Why won't my baby sleep? Is he in pain?

[JacqueslePeacock]

My DS is nearly 8 months. Since 4 months he has been an awful sleeper, and appears to be getting worse. Ater about 10pm he wakes at least every hour, often as frequently as every 5-10 minutes. Sometimes he will only sleep with a hand on him doing low-level jiggling, and wakes up if it is removed.

He will often go back to sleep after night wakings with patting and jiggling, so I don't think the problem is hunger. Anyway, I usually breastfeed him about 3 times in the night when he won't settle any other way. My concern is WHY is he waking so frequently? Is he in pain? He wakes with a big moan each time, and often moans in his sleep. He seems to have a lot of wind, and farts a lot in the night, but I'm not sure if that's what's waking him.

Any ideas anyone? Pretty please? We are so desperate for some sleep.

Hi, can you post his normal daily sleep routine. My DS was the same and at 7 months a friend recognised the symptoms of over tiredness (her son was the same) and we had it sorted in no time. Might be barking up the wrong tree but worth a shot!

Well I've JUST managed to get him to sleep now at 8.15pm after trying since 6pm (tried to put him down an hour early as he missed his late afternoon nap) so he had been up for 6 hours in total!! If that's not over-tired, I don't know what is! I'd say over-tiredness is definitely a factor, but could it really cause all these night wakings?

Anyway, his usual sleep routine is roughly:

7am wake up
9am-10am nap (1 hour)
12.30-2pm nap (1 hour 30)
4/4.30-4.30/5pm nap (30 min)
7pm bed

It's a strain to keep him up for 2 hours in the morning and sometimes he goes back down by 8.30am, esp if it's been a really rough night. He has missed the late afternoon nap a few times recently too.

Oh please do say it is over-tiredness - I love the sound of "we had it sorted in no time"!

Sounds exactly like my DS who is also approaching 8 months - will be watching this thread with interest! We have a similar sleep routine though DS seems to be dropping the late afternoon nap of his own accord. Seriously considering some controlled crying though hate the thought of it. Anyway - I feel for you!

We are going through the same in this house. I started a similar thread and somebody pointed me in the direction of the 8/9/10 month sleep regression.
Google this, makes a lot of sense.

Also, you mention that third nap was missed. Do you think that maybe they're trying to drop it themself?

Dd recently stopped having 3 naps and just has two now. By 7pm she is v ready to go down.

Doesn't stop her waking up all thorough the night though doing circus tricks

Hi, no advice here but we are also in the same boat with DS nearly 8 months.

Frequent night wakings, naps all over the place, wanting to comfort feed to sleep (occasionally will settle for a cuddle and sshh/pat).

We also have teething in the mix so I find it hard to be consistent with any type of sleep training, no matter how gentle.

We started doing gradual retreat (see nectarina's thread) and it did start working well- but with sleep regression/teething/crawling attempts it has gone a bit haywire!

Thanks for all the replies. I did consider 8-9 month sleep regression, but his sleep has been like this for nearly 4 months so I'm not sure I can pin it on that! I have also tried doing Gradual Withdrawal, but can't help thinking it's for babies who stay asleep once they're down, IYSWIM. With DS, it works to get him to go down, but he wakes up again shortly after, and repeats throughout the night.

I am definitely thinking over tiredness is contributing. I calculate he had about 8-9 hours instead of 12 last night, when you factor in all the wakings. I wish I knew what to do about it - but it's heartening to know we're not the only ones!

sigh I typed out a great long reply earlier on my iphone and mumsnet went down so I lost it all. Basically, your routine looks great but I do think he may be overtired from how you describe him and even if I'm wrong my suggestion won't hurt. I think your naps are spot on but to try and combat the suspected OT I would put him to bed at 6 for the next few nights. Don't be tempted to compromise with 6.30, it needs to be 6.

I found that when my LO was overtired this fixed things quickly (within 3 nights) and although I feared he would wake earlier in the morning this never happens, usually he wakes later. But even if he wakes at the same time, he's had an extra hour at the start of the night so ends up having 11 hours instead of 10 IYSWIM?

