Five month old doesn’t know how to sleep - help!

[BHA90]

Hi all,

FTM here. Wondering if anyone has any words of wisdom… I have a five month old baby boy who is an absolute delight apart from the fact he is SO BAD at sleeping. He needs a lot of help getting to sleep for day naps and nighttime (be it rocking or feeding) without exception, never naps for more than 45 mins and is still waking up every two hours in the night to feed. He’s ebf and won’t take a bottle or a dummy and despite his best efforts can’t seem to find his thumb to suck.

I know he’s young but I’m aware other babies the same age are sleeping much more and all of the official advice suggests he should be having at least one chunk of longer sleep by now.

Dont want to ‘sleep train’ per se but am a bit concerned I’m doing it all wrong and creating lots of bad habits. Plus I’m absolutely exhausted. Because of the bottle thing my partner can’t really help other than look after him for a couple of hours between feeds so I’m feeling a bit desperate!

Some other bits of info that might be worth knowing:

• Im feeding on demand and though I’ve managed to nudge him to three hours between feeds in the day he goes back to two hourly at night.


• His head circumference and weight are on the 98th percentile and one doc did suggest I was over feeding him because his height so far is only 25-50th percentile but my understanding was that you can’t overfeed a bf baby?! My partner is v tall so I’m expecting him to be tall.


• Other than his struggles to get to sleep he is a very happy baby and almost never cries. When he wakes up in the night he’s mostly grunting and fidgeting or furiously rooting. If I left him it would eventually descend into crying.

If any seasoned mamas have any tips or advice I’d be extremely grateful!

Are you putting him down drowsy? Rocking and feeding to sleep means he hasn’t learned how to do it on his own and is reliant on that, so when he wakes up the cycle starts again.

No, if I do that he just wakes up immediately. The only time I’m able to successfully transfer him to the cot is if he’s fast asleep and floppy otherwise he immediately wakes up and I have to start the process all over again! Conscious this means he’s totally reliant on me though…

I fed to sleep because it was the only way to get him to GO to sleep. Sleep training was the only way to break the habit (though they don't do it forever; however I absolutely wasn't going to feed past 1 so had to break on my terms). Mine only started sleeping longer once he started crawling and getting tired out.

If he's catnapping and happy, IT'S OKAY. He's not going to break as long as he has some sleep.

Controlled crying can help you, though I believe the advice is 6 months and over. It's gruelling work, but I would absolutely do it again.

My boy needed rocked to sleep, drowsy but awake used to crack me up, the second his bum hit the cot he was wide awake. So I went with the rocking. Some sleep was better than none imo. He's one year old now and sleeps like a dream. Plonked in cot and off he goes to sleep, no feeding, rocking patting, dummy. He just needed time to learn to fall asleep on his own. Yes he was reliant on us to get to sleep but I felt ok with this as it wasn't going to be forever. We did do some sleep stacking to get him to sleep on his own...maybe have a look at that.

Tbh, this was just how it was with my youngest. Some kids are just rubbish sleepers.

Its either going to take time or tears depending on which route you go down.

ppease Ignore the outdated advice on putting them down drowsy and needing to learn to sleep by themselves

what you’re describing is completely normal OP it’s just that parenting books like to make us feel it isn’t normal and there’s something wrong of our tiny dependant babies aren’t doing what we want them to be doing

my best advice - step away from the internet and books and anything else that tells you what your baby should be doing and how he should be sleeping. Just go with the flow. It’s natural and completely normal what your baby is doing. It’s actually unusual for babies to sleep through especially at 5 months old, yes some do it there’s always exceptions, but it’s biologically normal to wake up.

Youre not doing anything wrong. Some babies are just awful sleepers, just like some walk and talk later or can't build a tower of bricks until much later. Your baby has decided to torture you into submission with sleep deprivation. My advice is to bed in (pardon the pun), do whatever gets you the most sleep (early bed times for you, co sleeping etc) and one day it will end and you'll be shaking them awake telling them it's time for school.

I would stick to a rigid routine and try and help him to self soothe and this means going to sleep on his own. Something I used which helped transition from crib to cot was these little feet that I screwed onto cot legs and it allowed the cot to be rocked just a bit. I bought them online for about £30 I think. Lifesavers for us as at that time he liked a Little rock before sleep. What sleep aids does he have?? Eg blankie or Teddy or music.. baby here is 7 months and we have a rigid routine of bath, milk with particular music, then bed with blankie & still music playing on low volume. For naps it’s the same blankie and a little music projector thing. He sleeps through and has decent naps but I am absolutely rigid on these routines around sleep! x

Keep calm and carry on. He's just a bad sleeper. Percentiles don't count. How much does he weight ? I do remember a talk between us young mums at lunch time about when they get to a specific weight, you get your snoring back. Feed him as much as you can like you do. You are doing everything right. He will come around. Also try to feed him a little bit more (longer) and drink a little bit more. It's so hot those days. I have never seen months like that. Perhaps as the weather gets cooler he will get better.