6 months - hit me with your sleep schedules and woes!

[PocketRocket12]

Hey mamas.

FTM, first time poster but frequent post lurker 👀

My little boy is 6 months old next week. Until about a month ago he had woken every 2 hours at night since the day he was born and only napped on me (begrudgingly). With some gentle practice, he now falls asleep independently happily in his cot for naps and bedtime most of the time, hurrah!

However, routines and schedules are pretty much non existent and ever changing. It’s kind of like playing Russian roulette with sleep only all the chambers are loaded and you’re also on fire...

One day he takes 4 short naps and needs bedtime at 5.30pm, other days he takes 3 longer naps and it’s a 7pm bedtime. At night he can wake once (praise be!!!) or five times (Russian roulette analogy here!) and can wake for the day anytime between 4am and 5.30am. The only regular thing about our routine is that his awake window is approx. 1hr45 (short but I think that’s due to his general lack of sleep at night).

Scary sleep people are insisting that he should be on some regular nap schedule by now by the clock with exactly the same bedtime at night and similar wake time, or at least taking the same sort of length naps each day. It’s made me question myself and whether there’s more I should be doing? Scary sleep people also insist he should be on 3/4 hours of day sleep so I frantically jump about like a mad thing doing everything possible to extend his last nap on a short nap day despite being told this should be the shortest nap of the day.

My question is... what are your little ones sleep habits at this age? What do I believe? Is this just totally normal for a 6 month old and I should just continue letting him take long/short naps until he figures out his rhythm? When you haven’t slept properly in nearly 6 months you become some sort of sleep obsessed dictator...

(If your child has slept through the night since they were four days old I genuinely think you’re a rock star but please don’t tell me that on this thread lest I drown myself in a tub of Sauvignon Blanc).

@FATEdestiny thanks - we gave up after, admittedly, not tons of trying with the bouncy chair - because she tends to get wound up in it after more than about five mins. But that was probably before I knew to target the right wake windows so I will try again. God, being on the sofa with a cuppa and a boxset would be the dream! My partner calculated that I walked 16km the other day in the quest for naps! (Sadly no dummy, we spent weeks trying, I wonder if it's to do with her twice-snipped tongue tie crap suck).

This is really interesting @FATEdestiny. I do all of DS's naps in the pram either out and about or parked in the play room so I can catch him at the 30min mark and gently rock the pram so he doesn't wake. He will then go on to do another 1.5 hours or so without stirring. Are you saying if I continue this then I could eventually transfer this to the cot?

@EL1984 we have the same issue in that DS self settles and links sleep cycles overnight but can not do it in his cot for naps in the day. Interesting your sleep consultant was stumped by this too.

Are you saying if I continue this then I could eventually transfer this to the cot?

Yep.

You've got to be consistantly watching him though. Resettle before he actually wakes up. Then it will (over time) need less effort to resettle until ultimately no resettle is needed through to 90 minutes plus.

If you wait until he wakes and then try to resettle, you have a very low chance of a resettle. Resettle before waking is the key - that point from moving from deep sleep to light sleep. It's usually a grimace, face screw up or slight murmur. Any sort of cry or eyes open is too late.

Only once you don't need to resettle do you Then move to cot naps.

The mistake too many new parents make is trying to run before they walk. They go for cot naps far too soon, when re-settles are still needed. To quote the OP: Cot resettle are (largely) impossible. I wouldn't even bother myself.

Thank you @FATEdestiny that is so helpful. Gives me confidence my pram naps aren't a bad thing. Im always hovering over the pram at the 30 minute mark to ensure he doesn't wake so I will continue with this until he no longer stirs. This has made me feel so much better, thank you for sharing!

You are very welcome

@EL1984 We do a lot of resettling mid nap sleep cycles but never without picking baby up. We tend to do it for one nap a day (the second one), and focus on encouraging baby to sleep for longer in the hope that naturally he will start to do it himself but in short term he gets one good nap in a day. It has varying success but actually has worked more often than not and for last three days baby has slept longer for this nap naturally. This is probably a complete coincidence though. Basically I sit outside nursery at around 30 mins, wait for the first peep, quietly go into nursery pick up and rock baby back to sleep. Commit to doing this for 20 mins and if he doesn’t go back to sleep after that time call time and try again the next day.

Also how is everyone getting longer naps in pram? My little one will do 20 mins naps in motion at best - pram, along, car, anything! If there’s a slight distraction when he stirs then he absolutely will not go back to sleep. I’m so lucky he will nap in his cot but it is a bit like being chained to the house as he naps every 2 hours at the moment. Teething medication helped hugely overnight by the way! Only two wakes at 11pm for a feed and again at 3am for a feed and half an hour of chatting and rolling about in his cot at 4am ( I left him to it and he actually went back to sleep by himself! Madness!) x

@PocketRocket12 we're generally not, so it's not just you. 99% of the time she does 30-35 mins, she's done longer with me exactly twice. I guess the motion isn't soothing enough and the noise is potentially disturbing. I wish we had the option of cot naps as currently there is literally no way to get her to take a long nap and most days she doesn't, but I totally feel you on being chained to the house - would not be a fan of that either!

