Night wakings

[babyjellyfish]

Hi, this is my first post and I'm hoping somebody may be able to help.

My baby is 9 months old and we are struggling with his sleep.

I don't want to make this too long, so I'll start by explaining what is happening at the moment. He goes to bed in his cot in his own room. He usually wakes and cries once or twice during the evening but will settle back to sleep quickly when we go to him. Then he wakes at around midnight and doesn't settle, so we bring him into bed with us and hope for the best. We then usually get a few hours' sleep until he wakes up and doesn't want to go back to sleep, meaning that we can't either. On a good night we will all sleep between about midnight and 5am before he wakes up and wants to party. On a bad night he might wake up at 3am and stay awake until 6am, by which point we have to get up soon. Obviously we would like this to stop, but we have no idea how to get him to sleep through.

Some info which may be relevant:

• We tried putting him in his own room at 6 months and sleep training, which resulted in a lot of crying for a week or so and then seemed to work temporarily, but then went downhill again after he had a cold. Even when he was going to sleep independently he would almost always end up in with us at some point during the night. I think he has only managed the whole night in his own room once.

• We switched to full cosleeping for a bit and have only recently started putting him in his own cot again since he started waking up multiple times during the night anyway, so the cosleeping was no longer working for any of us.

• My husband and I both work full time and baby has been going to a childminder from 8am to 6pm five days a week since he was 7.5 months old. We are both very tired and my husband in particular is struggling with the lack of sleep.

• Baby is fully night weaned and trying a snooze feed at 5am isn't an option because he needs to take medication at 7am with a full feed and if I feed him during the night he isn't hungry enough in the morning and can't take his medication. He is a very healthy weight and eats well, so we are satisfied that he does not need to feed during the night. We offer him water from a bottle if he is thirsty.

• I am almost 36 and had recurrent miscarriages when TTC, so I would like to try for another baby when he turns one in April. My husband and I are both quite worried about TTC a second baby when our first isn't sleeping well, so I would really like to try and see some improvement in the next couple of months.

• I am not ideological about parenting or sleep training methods. I think different things work for different babies and different families.

The problem I am finding is that Facebook groups and so on tend to take a very polarised approach. I feel like the sleep training groups will tell me I have done everything wrong and shouldn't be cosleeping and that I should just let him cry it out, and the attachment parenting groups will tell me I need to put my baby first at all times and he will sleep when he is ready and question why I have gone back to work already.

So... I guess I am hoping for some non-judgemental suggestions which might help us to crack this. Or just commiserations if you are in the same boat!

Many thanks in advance!

What's your current routine, including nap times and bed time?

Thanks for your reply!

On weekdays:

Up at 7am, BF
At childminder's by 8
Nap 10-11
Lunch 11:45
Nap 2-4:30 ish
Snack 4:30
Home 6:30
Dinner 7pm
Bath 7:30pm
BF 7:45pm
Bed 8pm

We try to keep things fairly consistent at the weekends but it's not always possible.

I thought he might be napping too much during the day so yesterday he just napped for 45 minutes in the morning and 1hr15 mins in the afternoon (waking up at 4:15) but we still had a terrible night. He's got an awful cold at the moment though and is struggling to breathe, which obviously doesn't help!

9 months is very young to not be having milk over night. I would try offering milk again and put his morning medication in a smaller amount of milk.

We were told by the doctor not to feed him overnight and actually, he doesn't need it. Sometimes in desperation I have offered him a night feed to try and get him back to sleep and it doesn't work. He is still awake and then not hungry at 7am.

I think you need to persevere with the cot- he’s looking to get into bed with you. There are different methods for this but it can take a while and be prepared for some long nights. Do you follow justchillmama on Instagram? She has some great tips and you can pay for a phone call if you need more personalised advice.
After they’ve been poorly, you need to try and return to previous routines to avoid the slippery slope.
I hope you sort something soon- sounds very difficult.

To add I definitely wouldn’t offer a night feed either

I think that sounds like a lot of napping, could it be reduced to about two and a half hours? Mine was sleeping about two and a half to three hours at that age.

I would offer milk at night but I am anything for an easy life!

