I can’t go on like this

[User629202]

I am absolutely on my knees with my 6 month old and I can’t find the reserves to go on.

He used to be a great sleeper. He would do 8pm til 7am without waking from 2-4 months. At 4 months he started waking once in the night and then waking early for the day (like between 4 and 5 am).

For the last month he has been waking almost hourly, and after midnight he won’t be put down. Used to sleep happily all night in the snuzpod, now wakes the second you set him down and screams until he is held again. He literally has to be held all night or he screams until he vomits.

He won’t take a dummy. He cannot fall asleep on his own. I am awake from 1 til 6 every day holding him.

I am on my knees. I wish I had never had him. I would walk away tomorrow if it weren’t for the fact that I would feel too guilty leaving my husband to manage. I’m not cut out for motherhood and I regret having a baby more than I’ve ever regretted anything in my life.

I'm not going to be much use to you as I'm awake now because my nearly 3 year old is. I had two shit sleepers so I absolutely feel your pain. It's hell. The only reassurance I can offer is that I got through, you can do it. Are you co sleeping? If not perhaps look up safe co sleeping guidelines and give it some thought? It saved my sanity, even though I was really reluctant initially. Then, has this change in his sleep coincided with weaning? Maybe it's something to do with new foods he is eating?
I'm sorry you're going through this. It's really tough.

Yes I’d also wonder if it was diet related.

I’d start with a gp visit to rule out any underlying cause.

And try co-sleeping to see if that helps. In meantime divide and conquer. You go to bed when he does. DH is in charge until midnight. Then you switch.

Best wishes

OP, so sorry for what you're going through. A baby who doesn't sleep really is one of life's hardest trials. You can check my many many threads about DS1. He is 2.5 now and currently going through a stage of night terrors which is not fun at all as he wakes the whole house up including newborn DS2. So you are not alone there are many of us out there plodding along!

What I will say is and I appreciate it might sound like rubbish to you right now, but I felt/feel a lot better about DS1 sleep struggles when I basically stop thinking about it and try not to let it affect me as much. But this is easier said than done. I have been there with the horrendous nights and the days spent in tears frantically googling trying to make my kid sleep. I have tried almost every suggestion out there going. There have been nights and days where I haven't been able to stop crying and wondering what I was doing wrong. And slowly slowly slowly I tried to just go with the flow, and prepare myself mentally for the interesting night ahead (!) The next day I would feel a lot better mentally and emotionally because I had stopped trying to force a perfected sleep schedule on myself and on a baby. I am not saying everything is perfect, just the other day I had a wobble after a particularly bad night but I have noticed that by constantly worrying about sleep I would feel a lot worse about the situation.

I apologise as I haven't given much practical advice and I am sure other posters will be able to do that. I just wanted to let you know that you are not alone.

We tried to put DS in his own room at 6 months but it was a disaster. Had to bring him back to the side car cot in our room and ended up having to bed share for a few weeks (which we didn't do much before) until he got through the regression. Put him in his own room at around 7 months and he was fine. Just 1 or 2 wake ups and sometimes a full night. I think a lot happens for them developmentally at 6 months so it causes them to suffer separation anxiety and restlessness.

Get your DH to help more.

See your HV or GP. It sounds like you may have some post partum depression although lack of sleep won't be helping your feelings of regret.

@AlexLim

This post has been hidden until the MNHQ team can have a look at it.

Why???

I am so sorry OP⚘

I honestly would look at sleep training - they are not a newborn and have slept well before. This won’t be doing them any favours either. If you can at all afford it and there are any night nannies in your area, use them. A sleep consultant also worth looking at. Share with DH more as PP suggested. Don’t soldier on thinking this is just how it is, it’s crippling being sleep deprived and makes it hard to have the energy to do anything about the root cause.

Also see the GP, you sound understandably depressed and ADs in the short term and /other therapies could help you get through. Sending hugs.

@AlexLim it's not been hidden? Are you even from MNHQ?

Thank you so much for your kindness. I don’t deserve it, I feel so guilty for having these thoughts about him because I love him so much but I just can’t help him through this.

My husband has just taken over so I’m going to try and sleep, but will re-read all the suggestions more thoroughly later. Thank you

I don't know if it will be useful, I'm the sort of person who can cope with things better when I understand them.

So I think you might need a lesson on the physiological changes that happen to baby sleep at around 4 months.

So in the first 3-4 months of baby's life, sleep is passive. As long as all needs are met (calories, warmth, comfort) then baby will sleep. It's like it was in the womb - this period is often called the fourth trimester. At around 4 months old sleep matures. It stops being passive and will never go back to being that.

Sleep develops into an active endeavour - it takes work to get to sleep rather than it being passive. It also develops into sleep cycles, like adult sleep. This is periods of deep sleep and light sleep in repeating cycles. This is new for baby, they were not having cycles of light sleep before. If baby's sleep hygiene is poor then waking up in the light sleep phase of the sleep cycle is easier - which causes frequent night wakes and shorter daytime naps.

