7month old 11pm bedtime!

[susannaR]

Help! DS2 is nearly 7months old and a terrible sleeper...nothing like DD1 who is 3 and has slept through the night since 6months old..so I have no idea what to do with him 😕
He's EBF but settles to sleep with dummy. He has 2x cot naps per day about 1.5hours each. Some days if he naps in car/pram these naps will only be 40mins and then he might have 3 naps, but it seems to have no impact on night time anyway.
So I do the whole bath, book, milk routine with older sister too and then he settles to sleep in his cot (in my room), with his dummy at 6:30/7pm- Little fuss, sometimes non at all. However, an hour later he wakes and that is it...holy hell breaks loose 😣 so from 8-11pm every evening i am stuck in bedroom as the second I think I've settled him and leave the room he wakes screaming. Tried a bit of CC but after 30mins of 5min checks I figured that's enough and it was unlikely to work??
11pm I feed him again and we all 'go to bed' and he just falls asleep?!! It's like he knows I'm in my bed so it's ok? He will then wake around 2/3am for feed then 6am up for the day. Any suggestions?
DH has just got him up tonight and brought him back downstairs, and feels there's no point putting him to bed and he might as well stay up with us until 11pm 😳 surely not? But I take his point it's a bit ridiculous every evening spent in bedroom 🙁

Sorry for another reply but can you put him in his own bedroom? My son was in our room until we moved in to our house and he's now in his own room in his cot and I think that helped contribute to it all.

We used to do the same where we were living. Bringing him back downstairs with us and having his bottle when we all go to bed around 11!

Hi! Thanks for replying ☺️ That all sounds brilliant! Nice and flexible but it's working well!
Not sure what's happened here really? For about 6 weeks DS has always gone to bed in his own room at about 7ish (dependent on last nap)...then he would feed roughly 10pm, 2am and up for day at 6am. Happy days 😀 But suddenly Out of the blue he decided that he would go to bed at 7ish but then wake an hour later and basically be inconsolable unless I was in the room sitting next to him?! He basically wouldnt settle until I moved him back into our bedroom (in tiny snuzpod 🙈!!) then he would sleep when I went to bed at 10ish?
Anyway I've been trying to add in a 3rd nap and therefore later bedtime but this isn't working...he's far too tired. I think 7/8pm bedtime is ideal!....I've resorted back to original routine today lol! So he's been in bed since 9 (woke at 6)...ill wake him at 10:30 if he doesn't wake them ill aim for afternoon nap at 1ish and bed 7ish x

..not sure why I typed that all out 😂 Think I'm planning in my head? Which is fatal with baby sleep right?!! X

Yes definitely fatal lol. Just go with it and don't be too hard on yourself when it doesn't go to plan. As I say we didn't implement our routine he just got into that himself and I know it now after 2/3 weeks of it so I can plan it and work to it now x

Well best plans and all....woke him at 10:30 from nap and he went back to bed at 1:30 but woke at 2:30 😔 so too long from 2:30 to bedtime so he's currently just fell asleep in swing in kitchen 🙈😂 Aww well...hopefully get him to bed 8 rather than 9 tonight 🙏🏻

Just curious... why wake him from his naps?

Good point 😂 I don't normally but was trying to encourage a 9,12,3 sort of nap routine to get a bedtime of around 7/8. It's backfired tho 😣

Want to offer my sympathies - my 7 month old DS has been doing exactly this for the last 3 nights!

He has 3-4 hours during the day, sometimes on me or in his pram, and is awake by 5pm.

He used to do bed 7-8pm, dream feed around 11, feed 3am and then awake for 7am.

The last few days he has gone down 7-8pm, slept for around 45 mins and then up screaming (or just staring at me!) until 10.30-11 when he has a feed. He then sleeps until 2-3, has a feed and then is sometimes up for the day at 5am!! I am on my knees

He has also started being very clingy and I've stupidly been putting him in bed with me, where funnily enough he sleeps for longer chunks......

He has also started to refuse solids. He used to he so good, I even started a thread on here asking if I was giving him too much food!

He is cutting his second bottom tooth so fingers crossed it will all sort itself out soon. Probably doesn't help that I rock him to sleep......

Sorry, that was very long! Not intended to derail your thread but just saying you're not alone. I swear these babies are part of some sort of experiment on us

Morning! Oh wow so that are like peas in a pod! Identical! How strange?!
Still ongoing same issues here too it's a nytmare isn't it....they say 3 days don't they for new routine?!....this 'new routine' of staying up until 10pm has been going on for over a week here now 😱
Yesterday he had 3 hours in day (2 x 1.5hour cot naps) which fell perfectly with 7pm bedtime....went to bed as usual no probs....45mins later awake and refused to resettle after 30mins of trying so back down stairs again until we went to bed at 10pm 😣 Even then he was hysterical (presumably over tired) and I had to rock him sleep...never had to do that EVER! So it's getting worse here not better 😔
...what to do tho? It's the weirdest thing isn't it??!

