6 months sleep gone terrible - what am I doing wrong?

[splendide]

I'm a bit desperate here. Sleep has been on and off but mostly normal/good till about a week ago. DS was sleeping 7-4 or so usually with one resettle in that time and then feeding then sleeping till 7.

It's all gone horrific. Up every hour or more and nothing seems to work to get him off again. Even feeding lying down in my bed (my fail safe last resort before) didn't do it last night.

He has a dummy, could that be part of the problem? I wondered about teeth but calpol hasn't helped. Im so miserable and worried about him.

I would go with teething and I found calpol didn't help with that at all. Try Nurofen, helped much more and Dr recommended it over calpol for teething.

Its not usual to have unsettled nights/weeks every now and again. Could be any number of reasons, you may never know. But short spells of poor sleep can happen for a long time to come.

When my 5 year old is poorly, he sleeps badly and usually ends up in bed with us. Then needs 'training' out of this when he's better.

Please try to lower your expectations splendide. Sleep going tits up does happen, but it is just a passing phase that will change back and quickly as it started.

Short term coping strategies (like baby in with you for the short term to get through difficult patches) are what is needed here, rather than changing anything.

Same here - she's 6 months on Tuesday and last 2 weeks have been awful. After waking every hour a couple of times I've moved her to big cot and she's got better.
We seem to be in a phase of 2 x night feeds not 1 but I'm putting it down to her growing & not having started weaning yet.

I'm hoping that since she's been a good sleeper up to now it'll come back eventually. I posted something similar last week & it seems to be a common problem.

Good luck!

Thanks all, I guess I need to just get through this then. It's so hard to control the anxiety isn't it? I feel like I've broken the baby!

Sounds like teething to me and agree with pp that ibuprofen seems much more effective for my ds. Lots of and repetition of this will pass!

Even my 3.5 year old still has the occasional sleeping blip. He catches up the next day. He had one the other night. Keep doing what you're doing, he'll be fine.

Same here - my DD will be 6 months on Friday and she is just sleeping horribly at the moment. She was never a great sleeper and was in a pattern of waking around 11, then 2/3am, then 5am anyway but then she settled a little better when I started putting her in her own room 3 weeks ago. She even slept one night from 7-4am! That was the best she ever did.

Now we're back to the 12, 3 and 5am wake-ups. The worst thing is that now nothing works to get her back to sleep, as you say. She used to just feed or be rocked back to sleep or if that failed, I'd co-sleep with her in my bed clearing it of pillows, duvet etc. Now even that doesn't work I have no idea where to go from here. I just don't want a repeat of last night ever again where she was awake from midnight until 3am off and on and nothing would get her back to sleep. Awful... like the newborn days all over again....

Last night was worse again. Sleep at 7 then woke a 8.30, 9.30, 10.00 (stayed awake till midnight), 1.30, 3.30, 5 (stayed awake an hour) and then up at 7. I think it might actually kill me.

When you say woke, what is it that is happening during each of these wake ups?

Aside from the ones where you said he stayed awake, what happens during the other wake ups? How long is he awake? How do you settle him?

What time(s) did you feed last night?

The other wakes, he settled quickly with a dummy. Awake maybe 5 mins or less. I fed him at 10.30 (breast then when that didn't calm him, formula) and 5am (breast). I basically feed him if he's awake longer than a few minutes usually. I didn't feed him soon enough at 10 maybe, just didn't think he could be hungry so early. For the last couple of months he's been feeding once (breast) at between 3 and 5 am then going back to sleep.

You've said he's in a cot next to you, so this is just a case of leaning an arm into the cot and putting the dummy in his mouth? This shouldn't be reason for you to significantly wake up. This sounds like more of an insomnia issue for you, rather than any significant issues with your sons sleep.

Can you do things to make it easier for you to sleep? I have two suggestions:

• Remove, or turn around your alarm clock so that you cannot see the time in the night.

• Have a means to quickly and easily find the dummy without opening your eyes. We have a ribbon sewn onto the chest of the sleeping bag, which I can locate by sweeping my arm over baby's chest and the dummy is at the end of this ribbon.

The only time you need to be actually waking up properly is for the feed. All the rest can be done in a half-asleep haze. Have you tried an eye mask and ear plugs for night times? I can still hear my DD next to me when she wakes with ear plugs in, but they generally dull down the sounds. Ear plus and eye mask make getting back to sleep much quicker and easier for me.

You mentioned previously about him rolling now and that causing wake-ups. We used a tightly tucked in sheet get through that phase, until baby can reliably roll both ways.

Also given that he is now 6 months, try increasing his milk calories through the daytime. Not necessarily more solids, he also needs milk.

You're right I think a lot of it is an anxiety/ insomnia issue. It's actually very helpful to have it framed that way. I honestly lie there thinking he's going to be ill and damaged by the broken sleep and that it's all my fault.

I read something else you wrote on another thread about how you try to settle your daughter briefly then just feed her. That was really helpful as well, I think I was trying to avoid giving him a bottle at night as I was trying to hang onto the last of the breastfeeding. Very silly. I'm going to take plenty of formula to bed tonight and dispense it freely.

Thanks for the advice as always!

Just another thought - my daughter was very impressed with how accurate the 'wonder weeks' info was in terms of baby being unsettled/poor sleeping /different responses etc- it helped her not worry quite so much (her pfb! ) when things got her worried