7 month old sleep problems - nearly at my wits end !

[sazlocks]

DS2 fantastic sleeper til he was 4 months. Then had a huge growth spurt, followed by 2 teeth at 5 ish months. Moved into his own room at 6 months and this helped him to sleep longer for a week or so but he is now waking up every 2 hours.
DS2 is exc BF and was have been doing BLW for a month. He is offered food 3 times a day and his nappies have changed in the last week so he is definately eating but I am not sure how much.
He has a morning nap - usually 1.5 - 2 hours and a late afternoon nap - anything from 30 mins to 1.5 hours.
I have a 2.7 year old as well so am exhausted, tearful and starting to dread nightimes. At the moment I feed him back to sleep as its easier to do this than wake up DS1 and DH.
I am going back to work in November so need to get him sleeping some more by then !
I am not comfortable with leaving him to cry.
Really grateful for any suggestions, sympathy ! etc etc .....

Should add that he started crawling and sitting himself up in the last couple of weeks.

Ok. This is what I learnt from having twins ... and reading everything I could find on the subject of sleep ... His waking up at this age every two hours is really normal and it is about developing sleep cycles and when he is in deep and light periods of sleep. i bet he wakes at 12pm, 2pm, 4pm, and then from 5am goes back down into a deeper sleep again. What you need to help the baby to do is to be able to go back to sleep on his own when he comes into a light period of sleep, so not needing you to help him back to sleep.

To do this, it is very important that the baby goes to sleep in the room/cot/bed it will wake up again in during the night, so don't, for example let him fall asleep downstairs and put him/her in bed asleep. And definitely don't rock or drive round the neighbourhood to get to sleep. And try not to feed to sleep. (not easy I know).

Routines are really important at bedtime. So bath, milk, story, bedtime song etc. Put in cot when awake, and then potter about. Go in and out the room, put away clothes for quite a while. don't get stuck though sitting next to the cot. You'll never get away!

When the baby wakes up or if he struggles to get to sleep, there is a variation on controlled crying where you go into the room touch the back wall and go out again - and you repeat this initally several times a minute, and eventually leaving longer gaps between being in and out the room. You try not to stimulate the baby by picking up unless your instincts tell you you need to soothe or change nappy. The idea is that you reassure you are still around, but you don't get them up/ give milk etc. You will have to keep going for a few days with this, and there will be crying, but my experience doing this with the twins (admittedly when they were a bit older) was really good. It transformed hellish nights of being woken up 7 times or more.

Best of luck. this phase will pass!

Much much sympathy winging its way in your general direction!

Of course routines are important, but you prob already know much of this given this is your second DC (unless first one was incredibly laid back )

Firstly, what time are his naps? Is there a big gap between am & pm ones?

Many babies benefit from the 2-3-4 (ish) pattern around this age. That is 2 naps, 1st approx 2 hrs after waking, 2nd approx 3hrs after waking and bed 4 hrs after final waking. Obv not to the letter, but basically the gap goes 'shorter', 'bigger' 'biggest'

Secondly, it is better to have the morning nap shorter than the pm nap, so if it looks like he's going to sleep longer than 1.5hrs in the am, I'd (shudder!) wake him. Try to resettle if he wakes after 50mins/1hr in pm nap.

Thirdly - being blw, does he get snacks between meals in addition to bf?
When I started weaning, DS was ebf & we did blw. I also offered snacks mid morning and mid afternoon (rice cakes, fruit, those organic pseudo-crisps etc) which helped him get the hang & fill him up a bit. Admittedly I started spoon loading and by about 8mo I was regularly spooning it in for him, though I still reckon that's baby-led as he actively encouraged it - though that's another thread

Once you are fairly confident he is getting enough food/bf in the day, set a time after which you won't feed. With my DS i would give last bf just before bed 7pm and then would not feed until a wake up after 11pm. Then I wouldn't feed until a wake up after 4am. Wake ups during this time were settled with dummy and patting. Or holding/rocking if escalating. DH helped. in fact he settled quicker with him, likely coz he couldn't smell milk/knew it wasn't going to happen with DH! As weaning progressed he become less enthusiastic about night feeds and now he just had 'booby breakfast' at 6-6.30ish

You see, around the 7mo stage my DS sounds like he was v similar to yours, had sleep all over the place and though not totally fixed, doing the things above has helped no end and now (nearly 10mo) we expect get 5-6, even 7hr stretches from him on a regular basis with relatively easy settles when he does have a wake (generally dummy & reposition as he's got himself tangled up in the corner of the cot)

Hope he gives you some decent stretches soon

sazlocks, there are a load of us in a similar situation on this thread. We're working on ideas for naps from Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth and for night wakings from the No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley. It's not my thread, but I'm sure you'd be welcome to drop in.

