SOS Save Our Sleep! 5months mayhem

[TulipVictory]

Please if you have been in this situation and have managed to get your baby to sleep tell me your sorcery!

For background

Baby is 5 & a half months. Exclusively breast fed. Slept fairly well in between feeds until her Moses basket got too small a month and a half ago 😫. She is now in a bigger crib in my room. The trouble is we have more bad nights than good. Friday night was good she settled by 22;30 and awoke at 07:30. However, Saturday night she eventually settled at 03;30 and awoke at 6:00. Similar patterns the last three nights now and not sure how much longer I can cope with this. I wrote this with one eye open, a headache and bad pain behind one eye. I am physically and mentally exhausted. Last night I tried to get to bed as I had a migraine (probably nackered from all the other bad nights). Anyway it took until almost 2am before she slept in her cot and I had to be up for the school run. She will be asleep and she will either wake as soon as I put her in her cot or 5 minutes later when she realises I've put her down. I'll then pick her up put her in bed with me she will suckle on the boob to sleep for five minutes or so before she's asleep. I leave it a little while put her in her cot and repeat, she's screaming again then back to my bed, suckle to sleep, back to her cot and awake screaming again. This cycle will repeat for hours until she eventually gives in and sleeps in there. The last three nights this has taken until 03;30, 01;30 and 02:00. I physically cannot keep doing this I am shattered. Just to add, I don't want her to sleep in my bed.

In the day she will also no longer settle anywhere but on me so she will feed to sleep and then sleep on me and in the day this is generally:

After the school run - 09:30-11ish between 1-2 hours nap)
Afternoon 01:30- 02:30ish (1-1.5 hours)
05:00-06:30ish (1-1.5hours)
Then in the evening she's ready to sleep for the night anywhere between 20:30-21:30 except when I try to take her upstairs to put her in her cot 😫
She will happily sleep on me on the sofa
I've tried to put her down many times in the day now. Whenever I do put her down she has to be fast asleep but even then, a lot of the time she still wakes. She will scream blue murder with her eyes still shut until I pick her up.

Please someone tell me you have been in this situation too and how did you sort it out. I'm so nackered I don't know what to do with myself

Anyone ? 💤

It's poor sleep hygiene to put down an already asleep baby. This is the central issue you are having. From the 4 month sleep progression ( months ago, just as you noticed) it becomes really important that baby goes to sleep where they stay asleep. Putting baby down already asleep will never work in the long term.

If you want baby to sleep in the cot, baby needs to go to sleep there. If you breastfeed to sleep, baby needs to stay at your breast throughout the sleep.

This therefore broadly splits parents into two types:

(1) Attachment Parent. Accept you are your babys comfort. Breastfeed to sleep lying down on your bed, leave baby there to sleep (ie cosleep). For daytime naps with do the same, or have baby in your arms or a sling.
(2) Independent Sleep. Baby sleeps independantly of you, so in the cot/crib at night and maybe in the pram, bouncer or cot during the day. To do this baby learns to go to sleep in the cot. That doesn't mean being put in the cot asleep, nearly asleep or very drowsey. It means baby is awake when going into the cot/pram/bouncer and goes to sleep in there, then stays there.

The entire sleep consultant industry is based around finding ways to teach baby to sleep independantly. There are (literally) hundreds of different ways to do it - from the very gentle to the very harsh. But all have the same aim at heart - to teach baby to go to sleep in the cot.

If you want independant sleep, then a dummy will help significantly. Because it's not possible to cry whilst sucking, the ability to comfort suck independantly makes a huge difference in the amount of crying. So if baby doesn't have a dummy, you need to accept that there will be lots of crying in achieving independant sleep. No if's or maybe's, there WILL be lots of crying, so be ready for it. The crying in itself doesn't mean not comforting baby - you can still be compassionate, caring and comfort baby, but do so with baby in the cot, not in your arms. It's very labour intensive.

We (Me and dc3) co-sleep. I did the same with dc1 and 2.

It works well for us and imo is one of the best things about bf: teach them to feed lying down and they'll do self service as soon as they're big enough to wriggle and hey presto no night waking for me. Dc1 and 2 moved out of our bed aged around 18m (when I night weaned)

Can I ask how you comfort a baby in the cot? Do you pat or lay a hand on them or something like that until they cry themselves to sleep? I'd like baby to move from co-sleep to cot sleeping in our next to me.