Central to good sleep hygiene is to go to sleep where you stay asleep. So if baby goes to sleep in your arms, good sleep hygiene means staying asleep in your arms. If baby is to sleep in the cot, good sleep hygiene means going from awake to asleep in there. It is poor sleep hygiene to go to sleep in your arms and then be put down in the cot already asleep.

That brings me onto settling technique. The way you get baby to sleep becomes of very significant importance post-4-months. You don't mention your settling method - how do you get baby to sleep?

Daytime naps are usually short at this age, 30-45 minutes is normal. Baby will get over tired if there is too long awake between naps. I would aim for 90 minutes awake. That includes settling time, so if it takes you 15 minutes to get baby to sleep (in the cot with dummy) then start doing that 75 minutes after last waking up. This means more naps per day to get better daytime sleep, while naps are short.

Naps lengthen through practice. So for every single nap, try to resettle to help baby link from deep sleep to light sleep back to deep sleep, rather than waking up. To do this you need to sit with baby as he sleeps. Catch him coming out of the deep sleep, before actually waking up. This might show as a small movement - arm or leg moving, face screwing up, shuffling position, this kind of thing. If baby opens eyes or cries then he has actually woken up, so it's too late to resettle.

Try to disturb baby as little as possible when resettling, certainly leave them wherever they are asleep. Try patting or shushing, comfort sucking also helps. Resettles wont be successful every time. Don't worry about this, baby is still learning to deal with sleep cycles. But always try and then it will gradually become more successful. In the mean time while naps are short, keep awake time short to avoid over tiredness.

HTH

@FATEdestiny thank you so much for taking the time to write such a comprehensive reply, I really appreciate it.

Getting him to sleep in the cot is definitely an issue - I have no idea how to establish this. He feeds to sleep or sometimes will be rocked to sleep with a finger to suck. I can’t get him to accept a dummy, though I do keep trying in case it eventually clicks.

I’ve spent the last few weeks ‘habit stacking’ to try and help break the feed to sleep association, so I have lullaby music playing, a comforter for him to hold, and I pat shush him. But none of those things soothe him when he is in the cot awake.

As soon as he is lying in the cot awake he cries, and however much I pat, stroke or talk to him it escalates until he is hysterical. This is true of naps too, though he will also sleep in the buggy if it’s moving.

I have no idea how to get him to fall asleep in the cot - it seems like such an impossible dream at the moment.

Neither of mine ever fell asleep in the cot. I don't say this to discourage you from trying but so you know it's not something that all babies do. I thought it was me, that I was doing something wrong with my first until she went to creche at and they had to rock her to sleep in their rocking chair, she just wasn't a kid who could do it herself. They were very reassuring about this, that some kids just need a bit more help. She's now 4 and goes to bed like a dream, quick kiss, lights out and off she goes. It does get better.

Controlled crying will teach most babies to get to sleep on their own. This then sorts the hourly waking issue as they can get themselves back into their next sleep cycle.

Many MNers are vehemently against CC but in real life most people I know have done it to some extent. We did it and it absolutely saved everyone’s sanity, and safety as I was so tired I’d nearly dropped Dd down the stairs.

If you do decide to do CC I would recommend starting with the naps, not waiting till bedtime. Morning nap is when they are most able to learn to self settle, followed by bedtime. But best not to do CC for any late afternoon nap as it’s harder to get them to self settle then - buggy is a good option for this nap. Then CC at bedtime. This was the approach of our sleep trainer and it worked well for us.

Getting him to sleep in the cot is definitely an issue - I have no idea how to establish this. He feeds to sleep or sometimes will be rocked to sleep with a finger to suck.

Going to sleep in the cot is the basic premise behind the entire sleep training industry. There are (literally) dozens of different ways to get there, but all have the same premise of getting baby to go to sleep in the cot.

To begin with - sleeping in the cot is not necessarily the answer to get you the most sleep. What many people choose to do is to embrace attachment parenting. This means accepting that baby feeds to sleep, teach baby to feed lying down, feed to sleep on your bed and leave him there (ie cosleep). Then sleep with your top off and just let baby feed as needed without disturbing your sleep.

The point with attachment parenting is that is takes the basic premise that baby goes to sleep where they stay asleep but accepts that this doesn't have to be the cot. So stop trying to move baby after feeding to sleep.

