Baby sobbing and feel awful

[AleaEim]

Hi,

I have an almost 6 month old who used to be an amazing sleeper (think 8 hours stretches with no wake ups) until two months ago, sleep regression etc. Her naps have also become ridiculous and I also think her wake windows are becoming much longer, she’s only showing sleepy signs after 3 hours min and 3.5 before bed, its hard to fit three naps in basically, she’s just not tired enough. Last night was particularly bad, she woke every 1-2 hours, I ebf and feed her to sleep but I think that’s becoming a bad habit as I don’t believe she needs it hourly and could be causing the wake ups? DH tends to do well rocking her to sleep but she has started to reject that lately.

This morning, after finishing lucy wolf’s stay and support book, I decided to just put her in her crib and see if she would sleep independently while I supported her (she used to do this no problem), of course she screamed and I gave up after 10 minutes, I then put her in her pram (this used to be a guaranteed way of getting her to nap but has becomes trickier lately, she was ok for a few minutes, playing and moaning to herself but then started crying harder and harder. Sleep deprivation and thinking of how books are telling me not to create bad habits made me persevere and I left her in the pram to cry while I had a quick shower. She got into hysterics and is now sobbing, trying to fall asleep while I comfort feed her but her sobs are so hard they are waking her back up. This happened a few times before where she got into hysterics at bath time and her sobs would prevent her from sleeping. I’m not sure I can even do gentle sleep training with her if her sobs then prevent her from sleeping, it’s counter productive and makes me feel awful.

any tips anyone? She’s now been awake four hours but looks like she’s finally nodding off, her naps and bedtime used to be so easy, she’d go down same time everyday but now everyday is different.

She doesn’t need 3 naps, time to limit to 2 and stretch out her day. This is her way of telling you.

I will try do that but then her bedtime becomes v early and she’s up at 4am for the day. It’s like I can’t win. Like for example if she sleeps for an hour now and wakes at 11.30, she could go down at 2.30 for second nap but then she sometimes wakes after 30 mins, that would mean keeping her up for 4 hours until bedtime at 7, think I’d hate to do her bedtime earlier than that as she went down at 7.30 before and was still up at 4am wide awake! I’d like to do a later bedtime tbh.

Put the books down and stop following advice that is one size fits all. Your baby is an individual with her own sleep patterns, needs, and character, not an equation to be solved where if you plug in X you get Y. Respond to her cues when she’s actually tired, not when you want her to sleep or the book says she should, and if she is needing feeding and comfort to do so it’s not the end of the world. Can you put her in a sling or get out and about with her in the pram so she naps there instead of stressing about getting go her to sleep in the cot?

The thing is she does seem tired, she will yawn and become whiney but fights the naps, in fairness I may have put her down a bit prematurely today which may explain why it escalated but that can sometimes happen anyway. I do always go out and usually do a least one sling nap a day, she loves that but I can’t do that all the time. Today I just wanted her to have a nap so I could shower, I can’t do that while holding her in a sling. When she’s awake she wants constant entertainment so I find it hard to get stuff done while she’s awake.

It’s tough, I really empathise. I stressed about sleep a lot when my first was a baby too. Your stress levels will be lower if you go with the flow a bit more though, which might require some flexibility and thinking outside the box. For example can you shower before your partner leaves for work or put your LO in a bouncy seat in the bathroom with you so she can see you and not get separation anxiety?

Yeah I try that sometimes but because she normally goes down ok in pram, I just sort of planned to save the shower (me time) for when she napped. I’m so torn between sleep training her and going with the flow. I wanted to do a gentle approach but I think my presence makes her worse tbh.

We sleep trained at 5 months for this reason. "Gentle" methods didn't work, me being in the room or keep picking him up just made it worse. Rocking him and holding him to sleep didn't work anymore.

We did Ferber eventually and he cried for 25 mins total. Then 15 mins on night no.2. Night no.3 he smiled when I put him down, rolled around, cooed and went to sleep. Consistency is key if you do try sleep training. Whatever you try, be consistent.

At 6 months, before you try any sleep training, make sure he's not teething (drooling, not eating well, being extremely upset, aggressively chewing on stuff). You will have a lot of regressions between 6-12 months as sooo much is happening. Which is why I was glad we sleep trained early as every time he had a regression/teething episode, he went right back to his normal sleep schedule with minimal fuss (some protests but not outright crying more than a minute).

If you don't want to sleep train, that's totally fine, but then you need to accept it and lean into breastfeeding and cosleeping at least until 12 months. Set yourself up in his room and enjoy the cuddles. Otherwise you're stressing yourself and him. Sleep training at 10/11 months from scratch would be horrific, they're much more aware of things/anxious and capable of hurting themselves, so you do need to commit either way in my experience.

I think I do want to sleep train tbh, can you tell me more details on how to get started? Do I start with just the first part of the night or do you need to do it for every night waking aswel? I think it would be overwhelming to do it for every single waking personally and she would likely still need at least one or two feeds. How do I find out about the Ferber method? Is that all online?

Also my worry about sleep training is the way she sobs when left to cry, it ends up waking her up.

Just do 2 naps. It’s hard for that transition though when they drop one they’re not quite ready to drop. Can you take her in the bathroom with you? Put a blanket down or put her in her high chair or a play pen depending how much space you have.

I know you’re saying she used to do this or that but she’s only 6m
i don’t think you can count the first 3m personally, and longer if they’re early. So for 3m she slept well. Now she’s learning lots of new things, maybe teething, her digestive system is dealing with all these new foods, she’s more aware of herself and the world and you and her being different people and all that stuff is going on for her I think it’s normal. They’re helpless babies and they’re programmed to want to be near you for food and comfort and safety. I don’t think they can have bad habits at 6m really, you can try teach her different ways to calm down though.
If you’re going to sleep is there anyone else that can try the gentle approach for you, if you think you being there makes it worse for her.

