How do I convince my baby that 2am is not a good bed time!!!?

[milkysmum]

My ds is 3 months. I also have a dd aged 3 years. Ds is breast fed. During the day he is graet and pretty relaxed but come evening he gets very stressed and needs to be held constantly. I have been taking him upstairs about 11pm. Bf in bed and then try to put him down in his cot (in our room). Ds is having non of this and it is usually hours before he will settle. He has never settled himself to sleep at night and has to be held/ bf before he will settle. (Will sometimes fall asleep on his own in the day). More often than not it is 2/3am before he goes down to sleep. Sometimes wakes at 6am for a bf then back to sleep till about 9am but past few days has been missing this 6am feed altogether. Me and dh are at our wits end. We hate the idea of letting ds scream it out (and it really is a very distressed scream if we leave him (plus the risk of dd being waken up as well). DD was bottle fed and was sleeping through from 8pm at this age so am also wondering whether switching to bottle could be the answer. Although I realise all babies are individual and should not compare them but it is difficult. (although all attempts to date to introduce an occasional bottle of expressed milk have failed with ds refusing to even latch the bottle). Sorry for the ramble. Any advive appreciated.

Look forward to seeing the answers you get as am in same position. Have started standing up after feeding and rocking a bit then putting down half asleep so he starts to self sooth but it takes hours. If I let him fall asleep feeding he wants to sleep on me and wakes as soon as he is put in crib.

When you say he is stressed in the evening, what time do you mean? And does he nap during the day?

My DD is almost 3 months too and it took me ages to figure out that when she got cranky all it was was that she had already been tired and gone past that stage and was actually beyond herself with exhaustion. So she couldn't sleep.

My solution was to start bathing her and winding her down for bed around 7 or 8, before she reached that stage, and by 9 she would be asleep in her crib. Took only a couple of days. Now she's expecting it and seems much happier!

He does nap during the day but not at any set time and can vary bwtween about 10 minutes and an hour I think (longer if we have been out in the car/ for a walk in the pram etc. From around 7/8 I reckon he starts fussing and will only be held sat straight up a lot of the time, crying and thrashing around if he gets laid down. Will often fall asleep when feeding then the moment I try to lay him down he is wide awake again.

Try and write his every move down for a few days and I'm sure you'll notice a pattern. I noticed my baby needed a proper big nap about 2 hours after waking up in the morning and then again 3 hours after that, and then one in early evening. I started putting her to bed around those times and within a few days she started going down within minutes. No fussing which was unheard of, as she always used to nap on me and cried as soon as I put her down.

Also, I didn't want to give her a dummy either but I noticed it helped with those first few minutes of nap time. Calms her down and then she drops it and that's it.

I know it's not for everyone, but have you thought about introducing a routine that has set meal and sleep times throughout the day? My DS is 2 months and I have the same problem in that he is going to bed very late and gets very grizzly by evening time and hard to comfort. He has been on a Gina Ford routine since he was about 4 weeks and, although it went out the window a bit over Xmas, when we did do it it did actually work - the timings of the daytime naps is very hard to stick to, but I follow the basic principles of roughly 4 hrs daytime sleep. You could look into it and give it a trial run if you felt like it. But yeah I totally agree, getting DS to go to bed in the evening is still hard, he's so worked-up and overtired. I've tried putting him in a sling the last few days and it's helped him drop off, but transferring him into bed from there he always wakes up!
Hope things get better, good luck!

You're right that you shouldn't let him scream it out - he's far too young for any kind of sleep training. Being held or fed to sleep is normal for a 3 month old.

Using bottles (either with EBM or FF) won't necessarily help either - otherwise all bottlefed/FF babies would sleep without problems (they don't!)

Have you tried co-sleeping? If he's still next to you but in your bed, will he sleep there (rather than being put down in the cot)

Have you looked into reflux? If he likes being upright and hates being laid down it could be because it's hurting.

Have been thinking reflux myself and will talk to hv who is due to visit this week.
me and dh both torn with the routine idea, seems a good idea in the day but when he is crying his eyes out in the night it all goes out the window- hence the post at 3.30am with ds now dozing in the swing. am currently trying to make the decision- do I leave him in the swing all night if he stays asleep or risk waking him and carry him upstairs!!
Co slept occasionally in the very early days but really not comfortable with it- plus dh a smoker which i read is contra indicated for co sleeping.

Ours suffered quite badly from colic/reflux (in the end we were prescribed gaviscon, so I guess it was reflux) until about 18 weeks - needed upright movement and couldn't bear to be laid down flat. Abiding memories of walking round the living room in the dark carrying him and singing the pink panther theme tune at 3am, me ready to crash into furniture with exhaustion, his little eyes bright as black buttons. No way would I have left him to cry. My dp hit on singing in a very low deep voice (old man river, natural blues by moby) and this worked better than the gaviscon. Grew out of it at 17 weeks, cranial osteopath helped. Yes, he gets overtired, but I don't think that would have kept him up that late. I suspect yours has a similar problem. Look up websites for reflux and threads on mumsnet and see how many of the boxes yours ticks (and remember that with silent reflux they don't throw up constantly, but it hurts them more). -