hello,
I'm a first time mum to a beautiful little boy who's 5 months now. He's healthy and lovely in every way. However, his sleep pattern is all over the place :( ..
prior to giving birth I read about training the baby to differentiate between day and night and the naps ..etc
but when he was born he had to stay in the hospital for a while, and when I got to take him home finally I was extremely tired from all the worrying and sleepless night when he was in the hospital. also, I was still worried about him so I basically didn’t sleep at all for the first week when he was at home and all my plans for sleep schedules went out of the window and I would just try to follow his lead.
later I asked my doctor multiple times on how to schedule his sleep but he keeps saying follow his lead and he will eventually sleep all night. and others told me that waking up a baby from sleep is bad for their health.
Now my baby is usually up from midnight to 6 am (with a short nap sometimes) then he sleeps till afternoon wakes up for feedings and screams to go back to sleep.
I tried to change his schedule once and I woke him up at 7 am (he was sleep since 3 am) and basically kept him awake for 2 hrs and back to sleep for 1.5 hr all day hoping that by night he will be tired and go to sleep for the whole night. however, he kept on waking up every hour and couldn't sleep properly at night which made me feel really bad :(
now I don’t know what to do and how to fix his sleep properly. I know that he is supposed to be up in the morning and napping a few times in the am and then sleep all night. but how can do I effectively change his schedule? do I change it slowly, by waking him up one hour early? or ?
any advice would help