Terrible sleeper

[Nicole888]

My little boy is nearly 6mo old and is a terrible sleeper.

He fights naps in the day but we still manage 2 (sometimes 3) naps totalling 3 hours which is okay.

Bedtime routine starts at around 6pm and he is in bed asleep by 7pm (fed to sleep). He goes down okay but is waking up every 2-3hrs. On a good night (which is rare) he has slept 7hrs straight, woken up for a change and feed and slept for another 3hrs, then another 2hrs.

He was quite a good sleeper before he had a sleep regression around 4mo old and has been terrible ever since.

He is breastfed and using cloth nappies.

I am considering:

• Mixed feeding, breastfeeding in the day but giving him a formula bottle before bed in the hope this keeps him fuller for longer.

-Using disposable nappies at night to hopefully keep him dryer for longer (he is a heavy wetter and we always have to change him when he wakes up in the night).

If anyone has any thoughts / recommendations I would really appreciate it. My husband and I are going insane with broken sleep, feels like we are back to having a newborn!

Thank you!

How long is your awake time between naps? He sounds overtired which means they fight naps and are more disrupted at night. Ideally at 5 months, they should still be on 3-4 naps with awake periods of 1.5-2 hours between. I tend to start trying to put my little one asleep 10 mins before the end of their awake time. The 4 month regression can really stuff everything up!

YY to a disposable nappy at night so you don't have to change him.

I don't think a bottle of formula will help; I mean it might, but it sounds as if the main reason your baby is waking is because of the "feed to sleep" association, so I suggest you work on changing that.

This website and the huckleberry app are both helpful
www.babysleepscience.com/single-post/2014/03/12/the-four-month-sleep-regression-what-is-it-and-what-can-be-done-about-it
(Link says 2014 but the article has been updated since!)

Also, you might want to adjust your expectations, because while waking every 2-3 hours isn't ideal, I certainly wouldn't call that a "terrible" sleeper.

I've gone through awful sleep with both mine (more with DC1) and during those phases, I would have killed for 3 hours daytime naps plus waking every 2-3 hours at night! At their worst they would barely nap and wouldn't settle for any kind of decent stretch at night. I was at my wit's end.

DC2 (nearly 1) usually wakes up once a night for a feed and if she doesn't fall asleep feeding I can usually just put her in her cot and go back to bed, and she'll go back to sleep without a fuss... that's good for us! I want to drop the night feed at some point but it's easier just to feed her for now.

Im gonna say the opposite to a pp. baby with high sleep needs will sleep 16 hours a day and if you want 12 at night their daytime naps shouldn’t exceed 4 hours. Baby with low sleep needs will only do 12 hours total so again you’ll need to change expectations on them sleeping 12 at night as they’ll probably only do 9 hours total. Most are in between. Awake windows are between 1.5 to 3 hours.

Mine happily does 2.30 awake and she’s 4 months. Keeping her awake longer and doing a 45 min nap in the morning 2 hours at lunch and 45 in the afternoon means she’ll generally do 9-10 at night but I’ll only sleep well if I put her down around 9pm. I don’t want to do that so she goes at 7 and I expect her to be up at 5. 6 is a good day.

Totally normal for them to do 2 feeds in the night. Nappy changes don’t really seem to bother them and same with food, most can go 13 hours from 4 months but they get used to the habit of being fed and it’s hard to break.

His awake time between naps is about 2.5- 3hrs hours (he has always had a long awake time), I put him down for a nap as soon as I see his usual signals.

I didn’t think of that re low sleep needs, that makes a lot of sense! You just read books and things online and you expect 12hrs at night to be normal but as you say, maybe he needs less 🤔

Definitely hard to break the fed to sleep habit, that’s all that seems to settle him, but I guess it’s something we need to work on.

Thanks for your replies x

I’d definitely try the disposable nappies. If you don’t have to change him it then it will speed up the resettling and it eliminates wetness as a reason for waking. Formula isn’t a miracle cure so I would only go down that route if you have a partner that could give the bottle whilst you get a longer chunk of sleep. Id also think about a later bedtime so if he does do a longer chunk sleep then it will align better with you. The feed to sleep habit sounds like your primary problem though.

Thank you, will definitely try disposables at night and see how I get on.
I’ll just have to bite the bullet and try to break the feed to sleep habit 😬 x

It's a myth that formula makes babies sleep longer.
Agree with pps that you need to stop feeding to sleep, I did exactly the same and my baby only slept through when I stopped.
Someone described it to me as if you fell asleep all comfy cuddling your partner in bed then waking up on the bathroom floor on your own youd be all confused and unsettled too.

With DD2, she started sleeping through the night before we started weaning, I've no idea why.

OP - for help on breaking the feed to sleep habit I really recommend Lucy Wolfe’s book ‘The Baby Sleep Solution’. My baby always fed to sleep and would wake literally hourly, it was horrendous. We followed her ‘stay and soothe’ method and after 4-5 weeks my baby was able to fall asleep in the cot. He now (two months on) mostly sleeps through the night, albeit he wakes up very early. It was a massive game changer for us.

It’s totally fine to switch to disposable nappies at night if that works. Might be worth playing around with the reusables too though to see if they can be made to last, to save you some extra expense. What brand do you use? Have you been doubling up (or more) on inserts?