I just find the unpredictability of it all a bit stressful, will he stay down? Is it worth getting an early night or will he start screaming in half an hour? Trying to go with the flow but my control freak teacher side finds this hard

Don't want to jinx things but DS had 50mins this morning, 1hr & 45 between 10.30-12.15 and has now gone down again, all in his pram with minimal fuss....If I can get another 1.5hr out of him that sets him up nicely for a 7-7.30pm. We can but hope

It's like living with an evil dictator who speaks a different language!

Lol oh we are so similar!! When I put DS to bed I basically feel like I've got 45mins to tidy the house, make & eat tea and get showered before he's up again screaming the house down 😣
It wouldn't be so bad if once he was down again that was it...but he will also feed 2-3 times during the night as well 😕

Morning...is it morning?! 😳😴
Thanks for replying. Yea I suppose it definitely could be as he has taken to only nursing 1side at a time? However, I offer him boob the hour after he wakes and he just refuses?? Arching back/screaming...it's as if he is just so tired but can't get back to sleep?
We've been on a slippery slope for well over a week now with the resettling getting harder and harder until as predicted last night he actually refused to nurse at bedtime at all and then wouldnt go down 😣
Don't even know what to do now? I've been following the 2-3 hour wake window (3 before bed) as most suggest for his age...but is it not enough?
Yesterday he woke from last nap at 4pm (1.5hr cot nap) so I tried for bed at 7pm...no joy at all. Finally fed and settled at 9pm...which is 5 hours from last wake!! Surely that's far too long?
But then slept 9-12 (fed) 12-3 (fed) 3-6:30

Sounds like he is overtired and is now in a vicious circle - he can't sleep because he's too tired but then just gets more tired.

What I did with my DS yesterday was we had a day at home where I concentrated on getting as much sleep into him as possible. The first sign of tiredness he was put in the pram and pushed until he slept. I then set up a little station where I could sit and watch him while he slept. The first sign of waking and I pushed him again until he went back off.

So yesterday he slept 8am-8.50, 10.30-12.15, 2.30-4.30. I woke him at 4.30pm because I was worried he wouldn't be tired enough come bedtime. He then went down at 8pm and slept until 11pm!! This hasn't happened in days!

He then slept 11.15pm until 3.15am when he woke for a feed. He had trouble going back off because we had some really loud thunder but he went back off about 4.15 and went until 6.30am. So all in all a much better night.

He then went down for his nap today at 8.30am and he is still asleep! I've had to push the pram once to send him back off but fingers crossed he will have a good night again tonight.

Apologies for waffling on and possibly teaching you to suck eggs but have you tried putting him down as soon as he looks tired? Even if it's only an hour after his last nap? And maybe having all naps in something you can move until he is sleeping better. I haven't even attempted naps in the cot. I've also put the parasol up on DSs pram so it limits distraction because at the moment he is into everything!!

Hi susannaR

Stumbled across your post again and wondered how you was getting on with your little boy now? X

My DS is 13 mo now and has had a 6.30/7pm bedtime since he was roughly three months old. I introduced the idea of bedtime at 6/7 weeks but nothing rigid and just sort of put him to bed when he was tired. It went from 9pm down to 6.30 very quickly and he slept for 12-14 hours with no feeds for a good six weeks.

Between 4 and 9 months there was a lot going on, lots of teething, lots of growth spurts and developmental phases which meant he was often up every three hours...but there were the odd few days where he wasn't in pain or growing and he slept through again. He is now back to sleeping through (most nights) but the thing is, I never changed his routine. I let him get on with napping when he needed to during the day, so some months it was two short naps and a long lunch one or two long ones and now he has one long one 1/2pm ish, but I never changed his bedtime because he was still 'ready for bed' between 6-7pm every night in that he was still tired.

The point I'm trying to make in a really long winded pointless anecdote kind of way is... is he teething or having a growth spurt? If when everything was 'normal' he was sleeping well with his original bedtime, is it worth just powering through for another month or so to see if it's teething or growth spurting?

Well....from 4month sleep regression to 7.5months has been pretty torturous if I'm honest 🙈...breast feeding to sleep..co-sleeping ( but didn't want to)..rocking/shushing/multiple dummy inserts/5am wakes/11pm bedtimes.....Think we've had a go at it all 🙄😣
Finally (dare I type it?!) I think we've turned the corner! He went to bed last night at 7pm...woke for feed at 10pm and 4am then slept til 7am (probably shouldn't have fed him at 4am...sort of regretting that coz I had 'night weaned'...but it's just so hot I was a bit worried he might be thirsty) x