7.5 month old DS waking every hour... Am nearly at my wit's end

[Phew96]

7.5 month old DS had previously been sleeping from 7 until 4am then waking for a feed at which point I brought him into our bed until we get up at 6ish.

At about 6.5 months old he got his first tooth through, had a horrible cold and started sitting, crawling and pulling himself up all within a week. His sleep was really disturbed but settled back down to having a least one decent stretch from 7 until midnight then waking every couple of hours from then on.

However, for the past week or so he has been waking every single hour and I can't work out why. Occasionally he wants a feed (he is breastfed) but mostly just has a few comfort sucks and settles back down. I have tried calpol and teething gel in case it's his teeth bit it makes no difference. Sometimes he will settle with his dummy and a cuddle but not very often. He doesn't seem to have wind. He eats really well in the day, plenty of solids and bf every 2-3 hours so I don't think he's hungry every time.

He will typically have two naps in the day of at least 1.5-2 hours so I know he must settle himself during these at some point. The only difference is that he doesn't go in his Grobag for naps.

DH works shifts including nights and I have a 22 month old DD who still wakes at night a fair bit and is usually raring to go by 5.30 so I need more sleep. I'm sure it can't be doing him much good either.

Does anybody have any idea what could be going on or if there is anything I can do at all? Thanks

Hugs, he's possibly overtired - you no doubt completely understand how he feels! You know how horrible it feels to fall asleep when you are exhausted, like it feels like you are kind of drugged, and have to fight it, and if you had the chance (a fine thing I know) you know you would wake up and be unable to get back to sleep. I think it can be like that for those little ones. Then you have to make sure they get enough sleep (about 13 hours every 24 at 7 months IIRC) even if it means you going even further into the depths of insane exhaustion and after about a week they start to sleep better.

HTH

Hi. Sorry you're not getting much sleep. There's a great website www.babysleepanswers.co.uk
I don't usually buy into all these claims to offer a solution but this website has helped me with 2 children to get them both sleeping through the night. My dd2 is 8 mths and now sleeps right through!

Give it a try, they give 1 to 1 online help, and some very sensible advice, and it really does seem to work.

Good luck

P.s you have to pay £10.99 to access the online support and get a copy of the book, but very def worth the money!

whatdoesnt thank you for the link. I will have a look into it. Just out of interest, did you get any advice that was radically different to other sleep training techniques or was it the one to one support that made the difference do you think?

ridgewaylass thank you for the suggestion. He's having two longer naps now instead of one short one in the morning, a longer one at lunchtime and a shorter one late afternoon. I can't pin down if this is when the trouble started but he's definitely edging towards overtired by bedtime

I tried him without the Grobag last night and it didn't make a difference. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will pass soon but I'm fed up of my SIL telling me to do CC

Thank you again for the suggestions and support :)

Hi,

I have exactly the same problem, except that it has been going on in our case since birth.

I, too, am at my wits' end. When our dd was 4 months, we just co-slept all night because it made things a but easier on me. She woke up, I rolled over, she helped herself to my boobs.

It was ok for a while, but not a long-term solution for us, as she still fed every hour and walso wanted to cluster feed for two hours from 2-4, so I was still exhausted.

DD is now 7.5 months.

I have always said I will never do controlled crying, so I consulted a sleep specilaist.

She said to bring the cot back into our room, whcih we did. We then put dd in it at the start of teh night and had to teach her that this was where she slept. This took a while. She cried and we would comfort hrer in the cot - stroking and patting, etc - unless she became very distressed, in which case we would pick her up, calm her and then put her back.

By the third night, she was settling well in the cot, but still waking frequently.

We were also told we needed to break her sleep association - ie breastfeeding to sleep all the time. So I would feed her downstairs before starting bedtime routine.

Bedtime routine is a sleep association, so is her cot, and so is a rabbit that she has only at sleeping times. The rabbit is the only thing she has in the cot and she sucks its ears now to get to sleep.

What I reaslised throughout this is that, despite being 7.5 months, she is still geuinely hunry every three hours. So I also feed her now every three hours.

Anyway, we did this religiously for a week, for herdaytime sleeps and every time she woke up at night. It helped in some ways - ie she went to bed at a sensible time and slept in her cot. Her day sleeps were also improved.

However, she then got ill and that messed it all up.

But she's better now and we've been putting it back into practice. Her day sleeps are rubbish again - she wakes after 40 minutes and it is long, hard and, frankly, depressing work egtting her to go back down, even though I am sure she's exhausted

She also still wakes every hour.

