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Sleep

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5-month old crying in her sleep at night

1 reply

Stuckinmyownhead · 13/09/2018 06:47

Hi all,

I have a 5-month old baby who was a good sleeper (bottle fed at 9pm, 4am and then up for the day at 6:30/7:00) before hitting the 4-month sleep regression. For 5 weeks, her sleep deteriorated and she was waking every 1-2 hours. We got through that ok and for a week she was sleeping through (fed to sleep at 7:30 and then waking for the day at 6/6:30).

However, for the past 6 nights she has been crying in her sleep several times a night at roughly midnight, 2:30 and 4:00. She has her eyes closed so looks like she’s asleep and she is rolling from side to side and her head is right up at the top of the cot so she has sort of crawled up and can’t go any further. She has recently mastered turning from back to tummy and tummy to back (and does this relentlessly when she’s on her playmat!) so initially I put her to sleep on her back but just let her stay that way if she moves to her tummy. She is also very close to properly crawling (she can use her arms and knees to crawl, but just a few steps at a time). In the night, when she is crying and fidgeting with her eyes closed, I go in and move her down the cot, which sometimes settles her and she goes back to sleep. More often, though, she continues to cry and wriggle around and so I get her up and give her some milk. She only has an ounce or two, though, and suddenly settles into a deeper sleep and I put her down again. This whole process only takes about ten mins, so it’s not too much of a problem, but I don’t know why it’s happening when she had a week of sleeping through completely. Have any of you had experience of this? Could it be that she is mastering crawling so doing it in her sleep and then getting stuck and frustrated?

Many thanks!

OP posts:
FortheloveofJames · 13/09/2018 07:52

Hit the nail on the head with your last statement. Totally normal for developmental milestones to mess with sleep. Babies brain is working in overdrive and they are compelled to practice, even at times we really don’t want them to 😂 when DS started crawling his normal night need at 4/5 am that lasted 10 mins turned into waking at 3 and staying awake untill 5/5.30 because he just wanted to crawl around the cot. Baby sleep isn’t always linear in the first years, it goes up and down with regressions, developmental leaps, teething etc. Do what you need to and it will pass IMO Flowers

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