Sorry, another sleep training post. I’ll start by saying that this is my second baby and up until this point as a parent I thought I would never ever consider sleep training my baby or letting them cry no matter how long for. However I am broken, my mental health is suffering and I don’t feel like I am a good mum anymore, certainly not to my eldest who is 4 years old.
DS2 is 6.5 months old and was an ok sleeper up until the dreaded 4 month sleep regression. We have never recovered from it and things are slowly getting worse. He is breast fed but will accept the occasional bottle of formula, he’s had about 2 small bottles per week since he was 3 months old but a bottle before bed makes no difference at all to his sleep. He goes down to bed around 7:30pm, will sleep until about 11pm and is up hourly through the night. He is then up for the day at 5:30am (used to sleep until 7am at least but it’s creeping earlier as time goes on). He will only be breastfed back to sleep every time. I have tried alternative methods - shushing, patting, rocking and DH will also try the same but he will not settle back off to sleep until he is fed. But he literally has a few sucks and is off to sleep, I don’t even think he’s hungry. He will only nap for 30 mins at a time in the day so I can’t catch up on any sleep when he naps. This is regardless of whether it’s in his crib, pushchair or the car. He wakes up at 30 mins literally on the dot. I have tried all the methods I’ve read about online to extend them but nothing works. He will nap for 2 hours if it’s a contact nap so I’m happy to do this but it’s impossible when I’m also looking after my 4 year old DS too.
I feel like the poor naps might be linked to the poor night sleep but I just can’t get him to link sleep cycles. He can “self settle” by me putting him in his crib with his dummy in and white noise on and he goes to sleep on his own, but just won’t stay asleep. I thought that once they learnt to self settle they should link the sleep cycles but he can’t. I’ve tried co sleeping and he still wakes just as much. Things have got progressively worse and now he will only sleep if he is being physically held from 4am onwards. So either me or DH have to be awake from that time, we’ve been taking it in turns.
I can’t go on like this. What do I do? Would sleep training even help if he already knows how to fall asleep independently? I feel broken. I’m so snappy with my 4 year old and he doesn’t deserve it, I feel like a shit mum and something needs to change. DH works away a lot in the week but helps when he can. DS doesn’t have signs of any allergies or reflux. Tongue tie was released when he was 9 weeks old and it hasn’t reattached. He is actually a really chilled happy baby. He just doesn’t sleep. Help