8 month driving me insane.

[EMILYSSTAR]

Hope someone can offer some words of wisdom of advise.

My 8 month old is driving me to dispair.

We have previously coslept as he is EBF and for the last month have been trying to transition him into his own room. He has alway either fed or been held to sleep.

I have been trying putting him down drowsy or awake in hia cot but as soon as we do he screams the house down.

We tried the febur method but he was getting himself into such a state that he was dripping with sweat and giving himself hiccup that we could hear them in the other room.

On the rare occasion he does go to sleep we are only get max 1 hour at a time. He is not linking sleep cycles at all and just gets histerical when he wakens.

I am not expecting him to sleep through the night but a few longer stretches would be great. The lost I have maged is 3 lights in a row where I have persisted with his room and gave in to come back with us as it was ending up I was only get 30 mins sleep at a time.

I should also note I have been using hwite noise and night light and also a ewan the sheep.

I just need some sleep and some adult time as we can't even settle with his sleeps being so short.

We have had. Aube 4 nights where we have managed linger stretches around 5 hours it have done the same the next night and get 30-60min stretches.

Any advise would be much appreciated.

Not a clue, I'm in the same boat with my 5.5 month od, oy sleeps on me and any attempt to not hold him after 6 m results in crying.

Mine does sleep from 11 to 6 though albeit on me but I miss sleeping next to his dad 😔.

Sorry I've not been any help have I, I'm Almost tempted to try cry it out but his crys break my heart when I need to leave him to pee so I know I couldn't do it.

Jesus sorry for typos, cracked screen 😂

I had the same problem with my 5 month old but we managed to break the nursing to sleep using tips from the Lucy Wolfe book. He now mostly goes down in his own cot with a cheek stroke or chest pat.
He still co sleep at night as hes not 6 months yet but naps happily in his cot.
This method is not perfect but seems to be working for us (but not today as teething is ramping up and he is a little grumpopotomous)

So a little update, we moved DS into our bigger spare room as think he was feeling confined in the small box room. With this being the case we stilm have a double bed and his crib next to the bed in the room.

Have manged to get away for feeding to sleep. However some nights I out him down drowsy and can stroke hand and cheek until he drifts off and other nights I put him down and he is suddenly wide awake and won't go to sleep then for hours until cuddled to sleep and then put in his cot.

I have taken to sleeping in the spare room with him while he gets used to this so I can respond quicker when he wakens and doesn't get so worked up and hence goes back down a little easier

We are still generally not linking sleep cycles. The best we have had is one night where we had 3 x 3 hours sleeps. Every bother night is 1-2 hours max mostly one and from first out down sometimes we are lucky if we even get 20minutes.

He just lives to be cuddles when sleeping and in this weather it is unbearable.

If anyone else has any further help / suggestions it would be much appreciated. I would like to get some time back with my DH as at the minute the time we have tea it's bath and bed time and we barely get anytime together on work day. I would love to just be able to put baby down and sit and watch a movie.

It was very much pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking to consider going from feeding to sleep cosleeping to own room self-settling in one jump, without massive, massive amounts of distress.

The first step, as you are doing, wants to be to get baby sleeping in a sidecar cot rather than cosleeping. But that still needs you in a bed next to the cot. So you're doing the right thing now.

I'm not clear is baby is in a crib which is a different thing to the cot he will be in long term? Or if you intend to make the spare room he's in now his own room, or move to the box room later? Basically, you want to set things up as they will stay so that you dont have to make extra, unnecessary changes. So I would suggest using the big cot for baby now, set up as a sidecar cot (by removing one side and wedging it up to your double bed), and call the spare room your sons bedroom (with a double bed in it), rather than thinking youre going to move baby again at a later date.

The idea of the sidecar cot (with the big cot) is that you can physically get your torso into the cot to cuddle baby while baby is on the cot mattress, but extract yourself afterwards.

It is much more prefereable that baby goes to sleep in the cot rather than going to sleep (or nearly to sleep) in your arms then being put down either partially or fully asleep. So putting baby in the sidecar cot fully awake and you physically cuddling close to get him to sleep is better - he's going to sleep on the cot mattress and staying there, not being moved.

Is that something that might work? It's not dis-similar to co-sleeping, but with the added independence of a separate mattress for baby.

If you leap up instantly when baby wakes to comfort him back to sleep, he's never going to learn to link cycles. You have to give him time to work it out, let him have a little shout and a shuffle and see if he can get himself back off to sleep. We usually give DD about 15 minutes (unless she freaks out) and about 90% of the time she manages to go back to sleep by herself.

@BabySleepTeacherUK. Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed response.

In answer some of your questions:

• I am sleeping the tge beg next to his cot but without a side sown as the bed height and cot height are too different unfortunately.
• the room he is in now with the bed and cot will be his roon from now on and he is in his cot not a crib.

It is good to know that we are taking the right steps and it should just take some time.

@SomeoneElseEntirelyNow thanks for your reply. I don't jump instantly whenever he does move however he does go from 0 to hysterical very quickly and if he gets to hysterical it just means it takes longer to get him back to sleep.

the bed height and cot height are too different

Many cots have 3 heights you can place the mattress level at. The top height is set to match standard bed height.

If yours doesn't have adjustable mattress heights like this, might be worth investing in one (second hand?) so you can sidecar it. This is the fastest and easiest route out from cosleeping to independent sleep (that doesn't involve tons of distress).

The problem at the moment is you're creating a potentially more difficult to break sleep association by holding baby in your arms to settle, than you were cosleeping. It's really important that baby learns to go from fully awake to fully asleep in the place they'll stay asleep.

If you have an adjustable height cot but have lowered the mattress height due to baby sitting/standing, might be worth raising again even if just for the short term to teach going from fully awake to asleep on cot matters. It means sleeps in the cot need to be supervised, but just in the shorter term.

The top height is set to match standard bed height

Can't speak for OP, but @Babystepssleeptraining this is unlikely to be safe for an 8m baby, my DD is the same age and is gleefully pulling herself up on the cot bars, if the mattress was that high she'd be able to get up to standing and then take a header to the floor. I think the same would be true of any cot sidecarred to a bed, the sides just aren't high enough for it to be safe.

You can't effectively supervise sleep if you yourself are asleep, this is a dangerous suggestion.

I could argue that a sidecar cot is no more dangerous to cosleeping with a bed guard on the bed - something many parents do without judgment. Hence why I added the bit about needing be in the room with baby, to respond in the way you would when cosleeping.

But I'm not here to argue or convince anyone, just trying to make helpful suggestions for the OP in a way she may not have thought about.

You're right that it's not ideal. Most of parenthood involves navigating being not-perfect and doing your best. Like most aspects of parenthood, we all find a balance that works best for our families.