Baby crying during night but still asleep

[Seekingadviceplz]

My baby is 7 months old and since maybe 4.5 months cries in his sleep throughout the night. He will go from asleep to wailing suddenly, sometimes rolling about or with his head up but eyes are closed. When this started he did not have a dummy, although I reintroduced the dummy since as bedtimes were a nightmare. Therefore I don't think it is necessarily because he wants his dummy reinserted, however when I reinsert the dummy he settles straight away (although sometimes a minute later he will cry again etc).
He can reinsert his dummy during the day when awake, however this is not helpful since his eyes are firmly closed when he cries at night (plus I think it would be too dark for him to be able to do it anyway).

Just wondering if anyone has had this experience and figured out what the issue was? Sometimes (rarely) it will happen once a night, sometimes 7 or 8 times....

This is overtired.

It's not to do with the dummy directly, although inconsistent dummy use won't be helping. You would be better fully using the dummy for all sleep times.

Dummy helps baby get into a deep sleep, which is why baby settles with it. Once baby is in a deep sleep the dummy serves no purpose, baby's mouth/jaw goes limp (as do all muscles when in a deep sleep) and the dummy can and should drop from baby's mouth.

If baby is failing to remain in a deep sleep, that's because baby is over tired. An over tired baby sleeps in a very restless manner: mostly light sleep, waking easily at the slightest thing and struggling to stay asleep. It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle - bad sleep leads to worse sleep which leads to even worse sleep.

The opposite is also true, so good sleep means baby will more easily fall asleep, will get into a deeper sleep more easily and quicker and stay in a deeper sleep for longer. So good sleep leads to better sleep.

In your case the dummy is helping baby get to sleep, which is it's purpose. But the dummy cannot overcome the physiology of an over tired baby struggling to sleep deeply.

To solve the overtiredness, start off with 3 days of "Emergency Measures". By this I mean cancel everything in your diary, let the washing pile up and plan for easy to prepare meals. Focus totally on Any Sleep, Any How.

For these three days dont think about sleep habits, concentrate on helping baby overcome sleep deprivation so that you can reverse the over-tired spiral downwards that you are in. Plan for long drives in the daytime to help baby sleep. Or walk miles, Or bounce baby perpetually in the bouncer, or hold and rock baby continuously.

Awake windows want to be never longer than double nap length and never more than 2h. So if nap length is 30 mins then no more than 60 mins to next being sleep, 45 minute naps mean 90min awake window. If nap lengths are over 1h, don't go more than 2h awake.

Awake time wants to include settling time. So if you have 30 minute naps and it takes you 20 minutes to settle baby to sleep then start this no more than 40 minutes after waking.

Calories are also important at this age. Maintain pre-weaning milk intake and also include you 3 solid meals a day. So include at least one form of calories in every awake time - either a solids meal, a milk feed or both.

Get out of the overtired cycle and baby will settle into a deeper sleep more easily at night.

Thank you so much for your detailed reply!! Since I reintroduced the dummy I have used it consistently at all sleep times, however what you say makes sense as the dummy is often still in his mouth after 30 minutes so obviously he is not in a deep sleep. He had previously started taking longer naps but this has stopped again recently unless I intervene when he stirs at 30 minutes and successfully manage to extend it.
I will take your advice and reduce time between naps this week and try get him to sleep as much as possible, although I'm sceptical I can get him to nap after only an hour!!

For a baby who is not overtired, what kind of nap schedule would you recommend at 7/8 months?

I have a 7.5 month old and there is no way I'd be able to get her to nap after 1hr. Up until recently she was a terrible sleeper but we used controlled crying (not something I enjoyed but both me and her were terribly sleep deprived) and her sleep is now much better. Her rough schedule is:

7am - wake
7.30am - breakfast followed by milk (bf) or vice versa, depends when I get up as her dad gives her breakfast.
9.30-10am - morning nap
11am - milk
11.30am - lunch
12.30pm - lunch nap. She sometimes does 30 minutes, sometimes 1-1.5hrs.
Milk when she wakes.
Another 30 minute nap at 3pm if she only had 30 minutes at lunch.
If she had a longer nap at lunch, I'll give her a 10 minute power nap in her pram at about 4ish.
She'll have another bf sometime in the afternoon.
5.15pm - dinner
6.30pm - milk
6.40-7pm - bath, story and song.
7pm - bed. She's usually asleep by 7.15.