That's a lot of nap time. Try 30 mins in the morning and bring the lunch nap forward to 1pm for max 2 hours. Try not to sleep past 3pm. It might take a few weeks to adjust x

@Michellexxx

I think you need to persevere with the cot- he’s looking to get into bed with you. There are different methods for this but it can take a while and be prepared for some long nights. Do you follow justchillmama on Instagram? She has some great tips and you can pay for a phone call if you need more personalised advice. After they’ve been poorly, you need to try and return to previous routines to avoid the slippery slope. I hope you sort something soon- sounds very difficult.

Yes I think we are going to have to, but I am dreading it. We've already tried sleep training once but it didn't work, and the time he is waking up and crying isn't between his bedtime and ours, but between midnight and when we need to get up. It's exhausting.

@Oakelmbark

I think that sounds like a lot of napping, could it be reduced to about two and a half hours? Mine was sleeping about two and a half to three hours at that age.

I would offer milk at night but I am anything for an easy life!

Yeah I think it's a lot too. The difficulty is, we don't have a huge amount of control over what happens at the childminder's.

@scotsmama

That's a lot of nap time. Try 30 mins in the morning and bring the lunch nap forward to 1pm for max 2 hours. Try not to sleep past 3pm. It might take a few weeks to adjust x

We can't realistically get him to bed before 8pm, so if he finishes his second nap at 3pm, won't that be too long a wake window?

The childminder should be adhering to your wishes, really. I’ve asked nursery not to let my DS (now 14 months) nap more than two hours a day.

Hey OP, things sound really tough. To go against the grain here, my 11 month old DD sleeps 3 to 3.5 hours a day and will sleep 10 hours straight through on a good night, so I don’t necessarily agree that your DS is getting too much daytime sleep. I think your routine sounds good and not too dissimilar to ours (though all our timings are about an hour earlier). However, I do agree that he won’t need feeding at that age, so I think you’re right to just offer water. I think your problem is he wants to cosleep and doesn’t want to sleep in his cot. This would be fine if you were happy with cosleeping and felt that it was working, but it sounds like it’s no longer getting any of you enough sleep. So I think your best option is sleep training to get him back in his cot and staying there - this can be anything from a very gentle approach, to a cry it out method, depending on what you feel comfortable with. Whatever you decide, you do need to be consistent and once you start, follow through, but the actual method is entirely down to what you think is best. I hope that helps. Keep talking on here, and hopefully you’ll get plenty of good advice to help, but I’m sending hugs as I know sleep is a stressful and emotive topic!

If you can't get him to bed until 8pm then you could do a 15 min nap at around 5pm. Sleep after 3pm is much deeper than earlier in the day, so you'll find that too much sleep after this time causes night wakings.

Bear in mind that if you change your routine it might get worse before it gets better so stick to whatever you do for at least 2 weeks.

I wouldn't change the daytime naps or start feeding at night. He's waking up because he thinks he's going into your bed. No.amount of fiddling with routines will change that. What I would do is wait until he's well and you have a few days without too much on, and a period of 3 weeks or so when you are not going on holiday etc. Then commit to keeping him in his cot all night for 2 weeks. Expect 3 nights of protesting and then he'll be used to it.
You say you've done sleep training but if he's only spent one night in his cot it doesn't sound like you've been consistent enough. Once you are consistent he will get the hang of it quickly.

Absolutely agree with above post !

@SnackSizeRaisin

I wouldn't change the daytime naps or start feeding at night. He's waking up because he thinks he's going into your bed. No.amount of fiddling with routines will change that. What I would do is wait until he's well and you have a few days without too much on, and a period of 3 weeks or so when you are not going on holiday etc. Then commit to keeping him in his cot all night for 2 weeks. Expect 3 nights of protesting and then he'll be used to it. You say you've done sleep training but if he's only spent one night in his cot it doesn't sound like you've been consistent enough. Once you are consistent he will get the hang of it quickly.

Completely agree, consistency is key. Every time he has illness / teething, get right back in to the routine. Nighttime is for sleeping, sleeping happens in the cot. Each and every night. Otherwise it’s confusing for him and he’s getting mixed messages that sometimes he gets lifted out and sometimes he stays where he is

OK, thanks. My friend is coming to stay on Thursday for a few nights so hopefully by the time she's gone he'll be feeling completely well again and we will have to get strict with him. I guess that gives me a few days to work out what sleep training method to use.

