Struggling with 5 month old...

[Sleepymama285]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to Mumsnet so hoping all you wise mums can offer me some advice! I have a beautiful 5 month old daughter but am struggling with things a bit and still feel like we're very much in 'survival mode'

We had a rough start to things - my LO constantly screamed for the first 12/14 weeks, was very refluxy and impossible to settle (except by BFing).

She's now a lot less sick which is great, but spends a lot of the day groaning and remains super alert/hard to settle.

She has around 3-4 naps a day but has to be constantly on the move (pram/car/bouncer chair) and wakes if the motion stops even for a minute. Sometimes naps on me but has to have a boob in the mouth at all times and this happens less often now as she's so distractible. The pram is also working less often for the same reason. Naps are usually only 30mins but can be an hour/hour and a half at best if in the car...but it's costing a fortune driving her around aimlessly!

With naps being such a mission, By the time it gets to 5pm I'm exhausted and don't have the will for another nap attempt so we basically start the bedtime routine. I'm then shut in the dark bedroom BFing her to sleep (which can take 1.5 hours) and she often then wakes anyway once put in the crib (cue shush/pat/rock/scream/feed etc etc)

I feel like I'm getting thing all wrong as my LO isn't too cheerful and I'm run ragged/have zero time with my husband as I basically spend all day trying to get her to nap every 2 hrs and then go to bed at 5.30pm!! - not sure if I need to approach things differently, if my daughter is in some kind of discomfort which makes it hard for her to settle or if some babies are just like this? Or maybe I'm just crap at settling her?!

I know it's prime sleep regression time, but she's been like this from the start - hyper alert, hard to settle and often pretty grumpy.

Any ideas on how I can improve naps/sleep and cheer up my lovely girl and ideally reclaim a little time to myself in the evenings?

Thanks for reading and for any advice!

Hi OP I have a 5 month old aswell. Is your DD actually tired when you start trying to settle her for a nap? I haven some days where DS won’t go to bed because he just doesn’t seem to be tired!

Also I can see a sling being really helpful for you, we have a stretchy wrap one and it means I can pull the sides round so that DS can’t see out. Once distractions have gone he normally goes straight to sleep and I can sort of get on with some things around the house.

I also find that he gets bored with things really quickly so I quite often change what we’re doing and that normally enough to make him less grumpy.

I don’t think we’ve cracked it by any means but this is what my LO’s naps look like.

Wake up around 6am, bring him into the bed with us, breastfeed and sleep on and off until about 9am (I like a lye in 🤣)

11am first nap for about 45 minutes, this is quite often in the sling but if he feeds to sleep (in a quiet room) he will let me put him in his cot for this nap.

2pm second nap for about 2 hours, sometimes it’s shorter in which case he might settle back to sleep quite soon. Depending on how much I have to do I’ll quite often let him sleep on me. I quite like being trapped under a baby with a good book! Or we’ll go for a walk etc.

7pm (ish) start bedtime routine. He’s normal asleep by around 8pm.

In the night he wakes up once or twice, occasionally around mindnight but always at around 3 or 4.

Hope that helps!

Also I know if you go off wake windows my DS is awake for too long. But it works for us and I’ve decided not to worry about it 🤣

There’s an Instagram account I’ve found really helpful called Care it out. Might be worth a look x

Have you tried sleep training OP? I also have a 5 month old, she’s a terrible napper so we are still working on that but after a week sleep training she now sleeps ten hours at night and goes down without a fuss. Feel free to DM if you want me to walk you through it!

Hi,

Thanks for your replies : )

I've got a a sling but haven't really persisted in trying it after a couple of unsuccessful attempts early on, so will give it another go!

I think dd is tired as if I leave her beyond 2 hours she seems to get more worked up...I've found it tricky to read her cues though as she's grumbly quite a lot of the time and doesn't seem to yawn until she's overtired/it's too late!

Thanks for the suggestion on sleep training. I think that's part of my confusion...there seems such conflicting advice on whether to just power through with feeding to sleep etc and let her learn to self settle in her own time/when developmentally ready or whether it's better to sleep train/teach her to self settle and stop using feeding as a prop! I think I'm being indecisive as I want the best of both worlds....for baby to learn to self settle in her own time/with minimal tears but without the need for co-sleeping/BFing all night in the longer term. Perhaps a bit idealistic to hope for that! Would be intrigued to hear what worked for you though - will DM, thank you!

I had a similar struggle to you at that age. We were on 4 or 5 x cat naps a day. Naps weren't always easy to land (rocking, pram, car, feed to sleep) and every day was a slog. But it should get easier as baby gets older and drops to fewer longer naps. Not much advice I'm afraid just keep going.

I also used to bf to sleep at that age and got stuck co sleeping. Some nights I could hardly escape to brush my teeth without her waking and crying. Was really tough as I had no evening time and sleep quality was poor. So I felt forced in to gentle sleep training. That got her sleeping in her cot at least, still had numerous night wakings but I got my evenings back which made a huge difference.

Hi,

Thanks so much for your reply. It's reassuring to know it's not just me - although sorry to hear you've been through a tough time too! Glad to hear the nap length improved with time, that gives me some hope!

Could I ask what approach you took to sleep training and when did you start? Thanks again for the reply : )

Hiya, both of my babies took catnaps at that age. My son was the same in terms of it felt like it was always a struggle to get him to sleep. My daughter has always been more willing to nap. So I don't necessarily think it's something you're doing wrong. They both took longer naps as they got older. My daughter will now fall asleep on a quick pushchair walk and I'll then leave her in the garden to finish her nap which could be 2-3 hours. A stark difference to when she was 5 months and no real intervention from me!

@Sleepymama285 I bought the baby sleep solution book by Lucy Wolfe. It has lots of good advice, and sleep training methods (gentle) so I would recommend it. Fair bit of crying for a few nights but got us out of a bad situation and in to better habits. We did it at just before six months. Didn't get great results (still lots of wake ups) but I reckon she was a bit too young for it. Sleep still isn't great but we might try sleep training again now she's bigger.