So tonight, very reluctantly, I am resorting to controlled crying. I really, really don't want to, but I am at the limit of my well-being now.

I hope you get yours sorted. Maybe some of the above will be useful for you. Maybe not.

I found the babysleepanswers website good because they give you one to one advice and walk you through it, so to speak, right down to being interested in how many spoons of baby rice baby had for tea!

I recommended them to a friend after my 1st baby, this friend had already paid a sleep consultant without success, but this method really worked for her.

They give options that you're happy with, e.g.if you're not happy with controlled crying, they help and support you with alternatives. The book is really common sense, but if you're anything like me when you're not sleeping the last thing you need is a book of common sense, you need someone to hold your hand and tell you what to do which is what the forum does.

Phew sorry to hear about your sleep disruption. You must be shattered with 2 LOs and disturbed sleep. As you know I can relate to this...
What time are your DS's naps? I wasn't clear from your OP. If as others here suggest, he is overtired, maybe his second nap could be pushed back slightly, or else his bedtime brought forward a little?

There are other techniques to try aside from CC. Pickup/putdown etc. Does he not settle back to sleep until you go in to see him?

Sappholit sorry to hear things have gone downhill for you. I hope you find a solution and thank you for the advice

MM I honestly don't know how you manage three little ones, you must be some kind of superwoman Today DS got up at about 6.45 and had his first nap 9.30-10.20. He had his second nap 1.30-3.00. This is fairly typical of the last week although he sometimes naps for longer in the morning then naps slightly later in the afternoon. He went to bed at 6.40 and has already been awake twice :( DH has tried to settle him but he just gets more and more worked up until I go in.

I'm starting to feel like I'm just getting it all wrong. He feeds on and off all day and night. I try to keep his meals and naps at roughly the same time but it doesn't help.

I've borrowed a copy of GF as I'm considering trying to get him into some sort of routine but I just despaired when I saw she seems to suggest only 3 bf's during the day at his age. I don't even know if it's worth trying as he has so many more than this

I have literally just cut out daytime bfs altogether. She hasn't moaned at all.

We did controlled crying last night. It was nothing like as bad I was expecting. I did five minutes in her room with her, then two outside, then five, then seven adn she was asleep and slept better than she ever has. She didn't get terribly distressed, and I'd promised myself that i wasn't going to stick religiously to timings,and just to go in when I felt she was getting upset. So it hasn't felt brutal at all.

Sappholit I'm happy to hear it went well, fingers crossed for you tonight

Last night I fed DS at bedtime and he was (for once) still awake after his feed. I rocked him until he was sleepy then decided to try and pit him in his cot while he was awake. It started off ok, he spent about 15 minutes crawling round so I just laid him back down when he stood up. Then the crying started. 20 minutes of patting, shushing, PUPD later and he was nearly hysterical. I could hear DD screaming at this point too (DH was putting her to bed). I ended up picking him up and laying him next to me until he went to sleep at 7.30 ish and could hear him sobbing in his sleep over the monitor for ages after. He didn't wake again until 9.30 when I fed him to sleep and put him back down. He ended up cosleeping with me from about 11 and was up on and off all night again. I can't believe he was so upset even though I was with him the whole time

Oh dear!
I think the ideal is to be able to put them down in their cot, awake, without any rocking, dummies, feeding etc. But I bet that seems a million miles away right now.

I know I've mentioned it before, so don't want to bore you / irritate you but on the website I mentioned, they would be really interested in everything you're writing, and would be able to support you so much more than I can... all I could do is give you some of the advice they gave me, but than that wouldn't be specific to your situation. They would give you one to one intense advice til you were happy with DSs sleeping pattern.

With dd1 I waited til she was 9 months before finally admitting defeat and asking for help. Literally within a week we went from her screaming til 2am when finally going to sleep (being rocked), then waking every hour and being fed back to sleep... to her going down at 7pm and sleeping through til 7am. With dd2 I didn't wait so long to ask for help. As I was already a member of the website, I just went back to them for advice. She's 8.5 mths now and has been sleeping from 6.30pm to 6.30am for a few months now.

I really feel for you... I don't think anyone really understands what it's like til they have a baby themselves!

Hope you can find a solution soon.

phew 96 Whilst reading your post I felt like I had written it myself. My DS used to sleep from about 7pm till 4am and then I had to go in to him but he would fall back to sleep pretty quickly. The last week he had been waking every one to two hours and I have no idea what to do.
When I go into him he seems to settle but when I try and sneak out the screaming begins again.
Did you find any help x