If you do want baby sleeping in the cot - then this is called independent sleep. Every sleep training method has this as it's aim. The varying different methods to sleep train mostly vary in terms of where on the scale of harsh-gentle you want to lie. Some examples (and there are gizillions of others) include:

• Cry It Out (make sure all babys needs are met, put in cot, leave and dont go back)
• Controlled Crying (make sure all babys needs are met, put in cot, leave for a few minutes then go back comfort and leave again. Repeat)
• Pick up Put Down (put baby down, pat baby in the cot for set amount of time, pick up and comfort if very distressed, put back down. Repeat)
• Gradual Withdrawal (give baby all possible means of in-cot comfort. Then over several weeks/months gradually reduce the amount of comforting that is needed)
• Pantly Pull-Off (more extreme version of gradual withdrawal, starting from feeding to sleep. Aim to unlatch baby from from breastfeed just before fully asleep and then cuddle to sleep. Gradually move from feeding to sleep to cuddling to sleep by unlatching earlier. Progress to putting baby down at very gradually less fully asleep. This is a very gentle method - takes many months to a year or more)

There's loads more.

First decision - how much distress are you prepared to tolerate from your baby?

Because without the ability to comfort suck, there WILL be crying. Lots of it. No ifs or buts about that. Since you haven't got a dummy established and you need to stop feeding to sleep if you want independent sleep - then accept that this will involve distress and crying. Ask yourself how much of that you can cope with. That will tell you were on the harsh-gentle scale you lie.

Been there man. Get him in your bed and get some bloody sleep! Figure everything out later on. My girl is 19 months and finally in her cot but maybe that’s because it’s a bed we’ve taken the rails off and she prefers it. Nap all the time. You got this

Co sleeping didn’t work for us. Perhaps because we had got into a rock to sleep habit rather than feed to sleep habit. Also the whole side lying “baby helps themselves”feeding didn’t work for us (boobs too small/baby too small).

Thank you @FATEdestiny - it really helps to see it laid out clearly like that!

To answer the question re distress the answer is
‘Not much’ - I really don’t want him to cry or feel like I could be comforting him but won’t.

Last night I had him in bed with me (followed all safe sleep guidelines, so no duvet or pillows etc). He woke at 9pm, 3am and 5am which was so much better. And when he woke he was a lot less distressed and quicker to settle.

I didn’t really want to end up co-sleeping because it’s hard to see when it ends, but your post really helped me see that if the choice is between co-sleeping and a distressed baby, it’s going to be co-sleeping. And we are doing what we have to to get through the nights at the moment. Even though it was still a very broken night I felt so much better just for not seeing him get so upset. And we both got more sleep. I feel much less desperate this morning, and I feel like I’m not screwing up our bond by letting him cry.

Thank you for your help - I see you on these threads so often and I hope you know how much you’re appreciated for all the free advice you give. It’s a selfless and generous thing to do.

This is exactly how my son was. More less exactly 6 months and he didn't sleep, then a tooth appeared. He was cosleeping anyway but that was the o my rest I got. I was breast feeding and managed to feed from both sides without having to move and eventually he just sort if fed himself so I didn't have to wake properly. By a year he was sleeping through and we then put him a cot.

Hi op, just a word of hope/comfort from a co-sleeper (as I see lots of judgey posts on mn saying things like they will never sleep independently etc) - my first was exactly like yours, except from birth with no good sleep phase at all. We embraced safe co sleeping as the only real option. His sleep was so much better in with us! At around 2yo we transitioned to a toddler bed so he basically never slept in a cot. We put a single mattress next to his bed so one of us could lie there if he needed comfort in the night, but it was a very smooth transition and he really liked his bed. This coincided with him dropping naps and it was at that point that his sleep was revolutionised! He started sleeping through consistently with maybe only 1 wake up about once a week. He's now 4yo - sleeps in his own bed, in his own room. Goes to bed at 7pm and bedtime takes about 10-15 minutes and he's out like a light, sleeping until 7am. I never imagined I'd be a co sleeper but it worked so well for us and there have been no long term issues because of it. Meanwhile, my second absolutely loves his cot and has done since day 1! I think going with their individual needs is perfectly fine and if co sleeping means you all get some sleep then don't worry about it. Good luck!

@Hufflepuffsunite thank you so much - that’s very reassuring to hear! I think I just need to accept he’s a very attachment-seeking baby - even during the day he hates to be put down. It’s definitely time to embrace that I think!

Co sleeping was the only way I could get any decent sleep. Baby would wake up, whinge, I would cuddle him and he went back to sleep in 5 minutes, often without even waking DH. When he got too big for our bed I put him in a double bed in his own room, I would cuddle him to sleep then sneak out, and go back in to sleep with him if he woke up. It wasn’t ideal, many nights I didn’t get to sleep in the same bed as my own husband, but at least I was getting sleep and not hallucinating or going insane. He was about 2.5yo before I could reliably get him to sleep in his bed then go to my own bed and stay there. He NEVER slept in a cot by himself, some kids just don’t. The important thing is not where you sleep, it’s that you’re able to get enough sleep to function.

Thank you FATEdestiny. The options and methodologies were so useful .

Thank you for the appreciation, I'm glad I could help.