Put the books down. Your baby hasn’t read them and they’re mostly tosh.

Firstly, look after yourself and you’ll be better placed to look after your baby. Go to bed with her early tonight, feed her to sleep and go to sleep yourself. Tomorrow, get a shower before your DH leaves for work and grab some breakfast.

She’s a baby. They tend not to sleep through the night and 99% of the time it’s nothing you are doing/ not doing/ can change. It’s just how babies are. Lean into the fact you are BF - try co sleeping safely if you can to maximise your rest. If you think she needs to drop a nap, try laying with her and latching her back on if she stirs during her naps to lengthen it a bit. You can get some rest that way too.

Forget about set bedtimes - that’ll come with time as she gets older. Stop looking at the clock in general, if she’s tired she will fall asleep while feeding. If you stop looking at it in the night, you’ll feel less stressed about how much sleep you’ve had / how often she woke up.

Lots on Ferber online. You start with bedtime and yes, all night wakings. You can still feed in the night (I did) but you don't let them fall asleep on the boob. That part is hard (you cut him off before he falls asleep and he will cry) but my son soon realized he couldn't use the boob to fall.asleep and he stopped waking so much. Now when he wakes I know it's because he needs milk or something is wrong.

Once you have bedtime down, you also do it for naps. I didn't at first and the paedetrician told me off at our check up. She said whatever you do at bedtime, do for naps, keep it consistent otherwise you're confusing him and it's cruel. She was right, there was some crying but he got the hang of it in one day and my life was changed! Start with the first 2 naps. For the 3rd nap, they fight this one hard and you can decide to still do a pram or contact nap.

All the above being said, you need a cut off. Some people leave their babies to cry for over an hour. In my opinion, if that happens they're not ready.

So I don't want to preach about the above too much because I knew my baby was ready, he was practically squirming out of my arms to be put down. Baby's temperaments are incredibly important. I managed to sleep train because my baby was OK with it, not some achievement/ failure on my part.

Thank you, so do you mean start with bedtime first and then sort night wakings after or all at once? Most of the naps are on the go in sling or pram, would that confuse her then if let her sleep that way?

Maybe do one of her naps in the buggy with a snooze shade on and keep walking or use a rockit this should help the nap be longer

Does she have a dummy, if she does and she loses it tie it to something so it's easy to find

I had a chair in my bathroom baby could watch me shower in

Sleep training is literally them learning that you wont come if they cry. Might well gain you much better sleep now but its completely unhelpful for their attachments and future relationship with you. Do you have any adults in your life that you'd totally ignore if they were sobbing?

You need to drop a nap. This will help the sleep but it will be harder during the day, but we've all got way more reserves to cope with the side effects during the day. It wont last forever (but will come back when shes ready to lose another nap so you'll know what to watch out for!)

At 6 months my daughter needed two afternoon naps quite close together, I think her awake window was less than an hour between these two naps and then around 7 months these merged into one long afternoon nap.

A 6 month baby isn't developing "bad habits" and wanting cuddles and comfort from your parents isn't a bad habit at any age. It's very normal for a 6 month old to wake frequently to feed- she is growing very, very fast, the fastest she will ever grow in her life, and she has a very tiny tummy.

3 naps is definitely too many naps, I don't think my daughter had that many naps ever after the first few weeks.

You've identified that she needs bedtime around 3.5 hrs after her last nap, so work backwards from the time you want her in bed- if it's 9pm then her last nap needs to finish at 5:30pm.

Honestly at this age though it's best just to follow her lead and eventually she'll fall into a routine that works.

She’s one for the books, hates dummies and won’t tolerate pram for walks very often, likes the sling. I have had better luck with pram naps at home previously. She slept better last night, I cut her naps to two yesterday and kept her up quite long before bedtime. It worked somewhat.

Just so you know, one of mine did this, the little heartbreaking sobs. Sleep training doesn't work for every baby. Someone upthread says it took 20m first night etc. Mine cried for hours for months. Looking back obviously I should never have done that, even though I was going out of my mind with sleep deprivation. Not all babies will sleep train. The books will say they all give up immediately- its not true.

P.S. There's no such thing as "sleep training." Sleep is natural and developmental, it comes when it comes. You can train her to not cry when she wakes up and lie silently waiting. Babies left alone in the wild would learn that skill quickly so as not to attract predators. Bear in mind that you will have to do it multiple times over the years and on average, it will gain you about 16 minutes extra sleep.

Yes this is what I did last night and it worked, think she could nearly go to 4 hours soon. Even this morning again she stayed up 3.5 hours before her first nap, took her out in sling. I think she would have went earlier but was timing things to get to a group.

This routine came from a sleep consultant and worked wonders for my three. My eldest slept 7:30-7 from 3.5 months and my twins were the same at 4 months. Give it a go for a week and stick to it totally.

There was a method that was popular when DD was small and I've forgotten the name, I think it was Australian.

The basics were:

• Loads of outdoor time and stimulation during the day
• If they are not sleeping, don't try to make them sleep, get them up and play with them until they start showing signs of tiredness
• There is no such thing as "overtired"; a baby who doesn't want to sleep just isn't tired enough.

Try the Beyond Sleep Training group on Facebook.

Sleep training never worked for us. Don't feel bad if it doesn't work for you – some babies just don't take to it, and it's not your fault.