5.5 month old- crap night sleep...HELP

[Fedfedfedup]

Hi all

FTM mum here. Sooo very long story- DD has never been an easy baby. First few months we were figuring out her reflux and CMPA etc- she would get horrendous wind, explosive poops etc and was so so difficult to put to sleep because of the discomfort she was in. Thankfully things turned around DRASTICALLY once I cut dairy from my diet (clockwork routine, settling herself to sleep!!!).........until her first set of jabs! Everything went to not- sleep and stomach, no idea what happened but it took a good 6-8 weeks for her to get back to normal. The night sleep was the last thing to improve and just when she finally started doing 4 hr stretches in her cot at night, second set of jabs happened and same thing- routine just went completely out of the window, tummy issues came back, etc. I waited it out but this time she didn't really "recover", ended up seeing paeds etc as her tummy issues were just horrendous. Finally we have some tummy improvement (still not perfect) after taking a chance on some pricey probiotics (medications that paeds kept upping the dose of seemed to worsen things), so I was hoping her sleep would also improve. Here's what's happening now:

During the day, she sleeps perfectly in her cot. She is a fairly reliable napper, will nap for 2 hrs+ if we let her sometimes (I try not to). Rarely wakes up within the hour. But as soon as it's bedtime, it's like a switch flicks in her brain and things just get crazy. She will just be so irritable but also kind of hyper- I'll try to put her to sleep, try to feed, desperately try to comfort her but it's like she doesn't know what she wants! I can't really explain it any other way. I've tried earlier bedtime, later bedtime, swaddle, no swaddle, different temperatures.....I'm so exhausted that now I just take her to bed with me every night and let her feed to sleep (doesn't always work though, can take a few attempts and distractions to get her to calm down enough to doze off on the boob). She will stir and thrash about LOTS and wake very frequently. My sleep is crap at the moment...so is hers. I wonder if she naps so well in the day because she's getting such rubbish sleep at night?

Anyone experienced anything similar? Her CMPA is under control but I did notice that since her last set of jabs she's been suuuper congested and is constantly rubbing her eyes. During the day she is quite whiny when she is awake, can't really leave her for long before whatever is annoying her causes her to melt down. Not sure what's going on but I'm just trying to figure out what suddenly happens to her at night! She honestly becomes a different baby.

My son had CMPA so I know what you're going through.

However, are you saying she's 5.5 months old and naps less than 2 hours a day????!!!! My 22 month old naps longer than that!!!!!

At 5.5 months my son was having 3 naps a day. He woke between 7-7:30 and would have a morning nap of 45-60 mins at around 9am (I would wake him from this nap), a lunch nap for up to 3 hours (but we would try for a MINIMUM for 1.5hrs) then a cat nap in the afternoon if lunch nap was shorter than 2h. But he always slept 2.5-3h so we mostly dropped the car nap around 5 months. He was having an average of 4h day sleep at that age, then 12hrs + at night.

It sounds as though she's desperately overtired! The eye rubbing and irritability during the day, and by the time it gets to bedtime she's so wiped out and overtired that it's impossible to get her to sleep, then she wakes again soon after and it's a viscous cycle.

Day naps feed into night sleep remember

Sorry I meant at a time- she has 3 naps most days which can be 1 to 2hrs long

Apologies, in that case my response differs slightly.

I would try to stick to a routine and if you're aiming for a 7pm bedtime then try to arrange naps by letting her have two long naps and cut out the 3rd if she has had long enough already. We did the lunch nap 11:45-12-3ish and cut the afternoon cat nap, then bed at 7. Late feed at 11pm and then in an ideal world obviously sleeping until 7.

I know you said she self settles. Does she have a dummy? It sounds like she potentially just needs a bit of sleep training at bedtime, we have had to do this a few times since we originally sleep trained, after my son had been poorly or teething we always gave extra cuddles etc at bedtime based on what he needed, then he would often want to continue this once he was better. If you're bringing her into your bed, she's old enough at almost 6m to want to continue sleeping in your bed so my advice would be to be firm and ensure she's sleeping in her own bed. Did you sleep train her initially?

No sleep training previously and I'm kind of reluctant to do it. She no longer self settles- hasn't done since the jabs which were in mid December! It's crazy how it all just went to pot overnight D:

I know this sounds random but on another thread someone mentioned the possibility of worms...I'm going to be checking her nappies even more thoroughly than usual this morning haha

😂😂 I mean the chances of it being worms is slim to none. It's pretty obviously because she can't self settle, so she's relying on you to get her to sleep when she's just exhausted from a long day and wants to go to sleep - but she can't on her own. Can I ask why are you against sleep training? Is it because you don't want the crying, because sleep training isn't leaving them to cry. That's controlled crying / cry it out. Sleep training is training them to fall asleep independently without being fed / rocked to sleep and there's a million different ways to do this that don't involve crying. Lucy Wolfe's no cry sleep solution for one.