Has anyone done 'shout it out' on a 5 month old?

[SpankyouHardOnChristmasNight]

Seriously considering it as the right approach for DS having checked that he is actually well and fine etc and just 'shouty'. He's 5 months.

Sorry, what is 'shout it out'? My youngest is 7, so I may be out of touch.
Is this the same as controlled crying when baby is not sleeping?
Or do you have a noisy one at all times? One of mine was very 'shouty' from an early age. He's very quiet and refined now, 14 years on.
Interested to know about this technique.

I think it may be the same as controlled crying. I am definitely referring to the sleeping, or rather, not. He's waking almost every 1.5 hours and will shout unless he's picked up. My theory is that if he's going to shout with me there, he may as well shout with me getting on with other stuff . In the day he shouts and then suddenly stops and goes to sleep and my presence actually prolongs the dropping off to sleep bit and seems to wind him up.

are you sure he is not jsut hungry?

i think 5 months is way to young for controlled crying etc...

Can he really be hungry every 1.5 hours? I know he isn't because he doesn't have a full feed each time - maybe a third of a feed. I have no objections to feeding him if he's genuinely hungry, or indeed every 3 hours but I'm just not convinced he needs it. It isn't a 'sucky' thing either as he's not interested in a dummy and he actually won't suck at all if he's not hungry at all.

so he is taking some milk? i would give him his feed when he wakes and settle him back down when he has had enough

it is normal to have night wakings at 5 months

That's exactly what I'm doing and yes i agree that night wakings are normal at this age - I don't intend to stop them but just think they should be less frequent for both his sake and mine. He would benefit so much from having some proper chunks of sleep and then taking a decent full feed and then another good solid chunk of sleep etc. It's just that I don't really know how to spread them out!

i thikn that some babies are more inclined to sleep longer than others ! i would go to him as soon as he wakes, offer a feed, then settle him. also, it could be a growth spurt whihc means he wnats more than usual

is he draining his bottles in the day

He is a baby fgs. Save parenting and discipline techniques for toddler hood.

"He's waking almost every 1.5 hours and will shout unless he's picked up."

So go in and pick him up, as that is clearly what he is asking you to do. See if he wants to nurse, let him nurse, if he just wants a cuddle and some reassurance, then cuddle him until he settles. At this sge he is still very little and needs to be with you a lot, so he may just be unhappy because he wants/needs to be with you. Having pent 9 months in your belly he still craves close contact with you, which is why he cries until you pick him up, and doesn't stop if you are just in the room. He wants to be in your arms, not in a cot, so he shouts until you do what he is asking you to do.

I didn't have mine in a seperate room at this age. They slept in a bouncy chair in the livingroom, in a sling or on my lap. They didn't go to bed in the bedroom, for daytime naps or at night, until they were nearer a year old.

Hiya, my 5 month old is v unpredictable but seems to wake every 2hrs minimum. I feed back to sleep like you but am finding that he is more able to settle without feeding recently - we had 3 hrs, 2 hrs, 1hrs, 5 hour stretch last night!

I co-sleep with my ds as I find he then doesn't really shout/cry when he wakes and sometimes can be settled with a hand on his chest or holdig his hand. If he doesn't settle, I feed him. But we just had a growth spurt? where he was awake and shouty (and fed for an hour one night ). Odd, but it's all phases, and I am inclined to just ride it out.

Anyway, I honestly think it is just time - hang in there.

Message withdrawn

We let ds whine at that age.
He wasn't crying though - more moany.
He did it whether I held him or not, so if he was fed, clean and tired, we left him to it for maybe 5 minutes at a time.

Ok I kno I'll get slated for this but here goes.

Have you started weaning? Dd did this for about a week till I gave in and gave her a mushed banana.....

Made our lives a lot easier.

Gosh lots of replies - thank you!
He's not a clingy baby in that he will happily play / be cuddled equally happily in the day during his awake time and just gets grizzly if he's tired and / or hungry and then settles really well afterwards BUT the only way I can get him to nap is to make sure he's fed etc and give him a cuddle and then put him down, reassuring hand on chest, tell him it's time for a sleep and then leave the room. If I stick around, it all goes tits up and he won't sleep on me, off me or anywhere inbetween. It's as if he needs to have a quick yell and can then drop off and if I try to interfere with that process, he ends up awake and not napping and then he's in big trouble (with himself, not me!). He could well be coming up to a growth spurt because I've noticed that he's suddenly got very chubby (not surprising with the amount he's eating) and fully expect him to suddenly become longer and slimmer! What's confusing though, is that my friends have bigger (not older!) babies who only pop up once or twice in the night if that PLUS DS seems to feed more at night than in the day, so really I need to flip him over if I can as that would obviously make a big difference.