Help please, desperate Ftm with 7 month old

[Fivebyfive2]

I'm sat up in bed in tears, I feel like such a failure. Ds is just over 7 months (was a month early) and has never been a good sleeper; we had 6 or 7 really good weeks from about 11 to 17 weeks (ish) but otherwise, not good. He fights sleep, hardly ever self settles (I mostly feed to sleep) wakes constantly in the night and is wide awake at 5/5.30. Sometimes he is awake for 2 hours in the night, although thankfully this isn't nearly as often nowadays. Since the weekend it's been awful, over an hour to get him to sleep and then he wakes every 2 hours. I breastfeed and he's on 2 meals a day, lunch and tea. He's very fussy with bottles and has never taken a dummy.

He's in a snuzpod by our bed still as he didn't sleep any better when we tried his own room and getting up constantly was killing me. We do have a loose routine but not the best as timing varies depending on his naps. He usually naps OK thankfully, I've gotten pretty good with wake windows and his cues, he'll now nap in the pod, car and buggy instead of just on me but the length is always pot luck.

Please help, what can we do?? I've considered sleep training but honestly not sure and I do not want to put him through starting it if we can't see it through so want to give it more thought. I've even looked at 'sleep programmes' like Little Ones, but are these good or just something tired, desperate parents purchase at 3am?!

I basically feel like I'm already letting my baby down by not being able to get him to sleep as much as he should and maybe like I dug myself a hole with feeding to sleep??

Dh does help as much as he can, but works full time so the nights are mostly me. He helps with the extended wakes, most of the early mornings and when he's off he takes him for long walks so I can catch up.

Will it get better?? What am I doing wrong??

Sorry for the long rambling, I'm just feeling so upset about it all at the moment.

What you’ve described sounds quite normal to me. You’re not doing anything wrong. But yes, it will get better! All your baby’s phases will seem like they will last forever when you’re in them but before you know it, they will be a distant memory!

My boy was like yours. I remember thinking thay he would never go to bed without a huge fuss, never fall asleep by himself without me stroking and patting and rocking and playing white noise, never sleep through the night without a feed, never stay asleep past 5am. But of course he did! He’s nearly 2 and a half now and he’s currently back to waking up five million times a night due to an illness, but in general he’s a pretty good sleeper now.

We didn’t sleep train but we do have a routine which has been the same since he was about 4 months old. I think he was about 1 when I started trying to stretch out his morning awake period by keeping him busy with lots of fun activities to make sure that he would have one long proper nap after lunch instead of lots of little naps. It really helped me get through the day knowing that I would get a more or less guaranteed block of rest time for 2 hours or so every afternoon!

Hang in there! Things will settle down by themselves soon.

I was exactly the same as you OP until I stopped feeding to sleep. (Idea being if they fall asleep feeding then wake up in a different place it confuses them) I used the little ones app and it has methods on there to help stop feeding to sleep which I thought weren't traumatic for baby. Although if you're going to do it, you've got to be consistent. No point starting it then going back. Maybe research a few ideas or investigate little ones first and wait a few more weeks?? Little ones works on settling at bed time first then tackles night wakes after. Search dr jay Gordon's methods too. Stop being so harsh on yourself, you're doing a great job

Your first problem is this: "Dh does help as much as he can, but works full time so the nights are mostly me. He helps with the extended wakes, most of the early mornings and when he's off he takes him for long walks so I can catch up."

You also work full time. You have a small baby who you need to take care of all day long and who doesn't sleep well at night. Your husband needs to step up and do more. My husband works full time and does a lot of overtime but he still gets up when necessary. Your husband takes him for walks so you can catch up? On what? Housework? So your husband gets a nice relaxing walk with the baby while you continue to work? You need a serious discussion about division of labour, because fuck that.

I would try to give up feeding to sleep, that is just going to create problems because they associate being full with sleeping and then they can't get back to sleep alone without being fed. It's a hard habit to break, but possible.

Sleep training works and he's old enough, so I would just do it. It might be hard for a week but then it will be much better. The longer you leave it, the harder it gets because their sleep habits are more ingrained.

I find tiring my baby out as much as possible helps. So very very active, bright and noisy during wake times, then very dark and quiet during naps. That is so hard to keep up when they're not sleeping well, I know.

Don't bother with sleep programmes or 'sleep school' or any commercial scheme. They will give you the same advice that your health visiting team can give you for free. Which is definitely worth exploring-health visiting teams can't do extended home visits at the moment but they can certainly advise over the phone and, depending on the trust, might be able to offer video calls. You'll likely be contacted by a community nursery nurse for whom these sorts of issues are their bread and butter-they'll have a lot of excellent advice and support.

My boy was six months when I decided in desperation to do some sleep training. I was hallucinating through tiredness and had stopped driving because I felt I wasn't safe. Sleep training isn't for everyone, but there are a variety of methods, not just 'shut them in the room and don't come back til morning' and I decided that doing a bit of training was far preferable to an increasingly sleep deprived Mum in sole charge of a baby.

I chose to do a very very mild version of controlled crying because other methods hadn't had any impact (gradual retreat was useless because he was furious at me being in the room). Put him down in cot, left for 2 minutes, went back in to give a quick rub and soothe and then left again. The idea was to increase the time between going back in but, I shit you not, I spent half an hour doing this and he then fell asleep and, mostly, continued to go to sleep without any fuss.

