Help with 5 month old sleep please

[GiraffeTigerElephant]

Hi everyone

Looking for some help with improving the sleep of my 5 month old DD please.

Tried to keep this succinct but it's still super long, sorry.

Feeds to sleep, although sometimes rocked instead.
Four month sleep regression terrible. Was sleeping 10pm til around 4-6am for a feed then back to sleep. Now wakes every 45 mins - 2 hours at night. Sometimes settles herself with a gentle shh from me, mostly settles when I hold her hand. Occasionally needs milk - once or twice a night, feeds for around 8-10 mins.

Currently attempt an 8-8 schedule - wakes around 6am, wide awake, happy to entertain herself in the cot, doesn't cry for milk although very excited and obviously hungry when offered it. Often poos at this time. Change nappy if required, then feed. Eventually goes back to sleep around 7:00 - 07:15 and wakes around 07:45 - 08:00. Bed time doesn't always fall around 8pm, it can take until 9pm to get her to sleep.

No set schedule during the day - try to preempt tiredness and get her settled for a nap before she becomes overtired. This is often only around an hour after waking. She can be really cranky before a nap and it can take me up to 45 mins to get her to sleep.

She naps in day for between 35 and 45 mins a time. Usually 4 times a day. Can sometimes resettle her at the 'lunch time' nap and she might sleep another 35 - 60 mins but not regularly.

At night - feeds to sleep then held for 10 mins then put into cot.
During day - sleeps on me as wakes too easily when I try to transfer to cot. Have tried to put her in cot as soon as she falls asleep, this wakes her slightly, she opens her eyes and I shh her back to sleep. However she then stirs and resettles (within a couple of seconds) every minute or so, and won't stay asleep longer than about 15 mins, when she properly wakes and needs me to intervene with cuddles or milk to get her back to sleep.

I'd like to get her to sleep in the cot for naps. I know I need to put her in awake and let her learn to self settle but I fear that she's already so overtired generally that she just won't be able to do it on her own and she'll be awake for ages just getting more and more worked up and tired and it'll be even harder to get her to sleep.

Am beginning to wonder if I should treat the 6am wake up as her morning start instead of 8am as she seems quite happy when she wakes up. Then the first sleep until 8am would be her first nap. I'd then need to bring bedtime forward to around 6pm.

Also, a friend has recommended a sleep program she used. This program suggests that the wake window should be two hours and that babies go through a natural dip in energy levels after around an hour awake, so pretty much to ignore the sleep cues and keep them up closer to the two hours otherwise you're putting them down when they are UNDERtired and they'll wake early from their nap and wake during the night. So now I don't know if she's over or under tired!! Maybe she's undertired and I'm causing her sleep issues by trying to get her to sleep too early?

I just don't know what to do or where to start. And because of all this I'm massively exhausted and feel like I'm going to have some kind of breakdown as I can't nap when baby naps! Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Please help!

Am beginning to wonder if I should treat the 6am wake up as her morning start instead of 8am as she seems quite happy when she wakes up. Then the first sleep until 8am would be her first nap

I would treat 6am as wake up, if baby is clearly ready for the day then. But that doesn't mean bedtime will need to be earlier - at this age bedtime needs to be flexible depending on naps that day.

I absolutely disagree with the notion your baby might be undertired and needs longer awake. Given baby is waking so frequently through the night and also has short daytime naps, sounds like baby has got into a chronically overtired downward spiral. The more overtired baby is, the more fretful, unsettled and light her sleep will become, which in turn leads to even worse sleep and so it cycles downwards. Whereas a well rested baby is more likely to have deeper sleep, so wake less easily and so it keeps improving.

You need to actively work on getting out of the downward overtried cycle before you can realistically work on good sleep hygiene in the long term. I would suggest that for the next 3 weeks or so, you focus on: Any sleep, any how.

I would suggest moving daytime naps into something you can move. I favour a basic bouncy chair (that you can sit at your feet as youre on the sofa and bounce with your foot), but a pram/pushchair works just as well.

It is very important that baby goes to sleep where they stay asleep. So either you'll have to keep baby in your arms to sleep after rocking, or get baby to go to sleep in the bouncer and stay there for the sleep. This also then means that you can resettle baby the moment you see the first sign of leaving a deep sleep, by re-starting the bouncing (or rocking)

Awake time window wants to be around about double nap length. So 35-45 min naps mean an awake window of 65-90 minutes. This awake time should also include the time it takes to settle baby to sleep. So if it takes 30 mins to get baby to sleep you might need to start settling after only half an hour awake time.

I would suggest a cyclic routine to get you out of this over tired cycle, something like:

Wake > Feed > 30-45 min awake time on the floor (maximum, sooner if crying or clingy) > Top up feed > Into bouncer with dummy > Rhythmic bouncing at even tempo and active dummy sucking until asleep, just be relentless about it > asleep > resettle at first stirring > Wake... and repeat the whole cycle again and again.

