LO is 6 months old and I’m increasingly realising his sleep is a bit of a disaster and there are a lot of issues. I know that’s expected to some extent at this age but I want to start sorting them out gently ASAP as I go back to work in 2.5 months. So which of the following would you tackle first?
Frequent waking and feeding back to sleep He was great until the 4 month regression hit at 3.5 months, now a ‘good’ night it’s every 2 hours. I’ve fallen in to the habit of breast feeding back to sleep as it was the quickest and easiest method. However I’m at the point where I really want to be reducing it gradually ready to go back to work. He’s (minimally) combifed already so no worries about taking a bottle. I accept that he may well need night feeds at this point but he doesn’t need 5! A lot of the time he’s not actually actively feeding anyway.
Only DH can get him to sleep at bedtime In the middle of the night he feeds to sleep really easily but no longer will at bedtime and will only go to sleep if DH rocks him. If I try and do this after feeding all hell breaks loose. DH will have to start travelling for work soon and I have visions of him just never falling asleep! Also he’s far to big and heavy for me to rock and DH is finding it hard now too. He does however understand day/night really well and knows our routine means bedtime. The current ‘I feed, DH rocks’ usually gets him to sleep pretty quickly (though lighter evenings aren’t helping) .
Moving to own room I don’t really want to move him when I’m still getting up 5 times a night to be honest. However our bedroom is much lighter than his would be and we can’t get it any darker so the lighter evenings are not helping.
Naps vary wildly He’s a very predictable napper in that he has very clear sleepy signals after about 2 hours of awake time. However, sometimes it’s a 20 minute cat nap, sometimes it’s 90 minutes. He naps in his bouncy chair (though I’ve managed to stop bouncing the whole time!) or his pram (wakes if it stops moving). This one bothers me the least - I don’t want to be tied to the house for nap times. Is it ALWAYS the case that they have terrible night sleep if the naps aren’t right?!
So, which of these would you tackle first and how? Or do we try whole hog all at once?! I feel we’ve read ourselves round in circles at this point and now don’t know what to do! Neither of us have much backbone for crying and I think he’s still too little for any kind of CC to be effective anyway? Oh and no cosleeping! That is not for me at all.
We have a vague plan for the frequent night wakings/feeding we might try when he’s 7 months (DH has some time off). Basically I sleep in spare room for a couple of days and DH is on duty. We would decide certain timings he comes straight to me for a feed but other times he would come after DH had tried other methods. Other than that we don’t really know what to do!