Split nights and early mornings. Help!

[Starsandstripes24]

My 6 month old has always been a bit of a lark and struggled with early mornings and getting back to sleep after night feeds. This has recently gone to a new level and the split nights are starting earlier. My partner is on sleep medication that makes it difficult for him to help at night. I am just about holding up but know I cant keep being up for the “day” at 2,3,etc. Sleeping after the split night is really hard and O go to bed as early as I can.

Currently the day looks like this…
Wake up 7am ish (baby often drifts back to sleep about 5/6am after early morning wake)
Bottle straight after waking and takes about 8-9ozs
First nap 9am and after a quick stir I can usually catch him at the right time and resettle so it lasts at least an hour.
10ish another 8-9oz bottle
Somewhere between 12 and 1 (depending on last waking) nap 2 which I try to make last 90 mins or so.
Bottle straight after waking and another 8-9ozs
Catnap somewhere between 4-5 for 30 mins and ends no later than 5.15
Another 8-9oz bottle on waking
Bedtime routine starts about 7 with a top up bottle of about 7ozs.
7.30-8pm bedtime.
Anywhere from midnight - 4am he will wake for at least an hour sometimes 2.
5am onwards very unsettled and will not go back into cot, so in our bed but needs constant resettling (anywhere from every 10-30 mins).

Here are the things I have considered (lots of time to think at 2am 😂)
I don’t think baby is ready for 2 naps yet. Getting to bedtime is already a bit of a struggle and he often is cranky and clearly tired after 2-2.5 hours. 3rd nap is still relatively easy to get too.
He isnt crying for a feed and will eventually go back if one isn’t offered and when I give a bottle it doesn’t really speed up the resettling process. Also he has a lot in the day!
We have started weaning but doing baby led so he isn't eating large amounts yet. These problems pre-date weaning so doubt it is just this.
He has a lot of teeth already so they probably are bothering him but isn't screaming in pain and we give nurofen/anbesol when he is having a tough day.
He used to go down and self settle, then we resorted to drowsy but awake after a quick rock but now he rolls himself awake. So I have had to up the rocking and put him down in a deep sleep. I will start gradually reducing this down (against cc, coi etc) once we are back from our holiday. But frustratingly I am there and rocking at the moment and he still isn’t going back to sleep. Surely if it was a settling issue he would nod back off once I give the sleep crutch?

If anyone has any ideas I would be so grateful

I would say it's because lo doesn't know how to self soothe as part of the issue. Your the crutch. So lo relies on everytime your going to help go back to sleep. Which is completely natural. However it clearly isn't working for you and didn't work for us either. My lo was up Every 1 hour to 2 hours in night. I nearly cried. We sleep trained and went for cc. Which in turn improved everything.

I would say also lo is overtired? But you know your lo. Maybe wake windows are too long? Split nights usually indicate, over tired, developmental, undertired (which I don't think is the case)

With early mornings. Is lo having a feed then going back to sleep? Are you waking lo at 7am? Is it dark? Birds not disturbing? Cold? Usual things really.

Interesting you say overtiredness as this was my initial gut instinct. However we saw a sleep consultant who said probably not as he settles well at the start of the night (asleep in 15 mins) and doesnt have false starts in the first part of the evening. He currently has wake windows that increase throughout the day so 2, 2.25,2.5 and then 2.75 before bed. His day sleep usually is about 3 hours and night sleep totals about 10 hours after the wakes etc have been factored in. Whilst not the “optimum” amount not sure it is overtiredness territory. I could try to increase his first 2 naps but on days he has had 3.5 hours it has made no difference to the night.
The room is blacked out and if anything could be too warm (25 degrees most nights) but have no way to cool it down as we live in a very insulated new build flat on a train line so can’t sleep with the window open. He has always slept like this though so not sure he knows any different.
The early mornings don’t involve a feed. I don’t offer one as he doesn't seem particularly hungry but could try one or perhaps do a dream feed again? When I tried a dream feed in the past it made no difference to early morning wakes.
Ending the rocking is a difficult one as he used to self settle in cot with a hand hold but then he started rolling 🙄. In addition if I stop the rocking I worry about the interim period and the short naps that will follow. Most naps are long because I resettle with a rock. I guess it would be a couple of tough weeks then might improve things overall.

Forgot to say we have white noise to drown out the sounds of the trains. As he has sleep trained me, I am usually awake at 2,3,4 etc and can’t hear anything out of the ordinary to wake him up.

