My baby has been a terrible sleeper since the 4 month sleep regression (he woke at least every hour for more than 3 months).
We did some gentle sleep training at 7ish months (shush pat/pupd) and got him sleeping in his cot in his room and for longer stretches. Before this I was co sleeping and it really really didn’t work for us, as he was latched on the whole night suckling and neither of us got any sleep.
Since then we’ve had glimmers of hope (a few nights here and there of only 1 wake up/ 1 night of sleeping through).
However, with a succession of colds and teething and learning to crawl etc he is often up every two hours still. Obviously he can self settle as he can join sleep cycles, but won’t at these times.
I have insomnia and can’t sleep when he sleeps - every time I go to sleep I get woken up and this has been happening for so long I can’t get myself back to sleep anymore. I’m surviving off an average of 2-3 hours of broken sleep a night.
This week he’s been worse than ever (waking at least every two hours, fully awake from 4-6am, lots of standing in the cot crying).
Other potentially relevant info:
- naps on me or in pram only. Hysterical about napping in cot. This is making me feel like even more of a failure and means I really don’t get any time to myself. If I try to ‘work on’ cot naps he just sleeps for no time at all in day and this makes the nights worse
- tried strict routine and it did nothing. He does one things for 3/4/5 days - seeming to fall into line with a routine - then will completely change it for no obvious reason. Eg he’ll do 4 days of 1.5 hour lunch time naps at the same time, then the next day will only sleep for 45 mins at a different time and will do this for another few days before switching to something else. So I can also never make proper plans in day as I know I’ll have a baby sleeping on me but not when or for how long. (This is driving me crazy.)
- at the moment we are therefore just roughly following a 2/3/4 pattern plus watching for tiredness cues. He has a solid bedtime routine and goes to bed at roughly the same time every night with no fuss (fed to sleep and put in cot)
- eating some solids (but maybe not enough, don’t know) 3x day. Is heavy
- ebf on demand. Has usually 1-3 feeds a night but don’t think he really needs any/more than 1
- on waking at night is now usually left to grizzle / only attended to if becomes distressed. Recently though is sitting/standing in cot howling almost immediately
- has terrible separation anxiety, although I haven’t left him for more than a few mins his whole waking life. No one else can even hold him or he howls
I can’t cope anymore. I’m so frustrated by my complete failure to parent him successfully to sleep. I’m lying in bed at night thinking about how to kill myself as I can’t see a way out of this. I slept terribly when I was pregnant and have basically given up hope of ever sleeping again. My marriage is going down the drain and I have to go back to work soon.
I’m willing to get a sleep consultant/night nanny/do whatever to fix this as it is ruining my life but too frazzled to decide what to do. The sound of him crying makes my soul hurt but he’s crying a lot at night already so I’d be open to more sleep training - but he seems untrainable at the moment. He will just cry endlessly and the sound is making me hurt myself. I’m so worried that the lack of sleep is scarring him developmentally and I feel so guilty that he’s so unhappy at night. I always believed in attachment parenting and that things would be ok if I threw love at him but despite 9 months of me doing absolutely everything for him and nothing at all for myself they aren’t ok.
I think I’ve read the whole internet and I just can’t see the woods from the trees anymore. I feel like the worst mother with the worst sleeping 9 month old in the world.
Please could someone tell me what to do.