Baby waking 10-11 times a night

[baz12]

I NEED advise/tips/suggestions before I start pulling my hair out. My little boy will not sleep. As a new born he was fairly good and would sleep for 4 hours at a time. However since about 3/4 months it's gone down hill. He's been waking 10-11 times a night. Is there anything that has really worked for anyone?

I'm worried he's in pain so I havnt tried controlled crying it out yet. He was a really refluxey newborn so I have a concern he's still having this. He's breast fed and does comfort on me. However recently even when I let him do this (which I try not to and am good until about 4am) it just doesn't help anymore

He has a structured day time routine and naps really well in his cot on his own without using breast feeding as comfort

ANY suggestion is appreciated

How old is he now? 16 weeks is a killer sleep regression period. As long as he is warm and fed my only advice is to ride it through, nap with him during the day etc. Baby sleep is not linear and I found once I stopped expecting anything other than a crap nights sleep I felt a lot better.

He's 7 months now! It was all downhill from 4 months, he cut two teeth and it became mildly better for about a month. We were co napping until recently because previously he just wouldn't let me put him down. Now he does go down but wakes up 40 mins - 1 hour later😅

Do you have a proper routine? Day sleep/naps are critical to night sleep. There's an 8 month sleep regression so it's probably that. Bite the bullet get a sleep consultant and do sleep training, for you but more for your baby. Sleep is restorative and really important for young babies development

45 minutes is about a sleep cycle, so they obviously aren't able to link them/self settle

My second baby is the same age. What does he do when he wakes up? Does he scream for you (in which case obviously go to him) but sometimes my DD wakes up and just fusses for a bit and then goes back to sleep. It’s always worse if she can see me so I have to force myself not to go in unless she’s obviously distressed.

I’ll PM you

It varies. Sometimes a sudden scream, sometimes he's obviously trying to soothe himself. I do let him try to do this but he gets louder and more frustrated and ends up waking completely 😢 at that point I'm picking him up and soothing him

This would make a lot of sense. Any advice on how to help him to do this without needing rocking/feeding/shushing? I've tried from the cot and he just get increasingly angry. I'm having to physically pick him up and rock with him

What happens T bedtime? Where does he fall asleep?

After dinner he has a short play, bath, story and bed. We read the story in his room. I then put white noise and lullabies on. He falls asleep sitting up on me with some jiggling and patting. He screams the second I lay him flat.

Cosleep? My ds was like this until he started crawling around 9 months, think it was separation anxiety and tons of development going on and he just wanted to be near me

I think it's reflux then if he's happy when sitting up

This seems super common and you have my fill sympathy. I bottle fed my son for various reasons and due to weight issues for the first 4ish months the doctors were obsessed with us feeding him a certain amount per day. A lot of the time this meant feeding him when drowsy / feeding to sleep. This 100% ended up with a needing to be fed to sleep habit, which is something that lots of friends who breastfed dealt with so maybe the below will help you…

We sleep trained at 10 months when he started to waking up every 45 mins overnight (previously every 2-3 hours, which we kept being told he would grow out of) and he would not settle without a bottle.

We were lucky and essentially our sleep training went as follows:

• night one: bottle, bath, teeth, story, bed (previously went bath, teeth, story, bottle bed). He cried for 15 mins or so and then only woke once for a bottle.
• night two: same routine but he didn’t wake at all. After that, he never woke again for milk! Any night wakes from that day on were because he was either unwell, teething or needed to be changed. (Note: he sometimes will shout or cry for 30 seconds or so in the night but I can see on the monitor that he sits up, looks around and then grabs his cuddly toys or has a sip of water and then lays right back down to sleep).

I am sharing the above not to be smug but to give you hope - everyone said it was cruel to stop feeding on demand because it is biologically normal for a 10 month old to feed overnight and that my son would be inconsolable for weeks but no! He was immediately happier for it, I was finally sleeping again and also no longer worrying about his teeth. One tip: from about 12 months I started leaving his water bottle with him (b box weighted straw cup glow in the dark) as I noticed that he was waking in the morning very thirsty - this buys me an extra 45 mins of sleep in the mornings!

