I can’t cope with my 7.5 month old baby’s overnight wakings anymore!

[Luce988]

I’m actually losing my mind... I have a 7.5 month old who has never really been a good sleeper since he was 3.5 months. I’ve done 3 online sleep courses, I’ve paid a fortune for a private sleep consultant, I’ve researched non stop for weeks, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what’s going on. Baby has 2.5-3 hours of naps per day, across 3 naps (usually something like 45 min/1.5-2 hrs/20-30 min). His wake windows are roughly 2.5 hours. Bedtime at 7pm and he goes down easily. But every single night, he wakes SO FREQUENTLY, and I mean every half hour or less. Then he wakes at 3/4am and screams like he’s being tortured and won’t go back to sleep for at least an hour.

It’s not sleep associations - I don’t feed him or rock him to sleep. In fact I feed him at least half an hour before sleep incase it’s reflux or wind. The room temperature is right, it’s blacked out and we have a white noise machine on.

I’m starting to worry it’s something physiological like an allergy or sleep apnea, but due to covid there’s a huge wait to see a paediatrician and in the meantime, I’m losing my mind! I haven’t slept more than 2-3 hours of broken sleep a night in 5 months and it never gets better!

Personally I think he'd still need a feed. Have you tried putting him to bed later ? You are expecting him to sleep 12 hours.

I do feed him in the middle of the night?

The OPs baby is waking every half hour and screaming at 4am. It sounds soul destroying and I'm not sure about all these posts basically saying suck it up.

I would say your baby does have a sleep association, in the form of holding your hand for comfort. This might only be in the night, not at bedtime. Can you try introducing a comforter instead? Is he in your room? Have you tried a separate room? I get that makes feeding tougher. Or alternatively co-sleeping to be close to you. Does he sleep longer stretches at nap time?

Sometimes at 4am I had some success with 'restarting', so lights on, stories etc and back to bed. I didn't enjoy it much though!

Have you checked for allergies? My son had a dairy intolerance and woke 5 times a night. Once I stopped eating dairy it went down to twice a night.

Hey, no advice but just to say I’m with you. Like really With you, except we’re at 13 months. Wakes ALL night. I know people mean well on here but I don’t think some people understand how bad it is and that if you’re like me you’ve already tried everything! Every 30 minutes at least here with a wake up hour or 2 at 5am then back to sleep for an hour. I’m absolutely demented and I get a lot of help compared to most.

I tried to message you privately but couldn’t figure it out, please feel free to message me. I literally lie in bed and cry at least 5 nights out of 7 so I totally understand how you’re feeling. Unfortunately my son was the same, what worked with him was time - finally slept through a week before his 4th birthday and that was with the help of paediatricians and medication! Good luck and please let me know if you find something that helps.

I’d start by dropping the third nap and bringing bedtime a little earlier if needed.

DS still had 3 naps at this age but they only totalled 2 hours. Although it may well help it doesn’t seem to me like that’s why he’d be waking every 30 minutes.
DS also hates noise which we only realised at about 4 months when we left it off one night and he slept through. He’s never had it since. Refers the pitch black so we can’t have any light in his room either.
Again though, I don’t see how this would mean waking up so frequently. I agree that he possibly has an association with the hand holding. I’d recommend pick up put down which we did with DS or gradual retreat but it does sound like you need some sort of sleep training. I’d have thought the sleep consultant would have helped with that.