Tips for getting 6 month old to link sleep cycles

[clairebear610]

Hi all, does anyone have any tips for getting an almost 6 month old ebf baby to link her sleep cycles. She's not currently doing it so having very short naps and waking soooo much every night and id love to work on this so I can get a bit more sleep and more of a break in the day to feel more human.

6 months is pretty normal for them to just start linking them but it can take some time.

My 7 month old still sometimes naps for the magic 40 mins and sometimes will go 2 hours!

The best way I've found with both my babies is some gentle sleep training but appreciate this isn't for everyone. I feed about 30 mins before a nap. Take them up, dark room, white noise, sleeping bag, sing a song and put them down with a comforter. He'll toss and torn and grizzle and if he gets upset I pay his bottom to get him to sleep but ensure he doesn't go to sleep on the bottle or rocked.

I've been doing this for about 3 weeks now and he can put himself to sleep a lot of the time but I always stay with him and shush/sing/pat if he's struggling. He also now only wakes once overnight which helps massively

A lot of it will come with age though!

Should say pat his bottle not pay!

Arghhhh bottom! 😂

Thanks so much @ClingyClingy, I'll give that a go. Only trouble is keeping a noisy toddler out of the room

Ahhh I also have one of those too!

We have a bed in the babies room so I will sometimes let him come up, lie down on the bed and watch something on an ipad quietly when he just won't leave me alone 😆

Now the baby is used to this routine it's actually quiet sweet and toddler brings in his step so he can watch baby go into the cot and then he sits in the chair with me and we sing or shush together and then 'guess' when the baby has gone to sleep.

Although he's rubbish at using his quiet voice

Sometimes I have a full room and the dog even comes to join in 😆

This does take some time and quicker method is controlled crying but I found this seemed to work for mine and although sometimes he still needs a bum pat, he's usually pretty easy

I should also add that I don't go by a schedule but when he seems tired and I've found this is a lot easier than putting him down for a nap simply because it's x o'clock!

Good luck

@ClingyClingy ha sounds very like our household! You sound like you're doing brilliantly though, I definitely need to get a bit more structure. I've been going with the flow until now but I think if I could get my baby to link sleep cycles she and I would have much better nights. Can I just ask, do you leave the white noise on all night? (I'm wondering whether to just use my iPad you see or get a white noise machine which might be a more sensible option if all night). I've heard white noise can be brilliant.

It's very common at that age to have short naps, my DD (now 13 months) was only doing 30 min naps and longest stretch at night was 2 hours.
Her sleep was very up and down until 11.5 months and now she has either 2 naps at hour to hour and a half each or 1 3 hour nap.
She is sleeping through most nights now aswell. Occasionally we get 1 wake up where she'll have a drink but mostly through the night.
It can take time for them but they do usually just get there on their own.
My DD's sleep was bad around 9/10 months (apparently separation anxiety) and that was tough but it was yet another phase that she got through

Controlled crying deals with this very issue. There are some very gentle methods out there, such as ones where you sit with them the whole time etc.