I hate this. 😢

It feels awful at the time but afterwards you understand the process more I think and it seems less bad.

Would you consider a sleep consultant?

We would if we can't get it sorted. We are not in the UK though and a lot of the advice about babies seems quite different here.

Hi again!

We decided that last night would be our first night of sleep training. To say it was a fiasco would be putting it mildly.

I sent this link to my husband and we agreed to try it.

www.parent4success.com/2012/03/05/the-controlled-crying-sleep-technique/

Did the bedtime routine, got him in his cot, left him to cry for five minutes. Then I went in and comforted him for two minutes and put him back in his cot. He started crying again and I set the timer for 10 minutes. Before the 10 minutes was up my husband said he wanted to go and comfort him. It quickly became clear that my husband was not on board with the method so we made a snap decision to switch to the gradual retreat method. This was more or less successful until about midnight.

We always knew this would be the most challenging time because between midnight and 4am is when he has been waking up and staying awake.

Sure enough, it was terrible. I was in there for two hours trying to get him to go to sleep, with him in the cot and me by his side shhhing and stroking him. Every time I took my hand away he started crying again.

At 2am my husband came in and volunteered to take over and sent me to sleep in the spare room which is on the other side of the flat.

At 2:40 I could hear very loud crying so I got up and went to see what was going on. My husband had got fed up and gone back into our bedroom, leaving our baby to cry on his own in his cot. He had got himself worked up into a terrible state. After a brief row with my husband I went in and got him out of his cot and held him in the chair until he had stopped crying. I also breastfed him a little bit to calm him down. Then I tried to put him back in his cot and it was an abject failure. He just started crying again. So by about 3:30 I couldn't take it anymore and just brought him back into our bed. I went to sleep in the spare room and he slept next to my husband from about 4am until 7am when he had to be woken up.

I feel awful because everyone says consistency is key but we essentially tried controlled crying, gradual retreat and cry it out all in the same night and then let him back into our bed, which is sending an absolutely terrible message.

The thing is, I think we have a body clock issue. For some reason, he just doesn't seem to be tired between midnight and 4am. I'm pretty sure that whatever sleep training method we use to get him to go to sleep at bedtime, it will probably work until midnight, and then he will wake up and not feel tired. And at the moment it's a choice between leaving him to scream blue murder in his cot for 4 hours, or having him chattering away and thrashing about in our bed for 4 hours. Either way, nobody is getting any sleep during that time window.

This morning I told the childminder that I want to drastically reduce his naps to see if that is the problem. Until now he has been having his first nap for about an hour between 10 and 11am, and then a second in the afternoon lasting 2 to 2.5 hours and waking up between 4 and 4:30. Quite a few people I've spoken to think he is getting too much daytime sleep and too late in the day. So today I told the childminder not to let him sleep for more than half an hour in the morning, and no more than 2 hours max this afternoon, waking up at 3pm. If she manages it, that will stretch his last wake window to 5 hours.

I'm fully expecting this week to be a complete shit show. How long should we try this new nap schedule to see whether it fixes the night sleep issue?

And in the meantime (assuming that he won't suddenly start sleeping between midnight and 4am from tonight onwards), how do we tackle the middle of the night?

I'm happy to commit to a routine where he goes to sleep in his bed at bedtime and we make him stay there until at least midnight. But I don't realistically see how we can follow a sleep training method between midnight and 4am as long as his body clock is telling him that this is an awake time. I'm not averse to leaving him to cry for a bit, but I think leaving him to scream blue murder in his cot for four hours per night will make him angry rather than tired and create negative sleep associations which could be counterproductive in the long run.

Thanks if you made it through this mammoth post and have any advice!

Hi there @babyjellyfish. I’m in completely the same boat with my 7 mo old and just wanted to ask tie things are now with your DS?

Hi @Fiddlesticks6

Not as bad as things were back in February but still not quite where we'd like to be.

He goes to sleep in his own bed without too much fuss, but typically wakes up between midnight and 2am and then we bring him in with us for the rest of the night because we would rather sleep than sleep train in the middle of the night!

He is now down to one main nap between 1:30pm and 3:30pm, and sometimes has a quick catnap in the pushchair in the morning if he needs it. We saw a big improvement in night time sleep after cutting his daytime naps down.