5 month wakes up after 30 mins

[twiggy77]

My 5 month son has always been a bad sleeper, he has no idea how to settle himself to sleep and wakes up frequently. I thought it would get better as he got older but it hasn't and i am tired and exasperated.

During the day he usually sleeps in his pushchair but will wake up after 30 mins. He has about three naps of this length a day.

At night I feed him to sleep then put him into his carseat asleep. He will wake up about 10-30 mins later. Occassionally it seems to be wind that has woken him, but most of the time it doesn't seem to be any reason. I try to rock him to sleep but sometimes he needs another feed to go off. After this he sometimes sleeps for a couple hours, on other days he will keep waking every 30 mins when I give up, go to bed and take him in with me. He then wakes up every hour, and I BF him. I do this lying down so I can sleep to.

I don't want to cosleep but it is the only way I can get enough sleep.

Does anybody else have a baby like this, and what did you do??

May I ask why he sleeps in the carseat at night rather than a cot? Could be that he isn't particularly comfortable in there? My DS (now 7mo) used to be happy sleeping in more confined spaces when he was little but by that age he definitely slept best in the cot where he had more space to spread out..

Yes, I would go with the pram/carseat in this instance not facilitating good sleep.

My DS1 slept until he was 3 in the pram for naps - but rarely did more than an hour.

DS2 will sleep in pram/carseat for 30 minutes exactly - but in the cot at home for 1.5 hours. To be fair I have had to spend time getting him to sleep in the cot and it involved a day of crying before naps, but now he sleeps much better, and (the main plus) I can get stuff done whilst he naps!

If his naps are too short, he will be overtired at bedtime and this will make him wake constantly rather than settle down, so perhaps work on them.

My DS2 (26 weeks) settles really easily if he has napped well no more less than 1.5 hours before bed, anything over 2.5 hours and he fights it!

We got into the habit of putting him in the car seat when he had colic. That seems to be much better now, but I can't get him to settle in the cot. Also in the car seat we can rock him when he wakes after a few minutes.

However I haven't tried to put him in his cot for about a month, so I will try again to see if he prefers it in there now. I would definitly prefer him in there!

jazzandh when you say it involved a day of crying to get your DS2 to nap in the cot did you do CC?

I have done CC with DS a couple of times with no success, I can't let him cry for more than an hour and a half

Try to get a copy of "no cry sleep solution" by Elizabeth Pantley. I too was a reluctant co-sleeper and fed as much as you through the night. I have introduced some of the suggestions and now manage to keep my dd in her cot till 5 am from 19:30, and only feed once between 2/3 am. It has taken me a month but boy do I feel better having a nice cuppa and read before bed alone! Even when she does wake frequently i feel I can cope as I have had a few hours to myself. What's best about the book is the way it explains why your baby is doing what it does and offers ways to move forward. E.g. When I put dd down asleep I cuddle her over the bars of the cot for 10 mins to war
the cot/blankets so that when I pull away slowly she doesn't wake as easy as she did. But you need to put baby down awake to get results, but this is easier said than done! I hope this helps. Hugs.

I had been feeding Ds to sleep for every nap and bedtime. Poor chap was flooded with milk! I really felt I had little option, as his naps in the pram were insufficient. So I decided he would have to sleep in his cot.

I started actually by putting him in his cot just to play for a few minutes, with some toys, while I had a shower, or put washing away - just to get him used to it.

I was prepared to do PUPD as not a fan of conytrolled crying etc. He was extremely cross when I put him in his cot, so I tried PUPD and he would cry before I even got him back on the mattress - it just wound him up more, as did attempting to soothe him.

So I sat in his room fed him to sleepy and let him cry it out - it took about 40 minutes until he was exhausted, which was very hard - but I was there, and shushed him etc...

The next nap he cried for 10 minutes and after that he has generally been fine. I can now put him in the cot, he has a protest shout, then settles to sleep.

Bedtime, I started putting him down sleepy, but did this on a day where he was not overtired at bedtime, so he had time to settle.

Thanks nov75 and jazzandh:)

I have bought a copy of " no cry sleep solution", I have been trying to read it while pushing my DS back and forth in his pushchair to get him to sleep. It definitely makes sense, I'm going to start on Monday and fingers crossed something will change.

I'm also going to give it a go with getting him to nap in his cot the way jazzandh described, i will give that a go tomorrow while my husband is here to look after my DD. We are also going swimming so hopefully that will tire him out :) .