At 7 months I have to admit we did CC because for me it was that or antidepressants (for me not the baby :o). This resulted in 10 hour stretches of sleep as opposed to him waking every hour and a half and only settling with a feed. I was exhausted and desperate. Every so often he regresses (teething, illnesses etc.) but luckily we haven't had to do CC since 7 months (and I hasten to add he never properly cried, the first night he moaned for 45 minutes and that was the worst of it so we were very lucky).

So for me it has been a mixture of controlled crying and early nights that have helped immensely with our sleep. He now sleeps 10-11 hours at night and my only complaint is that we start our days somewhere between 4.30 and 5am but I just have to deal with that by having early nights.

Anyeway, gone a bit off topic now but with regards to my suggestion it has to be worth a try and if I'm wrong and it doesn't help then I think it will at least rule out overtiredness. HTH!

Sounds a bit similar to my daughter, only she's 4.5 months. She slept all night until she was 3 months old and then BAM. Last night was particularly horrid.

I'd always tried not to let her sleep after 5pm otherwise she wouldn't go to bed at 7ish (when our son goes to bed) but the way her naps work mean she's always ready for her next nap at about 5pm! Today I decided to let her sleep at 5 and have a later bed time if necessary, and typically she fell asleep at 4! I'm expecting her to wake up at any time, but we'll see..

I've thought that she can't get into a deep sleep because she's so overtired and worked up she's just dozing, but for the life of me I've not been able to get her to have extra naps. I've ALWAYS said that sleep begets sleep so if this later nap works I'll be jumping for joy!

Right, I have tried for the last 2 nights putting him to bed at 6pm as suggested, instead of at 7pm. The problem is that in response he has woken up for the day between 5 and 5.30am! Which means even less buggering sleep for me . Does this mean it ISN'T overtiredness?

Going back to what TinyDiamond said about dropping the 3rd nap, I've started experimenting today with a two-nap routine. No clue if this will help things but I am getting seriously desperate.

My ds wakes at 5.30am but sleeps all the way through so I deal with it. Has he slept through these past few nights? If so then I'd definitely stick with it as he may wake later soon. If he's still waking upset and frequently, then I'm not sure what to suggest

OP - I would say at 8 months you need to ditch that afternoon nap. However I also think that without it, he will be awake for too long between his lunchtime nap & BT since his current lunchtime nap is just 1.5hrs. IMHO I think his whole routine may need a wee tweak.

There are 2 routes you could take - 1) is the more structured routine 2) is a little more flexible - all depends on whether you are prepared/happy to wake your baby from naps or not.

Very gradually push his morning nap later by 5 mins every 3 days, but continue to wake him at 10am. Keep putting him down for his lunchtime nap at the same time i.e. 12.30. Do this until his morning nap is at 9.15am & hold for a couple of weeks & see what effect this has on his lunchtime nap. Ideally his lunchtime nap should start to extend. You need to keep pushing out & trimming the morning nap until his lunchtime nap is 2hrs long. You may find morning nap needs to go as short as 30mins 9.30-10am in order for this to happen. Once you get the longer 2hr lunchtime nap, you will be able to completely drop the afternoon catnap.

2. if you don't like waking your baby from naps, then I would completely drop the afternoon catnap, but instead offer an early bedtime of 6/6.30pm. Only do the early BT on days when you don't have a catnap - if you do it when he's had a CN then he'll wake early, as you already found. By giving him an early bedtime this will prevent him getting overtired & he should hopefully still wake at his usual time in the morning. Then I would probably let him continue to take his 1hr morning nap, but gradually push his afternoon nap to start at around 1pm & he will hopefully sleep for 2hrs. This is the 2/3/4 routine (nap 2hrs after waking, next nap 3hrs after waking from first nap & bedtime 4hrs after waking from second nap).

I followed 2) with my LO at this sort of age (similar to BW approach) but have to say I did find at 10/11 months that even a 1hr morning nap would cause early waking & so I had to do approach 1) (a-la-GF) & trim his morning nap hard & it really did work.

HTH.x

Slept through, Vix??? Ha ha ha ha! If only! He woke at least every hour and a half, unfortunately (which was still actually a bit of an improvement) and then woke for the day about 5.20! Thanks for the suggestion though! I think you are right, actually - and that the earlier bed time WOULD help if the naps were not so late in the day, as Omama mentions. Lots to think about, but now I need to go and try to get an hour's sleep...