At my wits end

[Springbaby2023]

I’ve posted about sleep on here before but positing again because we’re two months further along and things are just getting worse, I honestly don’t know how much more I can cope with.

DS is six months old. Breastfed - though we’ve tried a bottle at night to see if it helps. He’s woken seven times between 10pm and 5am and now seems to be up for the day. This is normal amount of wakes for him, sometimes it’s a lot more but he sleeps in later. The night before last he was awake for three hours straight. There is no pattern or consistency to it, he’s just a horrendous sleeper.

I genuinely don’t know what to do.

We’ve used white noise since birth and have a black out blind. We have a solid bedtime routine. I don’t feed to sleep if I can help it. He has an ok routine in the day, not brilliantly consistent but as good as possible given we also have a 3yo to manage. Yesterday he got around 2.5 / 3 hours day sleep which I think is about right for his age.

We tried sleep training which seemed to help a bit (in that we had 4 wakes a night instead of 8) but then he got ill. He’s finally shaken his illness so I thought his sleep would improve again but it hasn’t at all and I don’t know whether I can do sleep training again mentally or if it’s even worth it / going to work for him.

He’s started solids in the last few weeks and taken well to them but that’s not made a difference.

No allergies we’re aware of and I don’t think it’s reflux. Not constipated.

No real point to this other than to see if there is anything we’ve not thought of or whether or not this is normal. I genuinely don’t know how I can keep surviving on so little sleep, it’s been 3 months of this now and I’m a shell of my former self.

He did do a four hour stretch the other day and it was amazing but I’ve got no idea what I did to deserve that or how to recreate it as he’s not slept more than 90 mins straight since then.

My DS is 14 months is exactly the same and always has been. We have found he just wants to be asleep in your arms all the time, which is very inconvenient and frustrating.

We found that a dummy and swaddling used to really help, but now we just end up sleeping in his toddler bed because thats the only way he will sleep.

Sorry this isn't much help, but I wanted you to know you aren't alone and that I hope things get better for you soon

Thank you, and sorry to hear you’re going through it too.

He has never taken a dummy but I’ve tried to introduce a comforter to see if that helps. I’ve also tried Co sleeping but that doesn’t seem to help either and to be honest it’s not for me so I’ve not pushed it.

What do you do when he wakes up in the night?

@Shalopea a mix of feeding or rocking depending on how long it’s been

You say you posted 2 months ago, so he would have been going through the dreadful 4mo regression and he's now 6mo and started weaning and I'm pretty sure they have a growth spurt at this age. Believe me I've been where you are, my now 13mo was the worst sleeper ever and the regressions and growth spurts nearly broke me. He's finally started sleeping through the night, sometimes wakes once for a bottle, though he does only have 2 30 min naps in the day. I know it's hard to see now but it really will get better, ride it out, you've got this😊

Yeah the issue is there has been no respite between four and six months, it’s just getting progressively worse. Last night I had four hours of broken sleep. Surely that isn’t sustainable until he’s one or whatever 😩

I really hope not for you but In my first year I barely slept at all😭 you'll get through it, really hope it gets better for you🤞

My DD’s sleep regressed at 5 months and amount of wakes just increased between 5-7 months old. I was waiting for it to improve, never did and was like having a newborn. Exclusively breastfed and I felt like giving it up and getting her on formula just so that I could have some rest and help. Resorted to sleep training at 7 months and she’s slept through ever since. Hated the process of the training but I got my life and sanity back. Ended up happily breastfeeding until 16 months and she’s nearly 2. Can you re-look at sleep training?

Ilm sorry to say it sounds normal compared to my experience, it always seemed to get worse before it got better. just ride it out and it will improve.

@Lavender1029 What sleep training did you do? I’m definitely open to it. My eldest stopped sleeping at four months and didn’t sleep again until I stopped BF-ing at around a year, I don’t really want it to get to that point again.

You could try a ladder of intervention. So first when he wakes - just listen. Is he escalating? Or are there gaps in between the cries? Are the gaps getting longer? If so, he’s winding down, he’s working it out. Leave him a bit.

