Baby stresses herself out before falling asleep

[kalicia]

Hi all,

My sleep journey with my lo has been all over the place but we’re finally (sort of) in a good place. She’s 7m old, a month ago I transitioned her into her own crib in her own room after her going through a real rough patch and waking every 45 minutes. I tried the Ferber sleep training method and I guess I can say it has kind of worked. My baby does sleep for longer stretches now, every night is different, sometimes she will sleep for 4 hours then wake for a bottle then sleep the rest of the night. Sometimes she will sleep all through the night. Usually she wakes up around 6 and I will place her in bed with me, in which she will just go back to sleep.

When I tried the sleep training method night 1 was the worst and she cried for a good few hours (obviously she was not left, I kept going in at timed intervals, stroking her, holding her hand and shushing her). After that it got a lot easier, but she still cries a lot before she sleeps.

The problem is the initial getting her to sleep, she has always fought her sleep. Before this she had to be rocked to sleep, I still try that sometimes but she often pushes me away and cries now. So when it’s time to sleep and she goes down in her crib, she really stresses herself out even if I am in the room. She rolls all over the crib, gets herself stuck, cries her eyes out. I keep going in to see to her as I watch on a monitor. She does this every night for anytime between 10minutes to half an hour before she will just fall asleep. If she is napping in the house this also makes night times a nightmare as she spends more time fighting to stay awake than napping.

We have the same routine every night, she has a white noise machine, multiple dummies in her crib as she puts them in to sleep, full bottle before bed, I even purchased some lavender oil to perform a baby massage to calm her down before she sleeps. But she will never just go down easily no matter how tired she is, she will fight and throw herself all over the place. It may just be developmental and it will pass (I hope so). But I just want to know if there’s anything I can do to help. The odd time she will let me rock her but now she doesn’t want that. She also acts like this with anyone who puts her to bed including her dad and my mum.

She starts nursery in a month and I have so much anxiety around nap time as she is a nightmare to get to sleep. Any suggestions or reasons she could be doing this would be really appreciated.

What works for my kids

1. Audio stories on YouTube e.g. dear Zoo, hungry Caterpillar are some of my daughters favourite. You can find pretty much any kids book on there.
2. Bedtime nursery rhymes
3. You read to her before she nods off to give her a chance to snuggle down and get cosy.

I have just sleep trained my 5 month lld and I find that if you leave them to their own devices even if they don't sleep immediately it does eventually work. My DS makes all sorts of noises before he eventually settles. I just try not to be in the room and as long as he's not crying I don't go in. It's a good Time to fold laundry or clean the bathroom as you wait for them to sleep...makes you feel less anxious listening to their noises and helps the intervals naturally lengthen.

Some children are just like this, they almost need to get the crying out the way before they can sleep.

Could she be overtired? Have you tried moving bedtime 15/30 minutes earlier?

I'd also try leaving a bit of time between her bottle and going to bed incase she's uncomfortable/too full/needs a burp.

Do you read to her before bed?

Need to get rid of all sleep props. Dummy, white noise etc etc. Will be tough for a week but then she'll sleep no problem.

There's a greater sleep training YouTuber who I can't recall atm but she had material on 4 month regression. When we got rid of dummy, it was like a different baby once DC slept without.

After 4 months their sleep cycles are similar to ours, so as a grown child wouldn't sleep with a dummy, music, etc, neither does a 7 month baby need to.

That's just my experience, do whatever works for you.

My older two both relied on “decompression cries” before sleeping. It seemed bizarre to me, but it worked for them. They would both cry for 2-15 minutes before falling asleep. It wasn’t proper, upset, distressed crying. More like sniffling? If I went in to them, it would just reset the whole process. I never figured out why. They are perfectly normal kids now, and my third DC never did it. 🤷‍♀️