5.5 month old just won’t sleep at all

[Summerbaby333]

Our baby has never been the best sleeper but we’ve reached some fresh hell at 5.5 months. After the couple usual terrible initial months of sleep, at 3 months things improved and he was sleeping with 1-2 wakes a night (eg bed at 10pm, then wake at 3, maybe 5, and 7). At 4 months this went up to 2-3 wakes a night, which ok we accepted as the 4 month sleep regression.. then finally after over a month it started to improve again, before suddenly deteriorating over the past couple days. He literally has woken almost every hour the past three nights screaming his head off, nothing will settle him (whereas before comfort feeding always did).

He has 2-3 naps a day which total about 2.5-3 hours - these are usually in the stroller (and always have been). But his night sleep is adding up to maybe 5 very broken hours max right now with all the wakes and crying, so the total is way below what he needs. WTF is this? He doesn’t show any signs of discomfort or teething during the day but things deteriorate so rapidly at night.

Did anyone go through this :( All my Nct pals babies are now sleeping through the night or waking maybe once and I feel so so alone, exhausted beyond all belief, and so panicked about how we’re going to manage. DH works a crazy stressful long hours job and so I do all the night wakes most nights. I’m getting about 1-2 hours sleep during the night now with all the wakes and then stress meaning I can’t fall back asleep, and I can’t even sleep during the day because he’ll only nap while I’m pushing the stroller). I accepted this (barely) with the newborn stage but having it return even worse right now is freaking the crap out of me :( I’m meant to be back at work in a couple months and Ive started having panic attacks / crying at this point in the night because Im so tired and so stressed about how I can manage :(

Hi, OP,

I am sorry you're going through this. I'd wait until 6 months and sleep train.

Morning @Summerbaby333!

This sounds rough, sorry you're going through this!

I'm an infant sleep consultant and it sounds like he could be overtired, although I wouldn't want to make a judgement without the full picture.

He might benefit from some gentle sleep training to help him learn to self settle or you could try co-sleeping and seeing if that makes any improvement if you don't want to sleep train! How does he usually fall asleep at night and does he have a regular bedtime and bedtime routine?

I'm happy to share my details if you'd like a bit more support too ☺️

My eldest was a bit like this. I kept expecting it to get better and it peaked about 7 months.
we moved her to her own room which helped a bit. It also improved once she could put her own dummy back in around 9months.

I would also recommend the chair method of sleep training (we did this with our youngest during a bad patch at 10months)
you basically wean them from being held to sleep, but you stay with them in the room the whole time so they don’t feel abandoned. It took a while but in the long run was worth it. I think we started by getting her to sleep lying down in the cot with my hand on her chest making shushing noises and then slowly over many nights/weeks removed the hand and just sat in the rocking chair shushing. Some people eventually move the chair out the room but we always stayed and on the whole she got it.

you are in the trenches OP and I remember it so well. The Adrenalin of having a new born wore off for me both times around the 6 months mark and I remember just feeling so exhausted. Do you have a partner who can help? Me and my husband used to do shifts he would deal with wakes until midnight and I would go to bed early and try to have at 3 hours unbroken til then.

it will pass I promise x

Probably hungry. A lot of people start threads on here saying their 4-5 month old baby has suddenly started waking up lots. Until 20 years ago people were giving solids at 4 months. I imagine to keep them full up so they would sleep longer at night.

Thank you for the support <3 Honestly i would happily sleep train if I could even work out a method that works! ;(. I don’t want to try co sleeping unfortunately, just not for me.

We have a regular bedtime routine - bath, full formula bottle (to ensure he’s not hungry overnight) and then bfeed - he goes to sleep pretty much always right away after this, either while feeding or he’ll get drowsy and I’ll put him down and he’ll soon drift off. So putting him to sleep is ok. But now instead of sleeping c 4 hours for the first slot, he’s waking up within an hour and going crazy, taking over an hour to settle, rinse and repeat. We actually are giving him a bit of solids in the day (again to ensure he’s not hungry).

His bedtime is quite late - it often ends up somewhere between 9-1030pm - should we push it earlier to 7 and just give him 2 naps max? I mainly bfeed with the one formula bottle top up before bed - and have done that for a while - but I’ve also been thinking maybe I need to transition to more formula in the day as he’s very distracted when bfeeding? He’s always been a big eater but definitely more distracted now, and obviously with bfeeding I can’t track how much he’s taking in. But his weight gain is great, so I don’t think he’s really struggling there. Just feel I’m clutching at straws and can’t understand where this has all come from :(

Please don't sleep train at six months. They're so tiny still.

I honestly think the weaning guidelines are OTT and baby is likely hungry. I'd try some pre 6 month baby porridge at bedtime.

Sorry missed your update about food.

I'd definitely do an earlier bedtime and follow one of the charts online that shows you wake windows for that age. I think he's getting overtired.

