Sleep nightmare- 6 month old waking hourly

[Finndod]

Desperate sleep deprived mummy looking for some advice...
My LO is nearly 6 months old and sleep is a complete battle. From the minute he was born, he would not even go down in the cot in hospital, he cried a lot in the first few months so to minimise any more tears most of his day sleeps were on me or dad. Luckily he would go in his Moses at night but was up lots. Gradually this was getting better, especially at the start of the night but then 4 month sleep regression hit and boom since then it was been getting gradually worse. He is breastfed to sleep and/or shooshed in arms. Our present situation/issues are:

1. Day naps are hit or miss (aim for 3 naps per day, after 1.5-2.5 hours awake time/rubbing eyes etc)-maximum time of sleep is 45 mins (often wakes up within 10 mins & have to feed/rock again, mainly sleeps on mum but sometimes risk putting in buggy- hit or miss whether works)
2. Bedtime- long process (same routine every night, bath/story 6.30, upstairs for 7pm- cluster feeds/ falls asleep, try to put him down, wakes, feeds again, shooshed again- usually until about 9pm after many attempts goes down on cot.
3. During night- can be up every hour, sometimes get a 2 or 3 hour slot, tried leaving him but babbles/gets hyper then cries and even harder to settle. Sometime happy being rocked by dad, sometime just wants breast (probably for comfort most of the time), back in cot and sometimes can take 2-6 attempts as wakes within few minutes. Some nights won't settle back in cot so take in to co-sleep but usually that just makes for quicker settling but still only get 1-2 hours. (Tried feeding lying down but can't get the hang of it). Early morning worse from 3pm onwards and often resort to taking LO in bed and sleeping in my arms (but then I am staying awake as too frightened he nestles into me and suffocated). Usually get up for the day around 8-9am.

So as you can see from this lengthy story I am frazzled and can't really sleep through day either. Tried him with bottle this week but not really loving it. Won't take a dummy. Going to cranial Osteopath next week. Been advised by HV to try controlled crying and teach LO to self settle (which I really didn't want to do) but if it will work I'll give anything a go...anyone think this may work? Any other advice much appreciated. Thanks

Hi! Just to give you some hope, your situation sounds very similar to ours - DS is 7 months old and until last week was up 1 - 2 hourly overnight and was hard to settle at bedtime in the same way as yours - falls asleep initially but then wakes and takes a couple of hours to go back to sleep. I also mostly feed to sleep and was reluctant to stop this or do any kind of controlled crying.

It had been like this for a couple of months, then last weekend it was like a switch flipped, and we've now had a week of 5 or 6 hour stretches overnight, every night. The only thing I did was make sure he was having a longer nap in the afternoon than in the morning, which was an attempt to address the long bedtimes, but I'm not sure whether this actually had any bearing on the length of sleep overnight. I'm inclined to think the change in his sleep was just developmental.

Bedtimes can still be a bit of a long process, but I've found that if I hold him for a good hour or so after he initially falls asleep, he'll then go in the cot without waking. This is obviously less than ideal, but better than the 2+ hour struggle it was before.

Sorry I don't have any actual advice, other than solidarity with how awful the sleep deprivation is, and a bit of hope that things might suddenly change without you having to go down the CC route, if you don't want to.

Thanks for replying. How did u get your baby to sleep longer in aft? No matter what I do, when he is awake that's it . Really don't want to do controlled crying but feeling like running out of options xx

If I hold him for a nap he tends to sleep for longer than in the cot/pram - then when he stirs I just offer him boob and he usually settles again. The longer naps are definitely only a recent thing though, up until a few weeks ago he would only nap for 45 mins. I've not tried it but I've heard people doing wake to sleep, so you wake your baby around 30 minutes into a nap, then when they go back to sleep, they start a new sleep cycle. Might be worth a go? Really hope things change for you soon!

Yeah I usually hold baby to sleep too as he either wakes instantly or within short space if put him down and quicker to resettle if in arms and like you give him boob and he sometimes goes back to sleep. Sometimes he will be sooking for ages then come off and sleep for 45 mins or sometimes just 10 mins as he has already technically been sleeping whilst sooking. Can I ask when your LO feeds...as mine only really feeds when falling asleep to nap, during nap or when wakes from nap. He hardly ever just feeds and stays awake, always based around sleep which worries me too.

Yeah we're the same with feeding! To the point where, if he falls asleep in the pram or car, I can forget that he needs a feed as I'm so used to him being full when he wakes up! If he does feed in between naps it's never for very long. I think it's pretty normal for breastfed babies to have that association between feeding and sleeping