Helping baby to link sleep cycles

[Mammmoo]

Hi, I have a 5 month old who sleeps (naps and nights) appallingly badly and have posted several times before in desperation as I'm really struggling with not getting any chunks of sleep longer than an hour!

With the regression it seems that my daughters ability to link sleep cycles has dissapeared, as is very common I believe. So in the day she will easily go down for 30 mins, we have a great nap routine where we play specific lullaby and I hold her hand for a few mins and she'll go to sleep easily. After 30 mins tho she starts thrashing about, head side to side. Not opening her eyes so I know she's still wanting to be asleep but she can't work out how to get back to sleep. I can often get her back to sleep by repeating the same routine but it may take another 30 mins!

At night it's exactly the same, goes down really easily but just can't stay asleep. She is keen to bf at every wake up in the night too and will latch onto my nose/armpit if I cuddle up to her in her next to me! I'm broken and she's continually overtired.

So basically what can I do (apart from cio) to encourage her to link the cycles? She has my top in with her, she has white noise.

Did others just work it out in their own? It's been ar least 6 weeks now and it's not improving, if anything it's getting worse. I feel like a terrible
Mother as I just can't help her!

My baby is the same age and we are in exactly the same place. I have no advice, but I am there with you in spirit at 3am. I wonder if we have matching suction marks on our arms?!

I’m co-sleeping with DD and she will often latch on during the short wake ups just for comfort, not really for food, to get back off again.

During the day I’m havinng to jiggle, rock or buggy at 40 minutes in to get another spell out of her.

If you find the answer let me know. I’m hoping they grow out of it. For me, I’ve decided to wait another month and then get a sleep consultant in at 6mos if no improvement. I’m too soft for CIO.

Good luck. God speed. X

Sorry to hear you're going through the same marshmallow. Altho it's also nice to know I'm not the only one. I'm sick of people moaning to me about having to still do 1/2 night feeds at baby groups like that's a bad thing! That's my dream :-) Some nights I don't feel like I've slept at all.

My older dd didn't do this, she was an awesome sleeper and I figured I had parenthood sorted. Clearly not!

Good luck and I'll let you know if I find an answer.

I'm another going through the same and watching for some wisdom from others. My baby is just 6 months old and has been waking every couple of hours during the night for the past 6 weeks or so (so at the end of every sleep cycle?). It means by the time I've fed him and settled him, I'm lucky to get an hour's sleep before he wakes again. Feeling like the living dead. For about 6 weeks or so he would sleep right round until 5.30 and I thought I had it sorted but it's all gone out the window 🤦Wish I knew what I was doing before to get him to sleep so long in the night!

He naps during the day ok and we have a kind of routine going with that but how long he stays down for varies. Ironically, when he used to sleep through until 5.30 he was awful at napping during the day and I'd be really lucky to get a couple of hours in total for the whole day. Maybe I just need to keep him up all day?!?!

Good luck to everyone in the same boat, it will be kind of comforting at 3am to think I'm not the only person in the country awake (feels like it).

I've also previously posted about my 5 month old's terrible sleep. Thought it had started to get better for a few nights but now worse again...
He only naps for 40 minutes, no matter what I do. Has started constantly pulling out his dummy for some reason while trying to fall asleep and then not being able to fall asleep. And best of all, has started waking up and crying for about half an hour when he can't get back to sleep and wants to...

This happened to my DS, he worked it out on his own eventually but it took a good 4 months and even then his sleep wasn't consistently ok until he was almost 1! We did the gradual retreat when he was 11months but I didn't feel he would have been ready for it before this age as he was waking so much.
Hope you find a quicker method! Xx

Hi, this is an old thread but I am going through exactly the same thing and wondered what happened with your babies? Did it resolve in the end, when and how?

Thank you from a desperate tired mum! X