Settling back to sleep now taking an hour

[Eminybob]

DS is 7mo and has always woken 1-2 times per night. I will always bf him back to sleep which was a 10 min job.

Over the last couple of weeks it has started taking longer and longer, sometimes up to an hour. He'll just suckle and suckle and if I try to unlatch when I think he's fallen asleep he'll keep rooting and then get cross and wake up.
And when he does go off, it's a nightmare getting him back in the cot without waking him.

He won't self settle, although he does when I put him down at bed time.

It seems to be harder the closer to morning it is.

Any advice appreciated. Thanks.

Bumping for those who have cracked this sleep thing and therefore aren't necessarily awake at 4am

Watching with interest!

Sometimes they do this and its a sign that the feed is actually waking them up too much and they don't really need it anymore. I would say that would be more likely if your DC was 9 or 10 months ish though. So other possibilities are its a growth spurt (try upping the solids and daytime feeds) or he needs the comfort for some reason. Could be teeth or he could be cold and wants the warmth of staying close to you. Try calpol, extra blankets, hot water bottle to warm the cot before he goes back in. The early morning thing is a bit of a red herring as that is most babies most shallow sleep so any slight issue is more obvious then.

Presuming you've tried the old pantley pull-off by the way? The fact that he self settles when he first goes down suggests its not a sucky thing though.

I agree with everything cakeoff said above.

I'm reading "He won't self settle" and I'm thinking yes, he can self settle, just perhaps not in the way you want. Your son appears to want to suck as a means to self-settle. This is the most common means babies I know use to self-settle.

Sucking to self-settle generally takes two forms - breastfeeding or dummy.

I am pro-dummy, other people are not. Your son is showing you quite clearly that his preferable way to get to sleep is sucking. So I say give him a dummy.

Breastfeed, put into cot (que grumbling) then insert dummy. Hold in place until he 'gets' that he can suck on it. Then he can get into that peaceful suckling to sleep, but whilst in his cot so that when he falls into a deep sleep he does not need to be disturbed to be moved.

Dummies take much perseverance, so don't expect him to like it straight away. My DD took 7 weeks to accept hers. But boy, was it worth it!

Ah you see I did try a dummy, for the reasons above, but he pulled it out, looked at it for a bit then started chewing the sides/handle/anything but the dummy bit.

I suppose i thought it's because he is too old to introduce a dummy now but I might try again and persevere. It would be great not to have to sit there for hours on end while he uses me as a human dummy!

I have heard of the pantly pull off but don't know much about it as this has only been an issue for a couple of weeks. I'll google it. I'll also try the other stuff, temperature, teething etc. someone else mentioned growth spurt to me as well, and I have noticed he's been taking more milk during the day. He's BLW'd so it's a bit harder to increase solids.

He's also become a lot more active the last couple of weeks, he's commando crawling and spends forever zipping about the place so I suppose he needs to eat more to fuel that?

7 months is a bit old to be introducing a dummy and there is a chance he won't have it because of that.

The side/handle chewing suggests teething and is a common way babies handle their dummy when teething and so wanting something to chomp on (rather than suck). They can be duel purpose though, and be sucked sometimes and chewed other times.

The dummy is the least distressing and easiest of all the sleep training methods, so would always be my first choice (unless you are quite happy to feed to sleep for the foreseeable).

Other things he could suck: thumb, fingers, muslin, teddy, toy.

If you can't get him to accept something else to suck, then you'll be looking at the more stressful sleep training methods like gradual withdrawal, shush pat, pick up put down, controlled crying, cry it out etc etc etc.

Ok so I need a plan for tomorrow night.

Tonight has been a nightmare.

He woke at 2, wouldn't unlatch after feeding back to sleep at all, finally after trying a dummy (wouldn't have it) and rocking (eyes wide open staring at me) and back to feeding, he went back down at 3.30.

Then woke up again at 5 and here we are. Got as far as the cot at 5.30 but he woke up before I even got him all the way in. In desperation I put him down awake but content and went back to bed. But soon enough he was crying so I've gone back in.

Currently he's suckling but eyes are open.

I'm just exhausted. The last 2 nights have been similar but since 3am. I would honestly rather go back to newborn days where he was waking more often but at least went back down quickly.

So I need a plan for tonight. I'm so reluctant to sleep train, so my thoughts are:

A bottle when he wakes up rather than bf (he has a bottle before bed so this won't be new to him) to break the non stop suckling habit.

Or no feeding at all, just rocking, or shush-pat, PUPD (not convinced this will work tbh plus a have a bad back so standing over the cot is going to be a nightmare)

Or something else?

He seems to have fallen asleep now but still suckling.

I'm not a fan of the idea of PUPD (have never used it though, so what do I know?!). But I think it sounds far too over-stimulating to keep on picking up and exhausted baby who just wants to go to sleep.

Any chance you could take one side off the cot and butt it up to your bed? Makes transitioning from co-sleeping / feeding to sleep into cot.

I really, really would recommend you don't start rocking to sleep. This in itself is a major reason people end up on the sleep board, massive rod for your own back. You ideally want your baby to sleep independently of you and without a lot of faffy routine needed to trigger it.

Dummy is by far the least stressful way to achieve this, so I would take that sleeping baby on your nipple and whip out the nipple, replace with dummy quick as a flash and hold it there. And repeat, and repeat, and repeat... until he gets it.

Aside from that, all I can say is good luck. I've not tried any of the sleep training methods that result in an upset baby until 12 months old.