How do I get into a routine to promote sleep??!

[Brunocat]

How on earth do I get my 5 month old to sleep at a reasonable hour and sleep a bit more?
He is five months, breastfed and goes to sleep at some time between 10.30pm and midnight. He will then wake up every two - three hours have a tiny suck and fall straight back to sleep. He gets up at around 8am.
I've tried altering his daytime naps - ie: less and more but this doesn't help. Please tell me what a studid cow I am and where I am going wrong. Husband is getting seriously peed off with the lack of a sleep routine.
PLEASE HELP!! Will try nearly anything...

hey brunocat

sleep timing similar to us, although ds sleeps through from 11pm to 11am. the millpond sleep clinic book (great book) say this is a late sleep phase problem and advises waking up 15 mins earlier for 3 days and then bringing bedtime forward by 15 mins each day as well. keep going until you reach the desired bedtime. first of all you have to let them sleep to see how much they need - he may not be getting enough sleep if he wakes up at 8 - you could see if he'll slepp longer, then do the 15 min thing.
does that make sense? i found the book in oxfam books - its also described in richard ferbers book (without the need for controlled crying - thank god)

with the waking in the night - is he eating at all or do you think he's just coming into a light sleep and needs to suck to get back to sleep?

At 5 months the frequent waking might well be hunger, and the 'tiny suck' may well be a very fast and efficient breastfeed!

I would agree that trying to bring bedtime forward is a good idea, but be ready for early wakings. Have you considered co-sleeping? We do this with DS(6 months) and he feeds every couple of hours without me having to do more than roll over, and DP doesn't even notice!

In terms of your request for a sleep routine, I would say that in my experience sleep does generally improve with age but it can be three steps forward, two steps back sometimes. So don't bank on having a routine and everything being sorted because just when you've cracked it he#ll change and you'll be back to square one!

I'd start a basic bedtime routine, then gradually bring it forward. And I'd cosleep. I never thought I would do it myself but it's saved my sanity (and possibly our relationship!)

agree with bedtime routine! (sod all other types of routine IMO)
are you feedign enough in the day - you could try feeding more often so he gets most of his calories in the day

Yeah I agree with bedtime routine, just do the same things in the same order every night (for us this means bare bum time on bed, bath, clothes on, feed in dark quiet room (quite often falling asleep - both of us) then bed and let him nap in bright daylight during the day. when he feels like it too - I don't think less or more sleep during the day makes much of a difference until later on. Also, ignore him as much as possible in the night - if he needs to feed, feed him and be very quiet, don't have a 'ooh hello why are you awake again?' conversation with him in the night or he'll think night time is party time. Or any whispering 'why is he awake again grrr' type discussions with dh either (or was that just us?!) sorry if this is obvious stuff though...

Agree to bring it forward gradually too. If you start it at 9pm then hopefully he'll be asleeep by 10pm including a while to get to sleep. Maybe do that for a week or so then start moving it forward by about 15 mins at a time?

I also like co-sleeping if the baby is genuinely hungry in the night a lot, it does save you getting up all the time, but some people worry about the habit forming thing and it takes a little while to get them back in the cot once they are not feeding so much ime, but it can be done.

oh and you're nto a stupid cow just look at how many other posts there are from people desperate for sleep - babies dont' have this reputation for nothing!

Thanks for your replies - I'm going to give everything suggested a try!

Don't feel bad! It's confusing with a little one...we've all been there. I'm a very routine type person so we've been doing our routine for awhile. I'll share it with you and hope that it helps. 1. He gets cranky now around 6:30ish so we try to hold him off for about 7:00...we put him in his crib with some lullaby music going and soft lighting. He usually gets excited b/c he knows what comes next. 2. After we've filled his bath, we bathe him with this Johnson's bedtime bath soap (the smell is said to calm them). 3. He gets changed into a new fresh sleeper and we put the Johnson's bedtime cream on him. 4. Swaddle him up (yes, I'm still doing this, but will hopefully stop soon). 5. Final feed which typically lasts an hour! I think b/c he knows it's his final feed, he tanks up. I also read him a story while doing the feed...I hope that it'll get him used to the language of story that I hope to use at bedtime when he's older.

It took awhile for our routine to actually become that, but you will find what works for you through trial and error. This is what worked for me and my little guy sleeps from 8:30-4:30 without a feed. It's taken awhile to get to this, and I'm sure it'll change again, as it always does. Good luck.

nessa - i so agree with you about the tanking up - ds does it too...

so, when is it best to start a routine with a baby do you all think??

Try "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" by Dr Marc Weissbluth. He's studied thousands of sleep patterns in babies and children.

Regular nap times in the day are important imo. It seems to be widely accepted that a constant waking up time in the morning is important for setting the body clock and 7am is the natural waking time for most babies, though it can be anything from 6-8am.

By the clock, (according to paediatrician mentioned above), an ideal sleep schedule for a baby of this age is: Wake at 7am, naps at 9am and 1pm for at least an hour - leave them to sleep as long as they need to, about 20% of babies need a catnap later in the day, bed at 7pm with brief wakings for feeds only - no lights on, no play time after bedtime. These times are moveable by 1-2 hours for most babies, but should be regular for each baby. So waking could be 6 and nap at 8 and 12, but it should be more or less the same every day.

Try waking your baby (the only time it's acceptable to wake a sleeping baby!) at the same time every day, let's say 7am. Let him get lots of light as this helps set the body clock.

When he next shows signs of tiredness; rubbing eyes, quietening down, irritable etc, it's likely to be somewhere between 8.30am and 9.30am. Bring him back to his bedroom (it can be dark/ dim - at this stage they won't be confused between day and night sleep, provided they've had daylight on waking) and have a cuddle/ feed whatever it takes to make him calm. Put him in his cot for a nap. After about 4 months most babies get a more valuable sleep in their beds, rather than a buggy or pram. Same for lunchtime nap.

Bedtime, do a bedtime routine as described in the other posts.

If a brief suck is 5 mins, then yes, it could be more or less a full feed. If you're not sure, and he will take a bottle of expressed milk, it can be a worthwhile exercise to see how much he's taking at each feed at night. When I tried this with mine at the same age, I realised that the 1-2oz feeds were for comfort on waking. I stopped going to her and realised she would just snuffle around for 5-10 mins and "complain" rather than actually cry and then would go back to sleep again. My running in to her at every sound was actually reinforcing her waking habit - she wasn't hungry.

I also more or less stayed in for two weeks in order to get this schedule set in and it suits her down to the ground. She's a slave to her sleep and at 8 months sleeps for twelve hours a night and two two-hour naps in the day!

HTH!

BTW - I think babies seem to respond to this by about 4 months. It does no harm to start it earlier (though a very young baby has a much later bedtime - earlier bedtime is a neurological development stage, apparently). The later you leave it after 4 months, the harder it gets to implement.