I just seen you cosleep towards end of night beginning of morning? Which again is fine if it suits. Does the white noise follow lo? Or do you leave in their room?

The thing is a lo may be able to self soothe initially, but doesn't sound like lo is able to link sleep cycles all the time as you say you resettle lo during the day in between the cycles.... also as you co sleep lo is like ooooo mums bed now.

It takes a few days or so to catch up on overtiredNess. My lo always been low sleep needs kid, still is, it might just be them. I think at that age my lo was doing about 3.5 in day I think 🤔

I would go with lo is not able to link sleep cycles and being able to go in ur bed so it's the habit too.

Hi op for our DS split nights at this age were either related to teething or developmental (or both!).
After every period of split nights he would either cut a new tooth or gain a skill.
DS is now over 1 year old and just getting through 12 month regression.
The only thing that helped for us was a later bedtime and a set wake up time consistently. Everyone said he needed more sleep but actually he is a low sleep need baby and still only sleeps 8 hours at night on a good night. It was really hard when he had been up most of the night to wake him (and me!) at 6am and make him get up and then keep him awake until nap time but within a couple of days the split nights and 4am starts usually ease.

and to add that at 6 months he was having 3 naps a day but was in transition to 2 naps. By 7.5 months he was only having 2 naps a day. They are all different.

Thankyou for all your help. We are doing a nice quiet day at home to try and clear some of the possible sleep debt. So far shorter wake windows has resulted in two 90 min naps without lots of rocking about in between sleep cycles. Fingers crossed it helps and doesn’t backfire with an undertired baby tonight! Then we can tackle the rocking 😬

That's great! Maybe wake times have been a bit too long then. It be fine. Just member that the longest wake window is before bed.

We're having similar issues with our almost 6mo. Spent around 2 hours between 2 and 5 this morning trying to resettle, only for him to wake again at 6:30am. I'm exhausted.

This does seem to coincide with new skill development, as during the wake period he wants to roll onto his tummy, (attempt to) crawl, etc.

You know your baby best, but I think we can sometimes be too quick to blame overtiredness for why baby sleep has gone a bit wonky, as this is what the internet tells us. I've actually found the days my baby has the most 'textbook' naps are often the worst in terms of night sleep.

Thought I would update as often when I look at old threads I wish I knew how they resolved it!
In the end we paid for a sleep consultant to help and here is what she said. If your split night happens in bursts and then corrects itself then it’s usually developmental. However as ours were so consistent this was not the case.
Instead there is an imbalance in day sleep and it’s usually undertiredness. Split nights happen as there is not enough sleep pressure to keep baby asleep through the night as the sleep hormones fade. She said it was pretty common as most parents fear overtiredness so we are simply expecting too much sleep in 24hours. If the average 6+ month old needs somewhere between 12-15 hours sleep in 24 hours then a lot of the suggested schedules are expecting the upper end of sleep needs and not catering for the babies like mine who need about 12.5- 13.5 hours.
The solution was later bedtime of 8pm, dropping a nap, working to a 3/3.5/4 set of wake windows and capping daytime sleep to 2.5 hours. Basically you need to do a bit of math and work out how many actual hours your baby is sleeping both day and night Then adjust naps and time in bed to reflect that. We now only expect 10.5-11 hours maximum in bed and 2-2.5 hours of daytime sleep.
We still get a split night occasionally but nowhere near as bad as they were. Solidarity to those attending the 1/2/3/4am playtimes and hope they pass soon!

Forgot to say. He is still rocked to sleep but can now go through most of the night without a resettle. So my fears of him being unable to self settle being the root of the wakes were unfounded. He was simply not tired enough to sleep throughout the night.

I really appreciate the update as I’m going through this now - your original post is identical to my current situation in almost every way.

Thanks for updating @Starsandstripes24

I found your update really interesting. So much of what you read online (including Mumsnet) in regards to baby sleep would have you believe that self-settling is the key to everything and overtiredness is the root of all evil.

My own experiences have been different to this also - I have been guilty of encouraging too much day sleep and STILL thinking it wasn't enough - and it's taken me a few months to really tune into my baby and realise that the worst days and nights have been when I have tried to force sleep too soon or for too long.

The fact is you can't make someone (baby or otherwise) sleep when they're not tired, but there seems to be an entire industry built on ignoring this.