If he starts to escalate, you can go up your ladder from least intrusive to most intrusive so it might be:
listenjng
standing by the cot
verbal shushing and reassurance, singing
settling in cot - shushing and patting
settling in arms - rocking
feed

My son only slept for two hours at a time max until he was about 12 months old. I felt like we were doing something wrong as all the mums I knew had really good sleepers. It really isn't anything you are doing, and I know that's a bit depressing. We got through it by splitting the night so both of us would at least get a decent block of sleep. Some babies just take longer to learn the self settling skill. My son really likes sleeping now I would say but he still wakes a couple of times a night for comfort

What sleep training did you do? With DD 1 we ended up doing cry it out (after all else failed), which took 5 nights to go from waking hourly to sleeping through 12 hours.

@Shalopea we did the Ferber method which worked brilliantly to teach him to self settle at night but not then overnight, mainly because I’m not confident he can go all night without a feed yet. He does now sleep from 7pm until around 10pm which is an improvement but then up all night. It’s not even every sleep cycle, it’s just completely random. I might start again from tonight and see how we go.

And you’re right, I definitely need to leave him more overnight, I think I just worry he’s going to go from 0-100 and scream the house down so I feed him to try and get us all back to sleep as soon as possible

6 months old is peak teething- has he got his first teeth yet? Have you tried nurofen/calpol to see if it helps?

If his teeth are through already then it’s probably not that and is more that he’s gone back to old habits, and another bout of CC might be needed. Unfortunately IME CC was not a “once and done” thing but did need redoing sometimes especially after illness. But it was never as tough as the first time, more grumbling than outright fury iyswim…

Sorry CC = Ferber in case not clear.

I don’t think it had a specific name. It’s a 31 page document that a friend sent me and you have to do the training for all sleep so naps too. Sets out the routine, you have to put them down awake and basically it’s leaving them for 10 mins then going to check on them and soothe them without picking them up for 60 seconds before going out and resetting the clock for another 10 mins. If they stop crying for more than 20 seconds then you restart the clock for 10 mins again. It was hard. Looking at this is bringing back memories of doing it, I really had to sit on my hands but after a few days it worked

@minipie I don’t think it’s teeth as he doesn’t seem in pain (he’s just recovered from an ear infection and it was a very different cry) but we have been giving the usual teething remedies when we notice a day he seems particularly chewy etc. I think I will try controlled crying again from tonight and try to be stricter on not feeding during the night wakes.

Sounds very similar to Ferber / controlled crying. We started with a 2 min interval then double it each time. Problem is we didn’t do it for overnight wakes, just initial going to bed, and then since then he’s been ill and it’s all gone to pot. He has a pretty good daytime routine in line with all the many guides I have leftover from my older DS.

I would try Ferber. Put him down at 7pm, do a dream feed at 10pm and then ferber for the rest of the night. First morning feed at 6am earliest and then try and shift it on bit by bit to 7am. At 6 months they can def go 10pm to 6am if they were full term and have no health issues. Many babies can need nudging back into self settling after being ill. I know it will be a few tricky nights, but better than months more of terrible sleep.

For overnight wakes - what we did was give DD a feed at 10pm, if possible before she woke up for it herself. That way we could be confident she wasn’t hungry in the night (at least until about 5/6am) and also weren’t reinforcing the feed to sleep thing. We were lucky though and found that once we’d done cc at bedtime it pretty much stopped overnight wakes - until teething/illness hit.

My boy is 9 months and has never slept through yet. 4 months was bad but I got a proper daytime routine and nap schedule going which helped until around 8 months when he dropped to 2 naps. Can’t remember exactly but we did 2/2.25/2.25/2.5 wake windows I think. Once we had maybe a week of consistency it improved. First 2 naps I did an hour and second at 45 mins. We went from waking every 1 - 2 hours to getting maybe a chunk of 4 hours. It was also peak time I think babies fight naps and sleep, we used to walk, rock, bounce anything!

currently going through the 9 month regression but we’ve now gone to just holding and patting bum for a few mins and he’s asleep. I tried the controlled crying but I couldn’t stay strong. I used to run in everytimr I heard him make a sound but noe I watch the monitor and can tell by his sounds whether he will go back to sleep himself. Maybe once a night he will which he has learnt himself. Although doesn’t sleep through yet it has improved albeit regressed for a bit again recently!

@SeaToSki @minipie thank you that’s really helpful on the feeding front. He seems to wake naturally around 10/11ish anyway so I might try and get him one in before then so I know that if he wakes again after that he doesn’t need one.

@Namechange10122 we’ve had a daytime and nap schedule set from early on after I learned my lessons from first time around, unfortunately it makes no difference to his overnight sleep.