Her daytime naps aren't great, but her overnight sleep now is pretty good and she just wakes for a couple of feeds which I'm perfectly happy with. She will occasionally cry out in the night whilst still asleep, and it's always either at the end of a sleep cycle or half way through a cycle, so definitely to do with coming into lighter sleep.

@Seekingadviceplz

Thank you so much for your detailed reply!! Since I reintroduced the dummy I have used it consistently at all sleep times, however what you say makes sense as the dummy is often still in his mouth after 30 minutes so obviously he is not in a deep sleep. He had previously started taking longer naps but this has stopped again recently unless I intervene when he stirs at 30 minutes and successfully manage to extend it. I will take your advice and reduce time between naps this week and try get him to sleep as much as possible, although I'm sceptical I can get him to nap after only an hour!!

For a baby who is not overtired, what kind of nap schedule would you recommend at 7/8 months?

Aid be expecting naps to have extended by 7/8 months old. Once you're getting 90 minute plus naps consistently, not ubusisl to fall into a 3-nap day routine, usually with around 2h awake time For example: 7am wake (2h awale window) 9-10.30 nap (2h awake window) 12.30-2pm nap (2h awake window) 4-4.30/5pm nap (2-3h awake window) 7-8pm bed.

The more structured 3 nap days don't fall into place until daytime sleep cycles link. If you're usually getting 1h or less naps then best instead to be flexible with awake windows according to how much sleep baby has had. Rather than a ridged to-the-clock routine.

A decent approximation would be awake window around double nap length, give or take 15 minutes. It means that when naps are short, you have more naps per day as a way to avoid over-tiredness. With practice naps get longer and so awake times do too.

Hi BirdIsland-thank you for sharing your routine, mine is actually quite similar to yours, although I always ensure a 30 minute nap in around 4.30 which I usually do in the pram too. I really don't feel cc is the answer here, as he rarely actually wakes fully more than once during the night and I will feed him if he does which I don't mind, its this restless sleep that's the issue, him crying and rolling around in his sleep (which would lead to waking up fully if I left him) that I need to resolve!

Babysleepteacher - I attempted your suggestion but unfortunately didn't go to plan today, what would usually take 5 minutes after our naptime routine to settle to sleep took much longer, actually for his third nap I spent 50 mins trying to get him to sleep at home, white noise, rocking, boob, it only resulted in frustration and tears...so took him out in the pram and it took an hour (!) of walking before he fell asleep at 5pm, so obviously no time for a 4th nap and therefore he didn't get any more sleep than usual in the end. Will try again tomorrow if I can bear it!

I know this is quite an old post now but I just wondered if you ever got to the bottom of the sleep crying?

my 7 month old son is exactly the same and it’s the first time I’ve found anything similar to his sleep crying online. He wakes fully twice a night for a feed but will also roll around sleep crying and if I put the dummy in he will usually go back into a deep sleep. Sometimes it’s only once a night other times it’s every hour. I wondered if it’s teething pain that causing his to stir more frequently but honestly I have no idea!

id be so grateful to know if you found a way to help your LO??

Hi there! Wow, reading this is a real throwback. Totally forgot I ever posted it. And what's funny is I have another baby now who is exactly 7 months!!
Never exactly got to the bottom of it but things got better with time and by 8 or 9 months he was sleeping through without me doing anything. There is no way I would have been able to get him (or my current baby) to sleep as advised above. My memory tells he dropped to 2 naps around 7 months. With my current baby the same thing happens during the night...I think it's just normal to be honest? He naps well during the day (I don't worry about him napping in cot, he naps in the pram, my arms etc).
My one real piece of advice is to not obsess about sleep like I did with my first and to go with the path of least resistance. I cosleep now as necessary during the night. If reinserting the dummy doesn't work I just take him in, stick him on the boob and back to sleep we go. Sorry I'm not more helpful!

Thank you so much for getting back to me, that’s really reassuring! We sound quite similar in terms of our approach to naps and currently bed sharing so I can get as much sleep as possible.

fingers crossed it’s all a phase and passes soon! Xxx

What I learnt from my first is that everything is truly a phase 😂 I'm sure they will grow out of it, hopefully soon. Being woken up multiple times is frustrating but as long as you don't have to stay awake long I find it's much more manageable X