakeups...help please

[Kiwikiss1]

Can anyone please give me some advice on how to get 5.5 month old DS to resettle back to sleep after a 4am wakeup? He has done this since birth almost. He goes down at 6.30pm and he wakes once a night around 2am for a full feed. Without fail he will wake at 4am and cannot get back to sleep and he is not hungry as he had 7 ounces 2 hours before and if I do feed him it throws the entire next day as he will not have his first morning bottle. I either put him in the rocker (which he has nearly grown out of) or bring him into bed with us but it will take me over an hour to resettle him so I have no sleep after 4am and after 6 months I am ready to move out lol. The other problem is he will often wake my other DS who is then overtired for the entire day. He has blackout blinds, I have tried later and earlier bedtimes, giving cool boiled water, dummy (which he does not like) and even looked into leaving him to cry but then read this does not work in the early hours of the morning as the biological factors for a baby to go back to sleep are not present. He actually wakes up happy and chats to himself but around 5.30am he starts to get distressed as he cannot resettle. He goes down for a nap around 8am as he is so tired. He is not on solids, I was going to wait until 6 months but could that help? Can anyone offer a solution I have not yet tried? Thanks xx

I doubt solids will help with this one but I'll probably get flamed for that one. If you are thinking of introducing solids, does he meet the signs of readiness? Until he is 6 months there is very little you can give him anyway apart from fruit and veg

I know that you have tried later bedtime but it might be worth trying again. Some find that by moving bedtime and naps by 15 minutes every few days it does help.

Have you read 31 ways to get your baby to sleep and stay asleep or sound sleep by Sarah Woodhouse?

Have you tried giving him more bottles in the day too?

Personally, I would definitely try solids now.
Also you say he has blackout blinds, but do they actually blackout the whole room? From my experience of them, they actually don't, and I would definitely recommend some 'proper' black 'black-out' lining. I still use it with my DS who is a lot older. Sounds OTT, but he has a blackout blind, curtains (just cosmetic really), and then we drap the black blackout blinds over the lot. It works for us because the whole room is literally black.

My 5m DS is doing the same!!! (Although no more 2am feeds thankfully)

Whether he goes down at 6.30 or 7.30pm he without fail is waking up at about 4.15am. It's been going on for weeks & is starting to grate me too! We have blackout curtains but the light does come in the top, and by chance I noticed that sunrise at the moment is about this time - co-incidence??

We started giving him a dummy a while back as he wasn't waking up crying like he would for a feed so just presumed he needed some help going back to sleep. Plus he'll gurn behind the dummy if hungry. However it doesn't mean I'm not having doubts now that maybe I'm being a bad mum and should be offering a feed? Reluctant to so so though as he's already on 5 x 7oz.

I'll be interested to know if our LO's sleep longer when the sun rises later??

Have you fed him at that time? If he does go back to sleep? Who cares if it throws the next bottle? He'll be on solids soon so you could give him breakfast a bit later instead.

Also the birds are pretty noisy at that time - could it be that? The sun comes up from 4.30am ish. Painful!

Oh will add - I feed dd when she wakes at that time, she goes back to sleep, then when she wakes properly two hours later, she has a little drink then breakfast after half an hour or so.
We also have double blackout blinds.

Just today I have staple gunned down the edges of the blackout curtains in both our children's rooms. Even a chink of light through the edge is enough to let too much light in. No advice sorry - just a thought x

I guess it can be many things - out of habit, sleep pattern disrupted, too much attention to re-settle him etc.
I just wondered, how are his naps during the day and how do you normally settle him to sleep? If he has certain association with sleep, like feeding to sleep, it might be a bit of problem.

He is probably on two naps, around 9.00am and 12/12:30 midday, and the total of about 3h? If he is sleeping too much during the day, may be he is ready to spring into action early morning?
Also, how long do you want to keep him feeding at 2.00am? You might want to shift this one too, just so that you get some rest too!

There are many school of thoughts for feeding/sleep - it might give you some idea, but I found that the second book worked well for my DD and DS.

-Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child (solid book, but gives you hows and whys of sleep, but a bit complicated)
-Contented little baby book /contented little book of sleep (some people are not keen on a solid routine, but this suited us the best)
-Baby Whisperer (book and online forum which has a very helpful idea and tips on re-settling babies)

Good luck!