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 :(

We had similar and the only thing that worked was getting into a strict 7-7 routine. It was hell at first because the timings were all off but she eventually adjusted and was like a new child. So I'd say he's overtired.

Day 1, get him up at 7am no matter what the night has been like. Put down for nap at 8.30 - 9 (keep him awake if necessary) and don't let him sleep more than an hour (wake him up if necessary). Get him through to lunch and then it's a 2-2.5 hr nap, ideally in the cot. Again, wake up no later than 3pm. Ideally a little earlier. And then one final 30 min nap at 4.30/5 if he's not going to make it to bedtime but this is usually the nap babies drop first. Then bedtime no later than 7.30pm

Day 2 onwards-rinse and repeat!

It won't happen immediately so try not to get disheartened.

I imagine if you hired a sleep consultant this is roughly the approach they would take.

I’m sorry to disagree with the other people but at six months it seems very unlikely that they are waking for hunger - I’m currently dropping the night feeds for my 3.5 month baby and they are fine (my first baby also dropped the night feeds at 3.5 months - they say 13 pounds of weight is when you can start). It definitely sounds like waking for the comfort of you and your breasts but also that they have never learnt to self settle themselves if they need the pram for naps during the day and so when they naturally wake at night they need you to help them to settle to sleep. Either you find a way to help them learn to self settle (loads of sleep training techniques but all hard to do when you’re exhausted and the most efficient is probably cry it out) or you find a way to make putting them back to sleep less painful (I’ve never coslept but effectively that seems to be the reason people do). I was pretty focused from little on not having either baby develop too much dependence on me to help them go to sleep but still had to cry out my son for three nights at 4 months (1 hour a night) when I dropped the swaddle - if I were in your position I’d cry them out immediately as your sanity is important and it’s hard but also the fastest route. To get through it I tracked exactly how long he cried each night and compared it to how much he might otherwise cry split across lots of wakings and settlings - cry it out involved less crying in total by a long way. Otherwise, you probably need a maternity nurse who sleep trains in person rather than a sleep training advisor - will cost more but they can actually get you some nights of sleep as well in the meantime.

Two other things - it doesn’t sound like it but if they are actually showing signs of genuine discomfort then you could try moving to a hydrolysed formula if they are very gassy or constipated on normal formula (breaks down the milk proteins - Hipp do one I use but it’s not sweet so babies don’t love it as much as normal formula) or dosing with calpol for teething before bed. If either of those work then you know there is a real issue underlying it.

Yes i'd give calpol for a couple of nights, see if it helps

Baby sounds overtired to me and unable to link sleep cycles.

You need to wake baby up at a consistent time every morning if you're sticking to a strict schedule during the day.

If possible bring baby back into your room, he needs to learn to link his sleep cycles at night so needs to get back to sleep fairly quickly once he wakes up and potentially the delay in you getting out of bed and going to him means he's fully awake rather than stirring. You need to catch him when he's stirring and help him back to sleep however you do that e.g. dummy, hand on tummy or shushing.

I'd also consider a couple of contact naps during the day, so he gets used to sleeping without the movement of the pram.

Agree with @TeenagersAngst

You need to stick to getting them up at 7 every single day even if you're tired. If you hired a sleep consultant they would just give you a routine to stick to.

I never left mine to cry but we had a routine which meant they didn't really cry or wake up at random times.

Do you have a sleeping bag? They might be cold.

So much intense advice here. Just sounds like a normal baby that wakes a lot to me. My 9 month old wakes hourly atm and has since 5months old (daughter was every 2h for first year). Many babies do. So hard and wish there was something to help (aside from sleep training which I don’t believe in). Good luck x

Thank you so much for all the advice. For those saying do a strict 7-7 schedule, and bin the pram naps, what does your daytime nap schedule look like? I tried a crib nap today and he did manage it after fussing but only for 40min or so (which throws off my usual 1.5/1.5/.5 nap schedule in the pram..)

6am wake up
8.30 - 9.30/10.30 nap
11/12 - 1-2 nap
3.30 nap
6.30 bed

Sometimes DD only sleeps for 3 hours during the day, but sleeps 6.30 - 6 overnight

1st nap is usually 1.5 hours and then naps thereafter can range from 30 minutes to 1.5 hours.

OP did this work out for you? I’m in a scarily similar position with my 5.5 month old :(