I've had some improvement with my now 8 m.o. DS: you can read about it here.

Thanks all - some good ideas and things to think about here. I am really grateful for the detail in your posts.
I always follow the same routine before bed although he ends up falling asleep on me and then I put him in the cot asleep. I agree that the issue is him not knowing how to self settle when he wakes up in the night.

Our day looks something like this
7 am ish wake up and BF
8 ish breakfast
9 ish feed to sleep
10.30 to 11 ish wake up
12 ish lunch and BF
2- 3ish feed to sleep
4 ish wake up
5 ish BF
6 ish - dinner
7 ish feed to sleep
then the nights are usually wake up s at 11 ish, 1 ish, 3 ish, 5 ish at its worst.

I don't know how much food he is getting and have thought about snacks as well now he seems to be a bit more interested.
Thanks for the links angeldog - will have a look. I have both of those books on my shelf and have flicked through them - am so exhausted that its hard to get to grips with what I need to do !

Thanks

Sazlocks,
i completely understand what you are going thro. I have a 6m old who wakes everytime I put her down as never ever gone to sleep independanyly. Doesnt like pushchair/carseat - screams!!! I cannot do controlled crying, thin I would cry more!!! She even screams when I leave the room, in 6 months the only time I have a little bit of me time is when I shut myself in the loo!!!! Any advice please?? xx

Hello, I've been knocking about the sleep boards for a while and I thought I'd share my recent experience with my nearly 7-month old DD. She's EBF with a bottle at 10pm and we're mainly doing BLW.

She was just as you describe your DS and it was becoming horrendous, truly awful. Bolt awake between every sleep cycle, sometimes impossible to settle for 2+hours.

What we did ...

1. Made sure she could go to sleep on her own - NCSS stuff. Putting her down nearly asleep after feeding / rocking then patting, shushing, music etc until she dropped off. Picking her up and cuddling if she got upset, then repeating. We did this from 5-months or so and it did work but ever so slowly.

2. Once she was rolling and pushing herself up happily we put her down on her front. She could sort of burrow and wriggle into the mattress and it helped her drop off.

3. Made sure she wasn't hungry. After 6 months was up we did a week or so of settling without food every time she woke - realised she def wasn't hungry as took no longer than if we'd been feeding her. Also it meant that for the first time in ages she was properly hungry at 6/7-ish which helped start the day better.

4. Sorry, this is the last thing you want to hear but my two highly respected kind older friends of lovely happy children told me to do it ... We did two nights of CC. I was dead set against it, had never wanted to, thought it was horrible when people I knew left littler ones to cry BUT here's what happened.

Night One - she wakes at 0130-ish. I go and hide in kitchen with radio on. I am a coward. DH goes and gives her a cuddle and pops her back in cot. She cries. He goes in 2 mins later and gives her a pat and reassures her. She cries. He goes back 4 mins later. She cries. Then - 30 secs later she is sound asleep. Not hiccupy, sad asleep, just asleep until 0630.

Night Two - she wakes at same time. Repeat. But she is asleep after 2 minutes.

Nights Three to Fifteen (last night) - she sleeps all night with a dreamfeed at 1030ish. This even when from days 5-10 she had her first cold. She is also about 10,000 times more cheerful in the day.

I would never have persevered if the crying had been horrendous and would never have left her alone for more than 5 mins at a time - but I feel sick when I think that we could still be up half the night with her knackered and upset when this has been like a magic wand.

The thing that was stopping my trying CC was ME and how upset I'd feel, when actually it has been the best thing for her.

Sorry for mega-long post, but your post really struck a chord ...

and ps, that was as awful lot of suggesting without much sympathy - I really really feel for you. I found it so bloody difficult and I didn't even have a toddler to take care of. I hope things get better for you one way or another

thank you - really helpful suggestions and experience. I just can't get my head round CC but its on the list of things to try if all else fails and it sounds like it worked really well for you.

We had a better night last night as I made sure he had good naps yesterday (don't know if that helped but think it may have). He went down by 8 and woke up twice in the night to feed before getting up for the day at 7. Strangely enough I also put him down to sleep on his front for the first time and that may have helped. He has been much more cheerful today as have I !
I have started writing down all his naps, sleep times and feed times so I can use the No Cry Sleep Solution book - I hope it will help.