5 month false starts driving me mad!

[Chocolateorange098]

For the last month my 5 month old has had a false start every night! Getting him to sleep initially is ok (rock him to sleep and place in bed with me to cosleep) and then he wakes up at 30 mins on the dot. 9 times out of 10 it then takes 30 mins-1 hour to get him back to sleep and stay asleep. He often falls back to sleep fairly quickly but wakes after 5 minutes until eventually it sticks for a bit. He’s always been a bad sleeper and wakes every hour-1.5 hour throughout the night but it’s the false starts that are really driving me bonkers!

This was yesterdays nap schedule as a sample, which had a false start:

7.00am: Wake
8.45-9.35am: Nap 1 (woke at 30 mins but managed to extend nap)
11.25am-1pm: Nap 2 (again woke at 30 mins but managed to extend)
3-3.30pm: Nap 3
5.30-6pm: Nap 4
8.15pm: Bed

Nap total: 3.5 hours ish

I’ve experimented with longer and shorter wake windows and more or less nap totals and we still get false starts.

Anyone have any advice? I’m going bananas!

I should add we’ve had the same bedtime routine since he was 2 months old - bath, pjs and sleepsack, lullaby, boob, sleep.

Honestly I don’t have advice as such except just don’t drive yourself crazy with it, my 9 month old is a horrendously bad sleeper and I drove myself mad with wake windows, nap times, sleep training, white noise, breaking sleep associations, early bedtimes, every sleep tip and trick you can think of and NONE of it helped.

I know it isn’t comforting, but some babies are just bad sleepers and they’ll eventually develop better sleep patterns.

I try to just go with her now, and I’ll be totally honest and admit that DD genuinely sleeps better when she’s overtired. Late bedtime tends to mean longer stretches of sleep and more sleep overall otherwise it’s bed, wake up after thirty minutes screaming and tired but will literally stay awake for hours and hours, or constant wake ups and by 2am we get a long drawn out split night. She stays in the cot better, resettles herself and gets more rest if shes slightly overtired first though I appreciate this won’t be the case for most babies. She also sleeps and resettles herself better if I feed her to sleep, when I occasionally manage to get her to put herself to sleep she wakes up screaming for me anyway.

ignore all the ‘rules’ and just do what works for your baby and sometimes unfortunately just accept that the temperament of some babies just can’t be changed

We have also always had the same routine and it’s never achieved any consistency in her sleep. From hourly wake ups, to several wake ups and then a split night, three hours to get her into bed, staying up for hours or going straight to sleep, long naps, short naps, refusing naps altogether. Every day/night is a lottery

@CurlyOrchid You’re definitely right that everyday is a lottery! 😅

Could you drop nap 4 and bring bedtime earlier? Maybe that last nap is taking the edge of him being ready for bed.

@Wigglypasta Yeah, I think that final nap might be edging into danger nap territory…

@Chocolateorange098 Much as it may not feel that helpful, try to hold onto the thought that everything is a phase and this too shall pass…! Which is not to say that such phases don’t drive you up the wall while you’re in the thick of them 😬

@Spudlet @Wigglypasta he would struggle to last much more than 2 hours. Could probably stretch to 2.5 hours so that would make bedtime at 6pm? Unfortunately as we cosleep and he only stays asleep glued to me, I’m not sure I can go to bed at 6pm 😫

Anyone else have any advice?

If he’s falling asleep being rocked, he’s probably waking because he’s realised it’s stopped. 30 minutes ish is bang on when he would typically go into light sleep. He needs to fall asleep how he’s going to stay asleep. So if you’re set on the co sleeping then that would be lying down in bed with you, not being rocked. I’d also try to do 3 naps and an earlier bed.

Hi, appreciate this was three years ago now but I found your post as I’m in a very similar position with my nearly 5 month old. Just wondered if it got better/ what you did?! Thanks

@schnauzermum1 Hey! Yes it absolutely did get better but I don’t think it was anything I did that helped - I think it was a phase that fizzled out. I totally understand you probably want a solution, as I did when I wrote this post, but I’d just try to relax and trust that it’s a phase as it didn’t last long in the grand scheme of things. Only a month or two. My DS is now 3.5 and sleeps through most nights and has done since 16 months so you will sleep again. It’s so hard whilst it’s happening though. Sending sleep dust!

@schnauzermum1 The only thing I do wonder but will never be able to test the theory now is whether he was undertired. I used to follow a lot of the suggested schedules from Huckleberry and aimed for the recommended total day sleep but now that he’s older, I’ve learned that he’s actually quite low sleeps so I wonder if he wasn’t tired enough to stay asleep when going to bed. So depending on how your little one seems, you could try to see how they cope with slightly less naps or bigger wake windows? And from experience of trying schedule tweaks, always give it 3-5 days before deciding something doesn’t work. It can mean a couple of days of them being grumpy because they’re in a bit of a deficit but then they catch up.

Not the point of this thread but I hate Huckleberry. I twisted myself in knots following their stupid wake windows and schedules. And talking to other mums, they all said the same, that Huckleberry assumed A LOT more sleep that their babies needed.

I curse the day I found out about that app, it caused me so much work and anxiety 😂