Help! 7 month old sleep getting worse and worse

[NoSleepNoImagination]

Hi everyone,

Apologies in advance for the suuuuuper long post.

I’ve been a lurker on Mumsnet for a while but am finally reaching out for some help, advice or commiseration.

I’m a FTM to a 7 month old who thinks sleep is for the weak. He’s a super intense baby in the day time, always got his nose in people’s business and is extremely active (although he can’t crawl yet). He’s always been a poor sleeper (CMPA and silent reflux) but over the last 3 months his sleep has gotten worse and worse. He settles to bed in his own room by himself with a dummy (this is a problem which I want to tackle) and lovey which usually only takes 20 mins maximum, but will only sleep for between 1 hour on a bad night to 3 hours on a very rare good night. From that point on, he’s usually up every 30 to 45 mins.

Usually a dummy plug would work and he’d go back to sleep but now even the dummy doesn’t help. He becomes more and more awake as the night goes on, taking longer to settle and even his feed at night (he still has one 90ml bottle) doesn’t get him to drift back off. He’s also become more restless, slamming his legs down on the bed, rolling from side to side and grabbing anything he can reach with his hands - even whilst seemingly asleep! And once 5am rolls around, it’s damn near impossible to get him to sleep any longer even though he used to sleep until 6.30.

As we have become more sleep deprived, my husband and I have ended up bringing him into our bed from about 10.30pm just to try and get some more rest. Initially this really helped and DS would settle for a couple of solid hours before his feed and 1.5 to 2 hours after his feed but now even cosleeping isn’t working as he is waking up every 30 mins again and being very restless even when he is asleep.

He has around 3 hours of naps during the day (usually on me as he only sometimes settles himself in his cot during the day) so I don’t think over tiredness from the day can be the issue. He’s on neocate, 20mg omeprazole (a hefty dose as he’s a big baby!) and ketotifen for his CMPA/reflux and has recently had a posterior tongue tie and grade 3 lip tie sorted. He has just had a tooth come through, but he’s had everything possible to ease the pain of that and he was still not sleeping so I don’t think teething can be it either!

We used to have his crib inclined too, but as he now spins himself around regularly we didn’t want him getting a head rush from being upside down. And to be honest, the raised crib never seemed to make much difference to his sleep anyway.

We’re at our wits end and really starting to lose it from sleep deprivation. I’m hoping that someone on here might have some advice or words of encouragement - or even just to let me know that I’m not alone in my struggles!

Can you afford a sleep consultant?

I had a similar problem and after consultation with a sleep expert, we did a dummy detox. I was told it could be up to 5 days before we saw an improvement, but we had major progression from day 1. She's now 11 months and sleeps 11-12hrs a night.

Thanks for replying!

@thingymaboob Luckily we can and we actually are speaking with a sleep consultant. She’s great and we were starting to see some improvement at the beginning of the night, but he’s slid backwards and the advice that we’ve had since hasn’t really helped unfortunately. We have another session in a couple of weeks to see if there’s anything else we can do but I’m starting to feel like we may not even make it until then…

@smooshraspberry I think we may just have to do a dummy detox too! The only thing that’s putting me off at the minute is that he gets worked up without one and with his reflux, it can get really exacerbated. Was there much crying with your little one when you did it?

Is he night-weaned yet? Some babies get used to the fact that they can get fed at night and so wake more and more for night-time snacks. Dummy detox may be a good idea though, if you breastfeed, you may then end up with a baby who insists on feeding to sleep instead.

With my DD once she was night-weaned and dummy-weaned, I found putting her down to sleep in a different room (i.e: travel cot in a room she didn't usually sleep in) could break the routine of waking up at intervals, particularly paired with being less responsive (if baby sounds distressed, go in. If baby is just making exploratory noises, leave them be).

Then, once they get into a good sleep routine for a week or so, you can move them back to their usual bedroom. If you mess up whilst they are in the different room (i.e: you go in at 12pm when they are just babbling and so they now wake at 10pm every night in response), just switch the travel cot to another different room if one is available

*(i.e: you go in at 12pm when they are just babbling and so they now wake at 12pm every night in response)

@QuirkyStick That is such a good idea about moving rooms. I hadn’t really thought about ways to break out of the habitual toe wakings, so I can definitely give that a go

@NoSleepNoImagination

Hi I was just wondering how you got on and what worked for you?

We have also been prescribed Ketotifen for CMPA and poor weight gain, did you find this helped? Thanks

@Hazzyyy

Hi, I’m sorry to hear you’re having similar trouble. My DS is 2.5 now and luckily all the challenges we faced seem to have been resolved now.

We used ketotifen for about 10 months in total, but to be honest, I never noticed whether it actually helped or not. We took him off it more or less cold turkey at about a year old and couldn’t see that it made any difference for the worse when he wasn’t taking it anymore.

What we found made the biggest difference (we think) for both his allergy reflux and his sleep was getting his tongue tie fixed. About 3 or 4 weeks after it was done (not too long after my original post!) he suddenly just slept through the night and has been a great sleeper ever since. Is this something you’ve looked at at all?

Because his tongue tie was posterior, it was missed by both the NHS and a lactation specialist - it was actually a sleep consultant who spotted it in pictures! Turns out it had been impacted not only how he slept with his mouth open and his breathing, but also how he was swallowing air when feeding which then reduced his reflux too.

I think eating solid food also helped him and time too. Just after he turned 2 we tried the milk ladder for the second time and that time he made it the whole way through.

The only thing I unfortunately can’t comment on is poor weight gain. We had the opposite problem as he would drink so much in the early months to try and soothe his silent reflux that he put on weight fine.

Not sure how much help this will be for you, but I really hope you’re able to find a way through soon. It’s so hard, especially when they’re young!