I’ve had 5 children and I’d say he’s hungry. If it was me I’d introduce a small (tablespoon or two) of cereal in the evening and see if that helps. Your milk we be of poorer quality if you are getting so little rest so you need to eat and put your feet up as much as possible for a few days. Once he sleeps a little better and you start to feel more yourself you can move bedtimes if you want to (though personally I find a baby that sleeps later in the morning more convenient than one that sleeps earlier in the evening).

He might have a bit of tummy ache if he’s having breast milk, formula and solids. Have you tried any form of colic drops?

I did wonder about tummy ache .. he’s pooing slightly less than normal (still at least 1-2 times a day, but was usually a bit more) and he does sometimes arch his back in pain, especially in the evening. Burping him a lot does help. I just don’t really know what to do / how to balance the foods, he’s always been ravenous and never slept enough with just breast milk, plus I want to move to formula anyway before I go back to work, which is why I was trying to make formula more regular in his diet. And we were also told to start solids in case he was hungry (as others seem to suggest up thread!) / to prevent allergies. I know that combo all may be upsetting him but I don’t really see how we can wean him otherwise!

I always thought infacol was a bit bs but can give it another go I suppose..

No, it’s fine to mix the three, it’s just that some babies seem to need to adjust, and can get constipation/wind.
I used colic drops with one of mine and they did work. I tried stopping once, and the screaming and arching came back. Just give it a try, it can’t harm.

You mention last few days, could he be teething? Feeling discomfort so it’s waking him up?

Around this point I found my combination-fed baby stopped feeding to sleep (would still breastfeed, just screamed and/or wanted to play afterwards). So I stopped the 2am feed and sent DP in with a bottle instead. Turned out LO didn't want a cuddle and some food, they wanted the stimulation of being with me. So they stopped waking for a feed at 2am and went through to 5am.

HOWEVER. Once baby dropped the 5am feed as well, my milk supply TANKED, my periods came back - and then we were definitely on a path to stopping breastfeeding. So just be aware, if you stop all the night feeds in favour of formula/baby starts sleeping through, it might reduce your day time supply too.

You could give baby porridge (my baby happily ate Milupa, Cow & Gate, Kendamil and now real oats) at bed time instead of that final breastfeed, and change the falling asleep association if you can?

Also consider teething. Some night my baby just couldn't fall asleep. If they have red cheeks or are dribbling, you could have a tooth on the way even if you can't see our feel it yet, in which case try Calpol or Neurofen at bed time.

I moved to hungry baby formula at that age & I agree with others saying to try a spoonful of baby porridge or rice just before bed. Also do you do a dream feed at 10/11pm? That would hopefully stop a 12/1am wake up at least.

I never sleep trained mine but I think if you follow same routine every day then eventually it should work. Make sure they are waking up 7ish so they don't get too much daytime sleep.

So we tried a very strict schedule yesterday in terms of wake windows and naps, and feedings (which also meant baby’s tummy discomfort seemed to improve) - this all went well until we reached bedtime and baby just lost the plot at being put down in his cot. Absolutely lost it, screaming the house down, dh was convinced we should just leave him and he’d calm down but yeah that became impossible. Eventually we gave up and just put him back on his playmat, ultimately it took 2.5 hours to get him to go to sleep - he finally fell asleep nursing at 10pm instead of 730pm - and he’s already awoken 4 times so far at least (11pm, 1am, 130am, 4am). Three of those times feeding has sent him back to sleep.

Does this still sound like hunger or just bad habits ? If it’s hunger - at which point in the day should we try to bulk out his meals - should we add a solid breakfast and lunch or sth? I’m worried that bulk feeding him right before bed makes his tummy uncomfortable and hinders sleep too. He seems pretty full and happy during the day though, he seems to go through loads of milk, so I just don’t know!

Is the only bottle of formula you"re feeding the last one of the day? Have you tried different brands? Could it be that? Do you pace feed?

Well yesterday we tried swapping it up and giving him the formula bottle earlier in the day (not before bed)- but yes he only gets one bottle of formula a day (about 200ml), the rest is breastfed. I’m happy to introduce more formula/keep it at the end of the day too if that would help! We just use aptamil. He doesn’t have the 200ml in one go.. usually 100ml first then 100ml a bit later.. not sure about the pacing, but I do try and pause every ounce or two to burp him..

Distracted feedings are very common at that age, and that can mean they take more milk at night to make up for what they are too distracted to have during the day! But if feeding isn’t settling him and he’s very upset, is it possible it could be a bit of separation anxiety? We had a period of about 3 weeks (admittedly when older than your baby - I think around 7 months) where he would wake up very frequently and was absolutely inconsolable. We just leaned in to it and let him sleep on us downstairs until we went to bed, when I would then co-sleep. I see you don’t want to co-sleep, which I totally understand. It did resolve itself after a few weeks - I think sometimes babies going through a lot developmentally just need their parents more for a little while!

