Are your children’s vaccines up to date?

Set a reminder

Please or to access all these features

Parenting

For free parenting resources please check out the Early Years Alliance's Family Corner.

Help with my baby's bad sleep at nights

6 replies

MakesCakesWhenStressed · 11/08/2012 10:11

My baby is 7mo. He's fairly easy to settle as a general rule. Mostly he feeds to sleep, but can be settled other ways, especially by not-mummy carers :-)

The problem is that after a brief period of sleeping for 6 or 7 hours from 8pm he is now waking up every 3 hours maximum, sometimes every 1.

The worst bit is that I can't even get him back to sleep now, especially as the night draws on. He wakes up wanting to play. I keep it dark and boring, don't talk, don't make eye contact, just try and feed him, but he only wants to caterpillar and crawl his way around the bed and if we put him back in the cot he gets very frustrated.

As a test my dh was on first response last night and I slept in thr spare room with ear plugs. Only twice did baby actually need to come to me for a feed (although even those were quite close together for a baby who is eating a large amount of solids now) Thr rest of thr time he just wanted to play

OP posts:
Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
MakesCakesWhenStressed · 11/08/2012 10:16

Oops, posted too soon.

Basically I was wondering if there's anything I can do to improve the quality if his sleep. I know he's tired because even though he woke up at 5.30ish today he was asleep again by 6.30and slept for over an hour, then went down again at 9ish and is still asleep now.

Normally he has an hour at 8am, then half an hour at 11ish then 1 - 2 hours from 2 or 3pm, so he's a great napper, but i'm wondering if that's because he's just not getting enough sleep at night.

Any ideas?

OP posts:
MakesCakesWhenStressed · 11/08/2012 22:29

Anybody?

I'm looking down the barrel of yet another sleepless night here...

OP posts:
BertieBotts · 11/08/2012 22:30

How long has it been happening? It could be teething or a sleep regression, or just a phase.

Can you not just let him play in his cot while you sleep or is he crying when you're not there with him?

Interested in this thread?

Then you might like threads about these subjects:

NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown · 11/08/2012 22:45

Sorry not much help but as you've not had many answers thought I'd second the sleep regression suggestion and suggest you check out the wonder weeks website as it could be a development leap...

Also you say he's having a fair amount of solids now but milk should be his main source of nutrition until a year, I think it's natural for milk feeds to be staggered unevenly around the clock for quite some time yet.

It might be worth posting in the behaviour/development section for more advice or the ladies on the breast/bottle feeding are usually pretty good

best of luck

MakesCakesWhenStressed · 11/08/2012 22:56

Got thr wonder weeks book. Not much help in this instance.

I'm just so tired I don't have the capacity to do anything different from what i'm doing

OP posts:
tholeon · 12/08/2012 11:37

Hi don't have an answer am afraid but just wanted to say you are not alone. Dd is seven months and has always woken up for a quick feed every three hours or so but recently she has taken to staying awake for a couple of hours at a time in the middle of the night wanting to play.. We cuddle and feed but don't play, turn lights on etc but don't know what else to do... Also have a three year old who likes to jump out of bed energetically at five thirty so truly knackered! Let me know when you find the answer..

New posts on this thread. Refresh page