Having said that, yesterday we had to take her to house viewings in the car, which meant her nap schedule was on paper a total shitshow and not enough time, but we put her to bed half an hour early as she was clearly exhausted and she slept 5 hrs for the first stretch for the first time in weeks! So I feel like my take-home lesson there is if you have stuff you want to do just do it, sleep schedule be damned and maybe it won't be as bad as you think. Having declined several offers to go for a walk with fellow mums last week because the timings were off and the sound of my voice definitely stops her getting a second sleep cycle, only to be rewarded with mostly short naps anyway, I will definitely be prioritising my sanity over her sleep hygiene/schedule a bit more this week, and going for a couple of lovely walks with friends whether she sleeps or not!

@PocketRocket12 also, this doesn't solve the problem of not enough sleep but I've started taking the sling with me when I take her out in the pram with friends. That way if she wakes up while I'm still out I can just pop her in the sling - she enjoys looking around and it postpones the screaming by at least 30 mins!

I guess you've probably tried everything you can think of but I used white noise and a snooze shade with my nosey first born to get a decent length pram nap. Might be worth a try if you haven't already?

@soggycornflakes - thankyou so much for the reminder! I did do this (with a shawl) a while back and it just seemed to make her very angry, but that was when she generally hated the pram. Just tried again and, while it has not yet yielded any longer naps, she does go to sleep a lot faster - so worth persisting with I reckon!

Also, slightly off topic, but has anyone in here been through the six month growth spurt (called sleep regression in some quarters)? Last couple of nights she's been up every 1-2 hrs with many long feeds - it's made our previous (ongoing) four month regression experience feel like a walk in the park, so I'm REALLY hoping it's short-lived. Did anyone go through a phase like this/if so how long did it last? (She's 24 weeks, so not yet 6 months but close)

Hi ladies, how is everyone doing. We are a mixed bag, since I've started the diet restrictions he has been sleeping better for naps (has also coincided with him flipping over and sleeping on his tummy so could be that?). But night time is still all over the show. We have had a couple of good nights recently where he has slept in 4 hour stretches, one night close to five! But then mostly still wakes every 2 - 3 hrs and more frequently past 4am :( He just gets up and starts trying to crawl around the cot.
I've been having a read and I think we might be in the 8 month sleep regression as he has started fighting to fall asleep by himself.
Uuugghhhhh

Hi @Etherealhedgehog! I just wanted to say that we definitely had this. He had just turned 6 months and we had about a week when his appetite soared, his sleep was disrupted but he wouldn’t settle via any other method than milk and he was genuinely feeding for ages (reminded me of newborn cluster feeding days!) He started solids around the same time so there was a lot going on but it only lasted a week for us. Sending hugs!

We’ve turned a corner with sleep. He naturally started sleeping for longer for one of his naps so I felt maybe he was developmentally ready to sleep better at night. I spent days and days and days feeding him to sleepy but not to sleep and putting him down in his cot slightly awake for bedtime when I figured his sleep pressure was the most (as apposed to naps). Sometimes this went amazing and other times he protested as if I were leaving him outside for the wolves (I picked him up and rocked him then) but gradually... he got there. It’s still hit and miss but he goes down in his cot awake every night now (very drowsy and milk drunk though) and his night sleep is so much better. 5/6 hour stretches solidly with maybe 1 or max 2 feeds at night. We’ve had this for four nights now so I’m HOPING that it’s not a fluke.

I’ve started doing this for naps aswell now (harder...) so hopefully the consistency work. His last nap of the day is always an absolute hum dinger so that’s a sling nap for the rest of time until he drops it.

Hope everyone is okay. X

@PocketRocket12 sounds like you're nailing it!! Congratulations 👏
For the day naps, the first one seems to be the easiest to get self settling. I don't think any sleep books/programmes expect self settling for the last one. From what I've read they say it is a difficult nap and to do contact or in the pram if you need to.

@PocketRocket12 - that's good to know, thanks! It actually only lasted a couple of days for us, which seems a lot shorter than most things I read would suggest. My alternate theory is she might have been waking with reflux, as it coincided with a (short-lived) attempt to feed her larger meals less often, and an uptick in sickiness (have now given up on that). Though I guess if it was reflux she wouldn't have wanted to feed that much, so who knows - maybe we just got off lightly!

Good to hear you're turning a corner - feels like some potential light at the end of the tunnel!

@EL1984 still with you on the crazy early mornings - recently I have been able to put her back down at 4am a few times but she will then sleep for one hour max and the day starts at 5 (one extra hour on top of that to bring wake-up to a semi-reasonable time seems like such a little thing to ask!!!) But then on Sunday she woke for a feed at 3.47 and wouldn't go back down after that so 5am can seem reasonable by comparison... My latest theory is maybe she is getting to sleep too late/too overtired by bedtime, so I'm going to experiment with moving bedtime a bit earlier, see if that makes any difference.

I may have spoke too soon! A lot of wakes last night... but we will remain consistent and hopefully it’s just a blip, babies aren’t robots after all.

For those who are more “routine” inclined... is anyone seeing any sort of routine forming with their little one? Or is it all still a bit of a crap shoot?

I’m trying to pay attention as I’ve now got to fit meals in (do you feel like all you’re doing is feeding, playing for about 10 minutes, giving milk and then putting to bed on repeat all day?) and wanted to try and bring a bit of consistency. I know it’s a bit early and 7 months + is meant to be when a more “by the clock” routine emerges but I’d like to feel like I’m not flying by the seat of my pants everyday and actually start trying to fit in social activities gasp when we are able.