Hang on in there!

Mine was doing this until I stopped breastfeeding. I waited until 12 months. So now she drinks a cup of milk before bed and sleeps all night. She's a binky baby so she might stir and I'll pop it back in and that's it. Obviously no one can tell you when to stop breastfeeding, but it might help your sanity to know it does make a huge difference once you do get to that step. I wanted to nurse much longer but I needed sleep & my hormones needed leveling out.

After reading your last comment I wonder if he's having separation anxiety. In my experience (4 kids!) with any kind of growth like teething or growth spurt comes separation anxiety. You could try some extended cuddles and lots of reassurance. I do hope you get some ideas that help! I know how taxing it can be.

Ok so imagine falling asleep in your bed, and then waking up in the bathroom. You’d be disorientated and scared. It’s the same for babies when they fall asleep in one place, and wake up elsewhere (especially if the lullabies and white noise have suddenly stopped too). And once they’ve had one episode of fear, and they’ve increased their cortisol levels, it inhibits their natural melatonin (sleep hormone) for that night, so they get trapped in a cycle of waking frequently. I would work on bedtime and getting DC to fall asleep on his own in his cot before trying anything else.

You can feed/cuddle until he’s very sleepy, but make sure that you rouse him as you put him into the cot. He’ll probably be resistant to start with. Stay with him, reassure him, stroke his face/pat his bum etc. Once he’s more used to falling asleep in the cot, you can gradually reduce the contact.

Look up the Facebook page Goodnight Guidance. She is a sleep consultant based in Northern Ireland but when I used her it was all done remotely.

I know a few people that have used her. She got my 14mth old sleeping through the night within a week. She looks at the entire 24hr schedule. I recommend her to everyone.

My DS was exactly the same after the 4 month regression. He's now 13 months, we are back to work and trying to find solutions - I say this as a warning that it doesn't always get better on its own quickly. We have been saying 'well maybe he will grow out of it by 1, he's just a baby' the whole time. He can now no longer sleep independently and even do sleeping doesn't work as for the first half of the night he's waking up all the time without as there and we don't get a relaxing evening. Currently night weaning (because I wasn't to stop BF anyway) so it will be interesting to see if that makes any difference. I have been feeding him back to sleep mostly which I know is probably a huge part of the problem, but also enjoyed it so looking back don't mind.

Hope it improves for you! After PP suggested change in routes to milk before bath, km going to try that tonight

I had this with my second from around 5m - 18m. It then dropped to about twice a night until she was 2 and suddenly started sleeping through. That was a phase, and she started waking again after but it never got 'bad' again. From 2.5-4.5 (current age) some nights she sleeps through, most nights there is one wake up (usually short but sometimes long) occasionally more unsettled than this. But compared to how it was it is GREAT.

Its hell, but in hindsight I seem to have survived. I wasn't sure about it at the time though 😂

No advice or maybe mine would have slept, but solidarity.

This sounds exactly like me. I'm hoping it's a phase, although at this point probably not. Co sleeping doesn't help, just means I can lay down and be awake rather that standing or sitting. I get frustrated at the breast feeding but I do enjoy it- it's something only I can do, it's great for bonding etc. thank you for the heads up! I might just have to start having a serious think about making these changes sooner rather than later rather than waiting for it to pass

Well, so far, after a week of night weaning and then switching the routine I am amazed to say that DS only woke once last night, looked at DH and then went back to sleep. For us, I think the bringing feed earlier helped more from the perspective of he had time for it to go down and burp than anything else. While we were doing bath and book he did do a few burps and had bad reflex as a baby so have suspected he is uncomfortable over night for a while. Hopefully not a fluke but will take one peaceful night as a win even if it is!!

That's amazing! I've tried switching the feed to the beginning of the routine tonight so we will see what happens!

Well it was a fluke! Not even midnight and he's been up four times already 😴