Thanks again for the ideas here. Over the last week I’ve tried extremely strict wake window / nap schedules (basically just following the huckleberry app for his age, with 3 day naps - the final one being v short). It works to keep him in a good mood all day and settle down relatively quickly at night, but he still wakes every 1-2 hours overnight which is killing me ;(. I should’ve said he is sleeping in a crib next door as he outgrew our next to me bassinet, but we have tried bringing him back in our room in a travel cot and it doesn’t make a difference. All his naps are in the pram as he refuses to nap in the crib (or at least won’t do so on the schedule, it would take way way longer).

I’ve upped his formula intake and solids, and I don’t think he’s necessarily hungry at more than 1-2 of these night wakes, as sometimes he’ll go back to sleep just fine if my partner goes and soothes him without feeding. However if I go in (which I basically have to for the vast majority of the wake ups so my partner can sleep for work), he’ll usually only calm down if I feed him.

I don’t feel comfortable leaving him to cry atm, whenever he wakes up he escalates so quickly (usually within a couple minutes) to rolling onto his stomach, screaming and shoving his face in the cot mattress, which really stresses me out. It just doesn’t feel safe to leave him (even though he does know how to roll both ways). We’ve tried the more gentle methods eg no pick up etc, but they don’t seem to be having any impact on actually stopping the wake ups.

I try to keep him on a 7-7 schedule but realistically it often falls to more like 830-9ish, as his wake windows are influenced by his final wake up time in the morning. It’s usually worse on a later schedule, but it’s not really much better on an earlier one.

The only other things I haven’t tried are dropping the third nap and / or only letting him nap in the crib, but both those scenarios would probably mean he’d been extremely overtired as he would be up for hours during the day and barely sleep.

I’m on the verge of shelling out for a sleep consultant which I really don’t want to do as I can’t face losing a chunk of money with no results or just getting told everything I’ve already read about online. The stress now means I can’t sleep even when he is asleep (like now..) and my partner is struggling at work which is making me feel even more pressure to try and take the load of the night wake ups and sort this before we’re both back at work :(

sorry that was a dump but any other ideas off of this would be so so useful..

I would drop the formula and food tbh. Sounds like too much for baby all at once.

can you follow the safe sleep 7 and co sleep for a bit? You might find you get a lot more sleep if you’re not in and out of bed to settle baby.

at the weekend/ whenever your OH is off he needs to make sure you’re getting at least one five hour stint of sleep a night.

good luck - honestly this will just get better with time, the best thing you can do is keep responding to baby and maximise your own sleep. I.e. listening to a meditation to get back off to sleep rather than stressing etc.

I’ve three children all who have slept totally differently despite me doing the same with all of them!

Do you follow care it out on Instagram? She might have some good suggestions for you - I know what it’s like to be all consumed by sleep.

for the naps could you contact nap for some of them so you’re at least sitting down/ resting?

I want to move to formula over the next month anyway before returning to work so I can’t drop it - if anything it’s the breast feeds that need to go, I do think he’s got way too used to comfort nursing. I’m basically increasing formula and dropping breast feeds atm to do the transition. I should’ve said the food is just for tasting a small spoon a day or so, he doesn’t really properly eat any of it.

I really can’t manage the idea of co sleeping, it’s just a non starter for me.

I sometimes do contact naps but again I can’t fall asleep during them because of safe sleep worries.

I’ll try the instagram..

I agree I need to relax and find some time to sleep. Surprisingly my partner just telling me to relax after 3 night wake ups in 3 hours doesn’t help..

I think this can just be a tough period for some babies op! It’s awful but I just tried to love mine through it and keep trying new things to help them. I don’t believe in sleep training but I did co sleep.

I would think about dropping a nap soon.

my second was the worst sleeper of the two so I was more confident it was a difficult time for him rather than anything I was doing ‘wrong’. I think he was in pain/uncomfortable a lot of the time and just needed his little body to grow up.

they are 2 and 5 now and bulletproof confident sleepers. There is hope!!

try and keep yourself sane OP and I wish you all the best. Xx

He needs to have a day time sleep in his cot at home. If he is constantly being pushed in the parm, or comfort feeding on you he won't sleep through the night.
He needs to be in bed by 6:30/7! If you think he needs it only feed him between 10-11pm with a bottle, no other feeds in the night until 7am!
How much is your husband helping with this? I understand that he's working but he's just as much a parent as you and he needs to help more, maybe he puts him down at 6:30/7, and you go to bed then. Also could he do the 10/11pm feed?

All babies are different, but what eventually worked with my baby was having the cot back in next to us. I think he was freaking out that we weren't there when he woke. He got back into sleeping and we were able to move him out again.