For me it helped me to recognise a cry where he needed me and a cry where he was kind of mumbling himself to sleep (he used to make this 'ahhhhhh' noise when self soothing!) because I'd been going in at every noise and rousing him unnecessarily. I also felt that he figured it out so quickly because he had connected him going to sleep with me being in the room and was crying whenever I previously tried to leave as a way of alerting me to the fact that I'd forgotten to be there! Once he realised that I didn't need to be he was fine-it was almost as if he were protesting for my sake rather than his! He has now been diagnosed as autistic so I don't think it's that fanciful that he was fond of sticking to a system even if it didn't make sense

I promise you this doesn't last forever. My second baby was an absolute dream of a sleeper, it just comes down to individual babies and their needs and not your parenting (I remember feeling really upset at the time that I was getting it 'wrong')

Good luck, you don't have to do any method or training you're not comfortable with, just offering up my experience. I wouldn't have felt happy with going beyond 5 minutes between going back to my boy but luckily didn't have to. Go at your pace and what's best for you and your baby. And if you're husband isn't doing wake ups then don't brook any argument from him!

I’m in the same situation right now with my nearly seven month old - feeding to sleep, wakes to feed every two hours, often up for the day at 5am. And won’t take a bottle.

I have an older child too who was exactly the same until we did some sleep training at 1. I’m planning to wait till 1 again, when they need less milk, and my husband can go in at night with water. It’s very hard doing these two hourly feeds but it surely won’t be forever.

Give him breakfast too I think op, something filling like porridge. At over 7 months 3 meals a day would be better and the routine and fuller stomach will set him up better for that first nap of the day.

7 months is a hard age and still feeding so much is gruelling for you-been there myself, but do try more food if nothing else.

Don't feel alone though. Babies are SO hard and so unreasonable. I think he will settle into more of a pattern once he's on his 3 meals. Won't be overnight but gradually it will get better.

Quite normal. Ds1 fed every two hours day and night (so I didn’t ever get more than 1.5 hrs sleep at a time) for 10 months. At that point I stopped breastfeeding and went cold turkey. He really didn’t need it, but he screamed blue murder if he didn’t get it.
He slept through within a few days once I turned off the milk taps.

You’re a FTM so don’t be too hard on yourself. You’ve not let your DS down at all. I’m a FTM to a 5.5 month old who has some really good sleep phases, but equally bad ones too and it’s a constant learning curve trying to google what I’m doing wrong and then trying different fixes - what works on other people’s babies doesn’t necessarily for for me or my DD(!) so it’s trial and error and all the time she’s developing and changing and I’m trying to keep up.

Do you have a night time routine? I found that helped my DD understand it’s a long night time sleep not a nap. So ours is just dinner, bath, story time, feed, burped awake and then put down awake but drowsy. I also found putting her in her own room, with the blinds shut and white noise on helped her sleep longer stretches as the slightest noise or light in our room would wake her.

I also do cc if she won’t settle but I don’t leave the room, rather I sit next to her cot patting her until she nods off. She cries on and off but eventually nods off. Leaving the room just makes her angry and she screams her head off and becomes inconsolable.

It’s all trial and error to figure out what works for your baby because no two babies are the same. There’s no right or wrong way really as long as your baby is happy and healthy so don’t be too hard of yourself.

Oh OP, I feel your pain. I was exactly the same with my first son. He slept pretty well around 3-4 months then hit the 4 month sleep regression and it all went to pot. I was too emotional and exhausted to sleep train and kept telling myself it would get better, it must just be teething/ a growth spurt/ a leap and then he'd improve. He didn't. Only reliably slept through at 3 years old!

I now have 6 month old twins and I absolutely knew I could not go through that again especially with two babies. I did gentle sleep training at 5 months. Similar to pp, I have a nice bedtime routine with bath, feed, story, cuddles and then into cot with dummy and comforter. I potter a bit, sing a song, pat them and leave the room. If they cry, I wait a minute or two, go back in and shush/ pat/ stroke hair. The key thing is, they don't come out of the cot for anything except a poo. Sometimes it can take me half an hour to get them both asleep BUT my boy sleeps through from dreamfeed to morning and my girl we get maybe 1 extra wake-up. I sleep 4-5 hours at a stretch, it's soooo much better than with DS1.

Honestly I think you have a choice here. Either sleep train - and it will be hard but not as hard as when he gets older/ has separation anxiety/ can stand and scream/ climb out of the cot etc! - or stick with feeding to sleep but just co-sleep to let yourself get more rest.

I recommend having a read of the Precious Little Sleep website especially the 3 articles on sleeping through the night. Lots of good advice.

Thanks for replying! Some good suggestions here. I think we will probably research a bit more into sleep training and once we find a method we really believe we can stick with, just go for it! Will also introduce breakfast this weekend too, we'd been planning on doing that anyway.

We don't do evening baths as they seemed to work him up, but our routine lately is: play, tea, clean him up and do massage, put lullaby on and chill out and then into sleeping bag and up to bed. We try to do this as close to 7pm as possible, depending on how it falls with his last nap.

@ItWasNotOK, when I said 'catch up' I meant on sleep! Or just read, phone a friend or whatever. A break basically. We do the bedtime routine together, he helps settle him and takes him in the morning. But often when ds wakes it's often but for short windows, just a cuddle and feed, so I don't see the point in waking dh then? If he's up for a while, he will be up too, helping to settle him.

Also, thanks to those reminding me it's kind of normal! In my head I know that and am usually quite level headed about it! A few especially bad nights and a stream of nct updates about friends with perfect sleepers just got to me yesterday!!

Sleep training - do it! Look at all the threads from mums in your position when their child is 2 or 3. If you think you're tired now imagine how you'll feel in a few years time of your child still isn't sleeping.
Millions of parents teach their babies how to sleep. You'll be a rested, better mum and your child will be properly rested and able to enjoy their day.