Hi @BabySleepTeacherUK

Thank you for taking the time to reply with such detailed advice. I really appreciate it.

I do have a bouncy chair, but it's more of a reclined seat than one which is more flat, if that makes sense. Is that suitable to use or should I get a more reclined/lying down one? And when you say to be relentless about the bouncing... Do you mean to just keep bouncing and bouncing until she falls asleep even if it takes two hours for example? Can she end up sleeping too much in the day? Or should I just let her sleep for as long as she needs and as many naps as she needs at this point?

She usually rejects a dummy but I keep trying and she seems to be getting more used to it and sucking it for longer before spitting it out so I'll keep trying.

Really hope I can fix this soon!

Thanks again for your help.

It depends on the angle of recline.

As long as sleep is supervised (which all naps should be under 6 months anyway) then baby can sleep in it. An incline can often help with things like wind and reflux because it helps that baby's head is higher than belly. But too steep becomes a SIDS risk because baby can slump and block airway.

If your bouncer is a basic z-frame one, you can often physically push down the metal frame to flatten the Z, if you see what I mean. Ours always got more flatter with use, because baby's weight and consistent use flattened down the frame.

Keep going with the dummy - it is worth it.

And yes, being relentless about it basically means not questioning yourself when you know baby needs a nap.

When you've previously been dealing with an overtired baby who's got used to being awake too long between naps, it's easy to just give up on a nap. Have the confidence to know baby needs a nap, so start settling and just keep on going without giving up on it.

That means making sure baby is actively sucking the dummy (so don't leave it just limply sat in the mouth, baby should be actively sucking it), set yourself up on the sofa (TV remote, your phone, cuppa) with the baby in the bouncer at your feet. Make sure baby is not hungry, has been winded and has had the right awake window - then just be completely relentless.

Set an even tempo for bouncing, not too vigorously but keep at an even speed. Bounce with your foot and apart from making sure that baby is actively sucking the dummy you can largely ignore baby and just keep bouncing. Keep on going until asleep.

Once you see baby's eyes drooping, keep your bouncing going but start to reduce the tempo. Slow down and slow how vigorously your bouncing. Keep going for a good 10 mins (if baby is over tired, keep going right through the nap but under normal circumstances slow and stop bouncing about 10 mins after dropping to sleep).

Then keep an eye on baby. At the very first slight movement (might just be eyes screwing up, or small movement), dummy back in and restart bouncing to try to extend the nap.

Hi, I'm still learning with a similar aged baby!

We do use the Huckleberry app though, the free version. It works out your babies 'sweetspot' nap times and so far it has been spot on for us.

We do 3 or 4 naps per day depending on the length of them. I also try and wake baby at 7am for the day if not already awake!

I would also treat the 6 am as the wake up time. If that was my baby his 'sweetspot' nap time would then be around 7:45am for the first nap of the day. We would then typically get 1-2 hour nap xx

@BabySleepTeacherUK thanks for the further response and advice. Interestingly, the Health Visitor finally called me back this morning after I called them last week for advice. She told me to try to keep DD awake for four hours at a time during the day as that will help her sleep longer at night.... I questioned it as it goes against absolutely everything I've read so far but she said that's the advice they give. I won't be trying it.

@bookish83 thanks for your reply. I've started using huckleberry too and it is quite good. DD does get tired long before her sweetspots but by the time she has fallen asleep it's not far off. One problem we are having at the moment is that she seems to like to fill her nappy just as she's getting sleepy. So the nappy change wakes her up and we have to start the process again. Does your LO settle on their own for naps? I wish I'd had all this knowledge and advice months ago!

OP

I know! I had no idea about any of this. LO has been a decent sleeper though does wake a bit more since he turned 4 months old. It varies in the night!

He has always slept in arms. So doesn't
need rocking or movement but I cuddle for all naps and honestly still love it... though I do think soon I need to try different! For night time I set him down asleep

We use white noise and sometimes he uses a dummy at the start of a sleep. He only needs it for a few mins and then spits out.

There are times he just falls asleep though usually past his 'sweetspot' and just konks
out.

However sleeps fine in a car or pram, and used to in the sling when I wore!

I love this newborn infant stage especially as lockdown means more time at home. So I am not in a rush to change things just yet!

@GiraffeTigerElephant - I know exactly how you feel; I’m in the same situation but with a 12 week old.
I’ve just started to get him to sleep of his own volition in his Snuzpod at night but this morning (day 2) he would absolutely not self settle back at 5am after a feed. I was gutted.
Haven’t even attempted naps yet (he’s on me at the moment and I really need that to change).
I’ve tried really hard to get him to sleep with the pat shush rock etc but sometimes if he’s overtired, the only thing that comforts him is boob/food.
I don’t know where to start and keep swaying between over and under tired...until he had an overtired meltdown this morning that was nearly the end of me!
He’s napping far too long in the day (according to the internet) so I’m starting to think there’s something up...