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Baby won't go to sleep, please help!

4 replies

tiredparentstiredbaby · 28/01/2022 01:39

Ok background:

Dh and I live abroad. We are first time parents. Baby is 4 months old and just recovered from covid. Before covid he would sleep from about 10:30 - 3 and 3 - 7:30. That was fine we would cope with that. He is formula fed. Our country is very hot with 35 degrees being the average temperature so we sleep with the air con on.

Whilst baby had covid his sleep was very disrupted. That's ok we knew he was feeling crappy. We did capol and he wanted to cluster feed, be rocked to sleep and sleep in his bouncer rather than his crib. (When he slept in his crib flat it would make him cough and this was painful for him, the bouncer is slightly upright to it didn't make him cough as much).

Now he is over covid and is completely recovered but we have introduced bad habits and sleeping is difficult. I have had to isolate again this week and so am teaching online which means the workload is awful. I'm extremely tired when I finish for the day (more so than usual). Dh is helping out a lot. Baby still will only go to sleep if he is fed to sleep or rocked then I put him down in the crib and I go to bed too. About 2 hours later he will wake up again and dh will take him. It is totally not dh fault, he is just doing what he can to survive but he is letting him sleep in the front room in the bouncer. He sleeps on the sofa with the fan on. Baby will then wake up every hour, want 1 Oz, fall asleep and repeat until 3am when I swap with dh. I find it impossible to sleep in the front room, the fan blows my hair all in my face and the sofa is uncomfortable so I try and put him back in the crib. Then he has a massive tantrum and will only stop crying if you hold him and walk laps around the house for about 45 minutes. He will eventually fall back to sleep but only in his bouncer and then we are back to waking every hour.

During the day he is at a kindergarten. He is the youngest there with about 20 other children and a few members of staff. Think of it more as a childminders, its not like a western kindergarten but they love him and take such good care of him, teach him to sit up and grasp things and play with the other children. But they do just let him do whatever when it comes to sleeping.

This weekend I want to make a start on fixing this sleep issue. I should be allowed to go back to work on Monday and so want to be making a move in the right direction to at least 5-6 hour stretches again. Please give me all the suggestions!

OP posts:
ChittyBang1987 · 28/01/2022 03:30

Have a search for 4 month sleep regression. Sounds like your little one is used to feeding to sleep, and the lo sleep cycle at that age is 2hours so lo is wanting to fed to sleep every 2 hours. My lo naturally didn't feed to sleep, I have no idea why. I used a dummy which may help? We still had the period of waking every 2 hours I remember waking and popping dummy in, hand on my lo chest and tapping dummy until she went back to sleep.

If you have a bedside me to you cot could try raising one side of the crib to imitate the bouncer.

Sleep regression can last 6 weeks some less some more, have a search and I'm sure suggestions will be given as apologises I can't remember them all.

Addidas · 28/04/2022 00:21

@tiredparentstiredbaby did you ever sort this? Same issue over here!

tiredparentstiredbaby · 28/04/2022 05:01

Addidas · 28/04/2022 00:21

@tiredparentstiredbaby did you ever sort this? Same issue over here!

Hi Addidas, I'm sorry to hear your going through this now. I ended up sleep training him using the Ferber method. It took 3 days and the longest he cried was about 20 minutes. Baby is 7 months now and this week he is sleeping 12 hour stretches for the first time. I want to be clear that baby is chubby so going 12 hours won't hurt him and he is very chilled out. Ferber won't work for everyone, if baby is fussy etc. And I wouldn't expect a 4 month old to go 12 hours (I even think it's uncommon for a 7 month old to go that long!) There are some more gentle sleep training methods to look at. Ferber was the easiest for us and suited our baby. I hope you find something that works for you guys

OP posts:
Addidas · 28/04/2022 10:21

@tiredparentstiredbaby thanks for replying, was hoping you had said their sleep went magically back!!!! My lo was sleeping great
7-2 wake up for bottle then 2-7 again! We didn’t do anything just how she was.
now it’s a mess post Covid! But I suppose that’s baby life!!!!!

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