Help please! My lovely Ds is gorgeous, but he is wearing me and Dh out. We are getting beyond the point of exhaustion.
Basically he hates sleep. The mere hint that it is time for a nap or bed and he begins screaming. He will sleep after being rocked, but not without crying and getting worked up into a frenzy. It's the same if I try to take him for a walk, put him in the sling or drive him about. He always gets upset. He also wakes from naps after 20 mins and wakes several times during the night.
We've spent fortunes on poddle pod, amby hammock, ergo cocoon, gro bags, swaddle blankets. Nothing helps. We have Ewan the dream sheep, white noise apps aplenty and have tried classical music and lullabies.
We moved him to his own room thinking we might be disturbing him, but it's made no change. We measure temperature religiously, and have blackout blinds. We bought a very expensive matress for his cot in the hope it might help. He also has a wedge as advised by our hv.
We have a bedtime routine of bath, massage, bottle, story, lullaby. But he rarely gets through bath without starting to get worked up. We thought he must be overtired and tried increasing the number of daytime naps and bringing bed time forward but it makes zero difference.
He still feeds in the night which is fine, but he's up all hours either crying or laughing. He's been seen by GP and Paediatrician and he is being treated successfully for reflux, but both Drs agree his behaviour towards sleep isn't linked as it doesn't matter how he is lying or being held.
Can anyone please help us improve things for him? We try our best to make sleep time calm and to make him feel secure but he just fights and fights. As I type I can hear poor Dh desperately trying to put him to bed. This situation is really getting us down and we know it's bad for baby as he's grizzling all the time because he's tired! If anyone has any ideas to help relax him or help him get to sleep without crying so much I would be so grateful.