What the hell is wrong with my 7 month old?

[AllesAusLiebe]

Is this just yet another ‘phase’, or do I need to change what I’m doing radically?

He’s always been incredibly challenging since day one. Sleep has been problematic and he’s very active and curious and finds it difficult to wind down.

The last few days have been shocking. We’ve got a good bedtime routine which has been working really well but now when we put him down (both for naps and bedtime) he screams for upwards of an hour. Nothing works. I’ve tried lying next to him, dummy, leaving him to it. It just escalates and is awful to watch because he becomes sweating and really angry. He never falls asleep during feeding and He’s never been particularly cuddly and definitely isn’t the type of kid who needs lots of physical contact. Hates the sling, so that’s not an option. I’m finding myself walking around aimlessly during the day with him in the buggy, just to make life slightly more bearable.

This is our schedule which up until recently worked pretty well:

6am - wake
8am - nap
11am - nap
3pm - nap
7pm - bed

Is this just another awful ‘phase’ that we have to ride out? Any ideas gratefully received! I’m so fed up. Seriously questioning what the hell I’ve done here.

Maybe he’s not tired? So after he wakes up, for a few days notice when he naturally gets tired. I would say by this time both my kids had dropped their third nap. Maybe a later and shorter first nap and then a later (post lunch) second nap would work better.

Assuming he’s napping for an hour there is barely any awake time in the day. Two hours from 9-11. And then a few hours in the afternoon. And he’s again awake for a couple of hours or a bit more before he’s being sent to bed. That’s more a routine for a 3 month old than a 7 month old I would say. Maybe he’s just not tired enough at those times.

Probably get rid of the 8.00am nap and get him to do just one morning nap a bit later?

He is probably getting ready to drop a nap .The transition can be a bit painful as sometime he may need the extra nap and get grumpy and sometimes he won't.

I would start with dropping the 8am nap. I would actively discourage a nap at that time ( though sometimes he might sleep anyway of course) and see if he sleeps better at lunch time

Have you tried white noise?

DS still falls asleep to it. Its magic.

Try the Relaxio app and see if it works?

Also, try and adjust the lighting. Apparently, exposure to blue light (not just from phones... it comes from all artificial light) can inhibit the production of melatonin. Sarah Ockwell Smith recommends a red light. You can still see but it helps with melatonin.

I got her Gentle Sleep book and it's fantastic.

That’s a lot of naps, my son did about 45minute nap at 2ish and then bed at 7.30pm at that age

I disagree about naps. 3 naps is totally normal at this age. We dropped to 2 at sometime shortly after 8 months - my baby couldn't have coped with less naps before then.

Could it be teething related? We also went through a phase of waking up screaming at around 7 months, I posted about it here even; it passed after a couple of weeks though.

One of my kids did this for a few months. No idea why, but he has always been a poor sleeper and unable to self soothe. We found that the only way to deal with it that actually worked was one parent attempting to do the sleep routine for the first 20-30 minutes while getting screamed and cried at by DS. Then the other parent would come in to take over rocking him, the first parent would leave and DS would relax and fall asleep in exhaustion. We traded off who would be the "bad" parent. Not a fun phase!! Good luck!

Might be time to drop to 2 naps. Most babies do at 6 months ish.

But it does sound really wearing

Any possibility of allergies, silent reflux?

Can you transfer him when he's sleeping so e.g. get to sleep in buggy, move to cot?

Thanks so much for the replies everyone!

Well, I think it’s a case of me trying to make him sleep too much. Today he slept this morning and for around an hour and a half this afternoon and has gone off to sleep at 7pm perfectly! I’m not being too complacent, however, because I know it’ll probably all go to shit once again before long.

Thanks for the tip about the app - I’ll get that for the future. He loves songs so maybe some calming music might help.

The middle of the night screaming may well be teething related. He has no obvious signs of more teeth coming through, but with the first two he was terrible. No pain threshold, just like his dad. 😂

Re: allergies and silent reflux. I haven’t seen any evidence of allergies but I’ve long suspected that he may have silent reflux. As a newborn he’d be really upset after a feed but never vomited.