5 month old terrible sleeper!

[Abblesnapps]

Hi everyone - we have a very active 5 month old who is a bit of a live wire and needs constant entertainment. He’s very noisy and boisterous and is on his way to crawling, sitting up etc. He’s a lovely happy baby but we are really struggling with his sleeping… he will only sleep in 2-3 hour chunks at night and quite often will wake every hour and scream the house down until fed or rocked back to sleep.

We have tried co-sleeping, a next to me crib, and now he’s in his big boy cot in his nursery, but nothing seems to help. We have a nap routine in the day (1 hour in the morning, 2 hours over lunch and another 30-60 mins through the afternoon in catnaps where needed). We use white noise, a sleep sack and the boob or rocking to get him to sleep.

When we have a few nights in a row of the hourly wakes I start to get physically exhausted but of course he’s raring to go at 6-6.30am! (Thankfully my husband can usually take him for a couple of hours before work so that I can get a little more sleep).

We are dead against using ‘cry it out’, especially as we tried it once or twice and he just didn’t stop screaming… Does anyone have any advice as to how to improve his sleep? Or did anyone else have a hideous sleeper who’s now older and better? I’m starting to think he will never sleep.

THANK YOU! 💗

teething? Calpol?? My son got 8 teeth at 6 months

I think this sounds really normal! My first baby was like this, and it did last a few weeks around 4/5 months with hourly wakes and then suddenly stopped. It’s the 4 month sleep regression as a lot of people will refer to it, and some babies do it (my second did not thank godness!) A dummy did help a little as did a comforter as they could use these to soothe back to sleep rather than need me to feed or hold. I do think safe sleep guidance on comforters in the cot is not to let them sleep with it til 6 months though. But honestly I think it’s just a phase. They started sleeping better, only waking for a feed, and then dropped the night feeds and slept through from 10 months ish! They still sleep with the comforter at 3 years old. It’s so rough when the night is bad, so I feel you. I did find that getting up at 7 and sticking to good naps and a really consistent bedtime routine during this phase did really pay off when sleep settled down as we were in a really good routine, so just stick to it in the daytime if you can!!

Oh yeah as @Humbugg said, if there is any doubt that it could be teething then definitely calpol at bedtime!

Thank you, I think you may be right. We already went through some hideous 4 month sleep regression stuff so I naively thought we had gone past that… but I guess it can last a while. Interesting that your second baby didn’t go through it! I’ll pray for that next time around 😅

10 months is doable - at least it’s not forever… it’s so tempting to throw the routine out of the window when it appears to not be working but we will keep at it and keep our fingers crossed that we ride this out quickly.

Wow poor baby that’s a lot! I don’t think it’s teething as he’s not unhappy (although we have had periods of teeth moving for sure). He just seems wired at the moment! Like he can’t switch off.

Sounds normal to me too. My first woke every 45m-1hr at night when teething or when cold. What does baby wear to sleep in? My second wakes bang on every 1.5hr just because (also 5m).

My first started sleeping through at 2y1m but night wakings up until then improved to 11pm, 2am and 5am. I'm optimistic that baby 2 will be different (read: better)!

Just cuddling 13 month old ds back to sleep! Ds1 NTM Co/slept worked a bit harder with him and he was sleeping through by 7 months fed/rocked to sleep. I’d then rouse him ever so slightly when I lay him down then stroke his head until drifted off just upped by anti until we could lay him down awake
However it was A LOT of work hours spent by the cot holding his hand picking him up if he got upset calming him down then laying him back down but not fully asleep. Never again

this time so with ds2 NTM cot / CO slept breastfed on demand through the night all of us getting lots of sleep until 10 months. We were waking him up going to bed (the room we all shared) so decided time to go in his own room. If he woke up I went in latched him on then when fully asleep laid him back down. He would typically go 2/3 hours. Then started doing 3/4 hours and has just gone longer and longer stretches to 8 hours. He’ll do 12/13 hours in the cot with 1 feed maybe 2. So 7pm -8am and I have to go and wake him up. It’s been a lot of work I’ve spent alot of time in the rocking chair! I just believe he’ll get there on his own with no crying no sleep training.

when I was setting up ds 2 nursery for his first night I found and played the white noise/music I used to play when I was ‘teaching’ ds1 to fall asleep independently. Ds 1 said please turn that music off mummy I don’t like it, I said why not he said I don’t know it just makes me feel sad. I couldn’t believe it I didn’t think ds1 was distressed during that period. They’re quite nice memories for me stroking his head holding his hand but must of just wanted to be held.

you will get there 👍