Worst night ever - so upset

[Stefka]

Last night my DS who is five months was just awful. Tried to put him down for seven - took an hour to get him to sleep but the clock change probably had something to do with that. He slept for two hours, woke up - took an hour to get him back down. Slept for three hours then woke up and it took me three hours to get him back down. He then slept for an hour before he got up for the day. On my fifth attempt at getting him to sleep I started crying when he woke up again.

I am using stuff from the no cry sleep solution but don't seem to be getting any where. I am so desperate and unhappy and tired I don't know what to do. I feel like a shit mum who can't get her baby to sleep and I feel physically awful. This is starting to get me down.

Stefka - how are you this morning?

Better!

Last night he was up and down until 2am. He then slept until five and woke up but as I was popping to the loo I noticed he had stopped crying and was chatting away and he went back to sleep until 7! I hope it's a break through

Stefka, same happened with my dd at just over 4 months. Things i did that made a huge difference were, stopped breastfeeding her to sleep at night and for her naps ie i made sure she was still awake when i put her down, made an effort to get her napping in her cot during the day so i could have some "me" time, fed her properly every 2.5 to 3 hours during the day making sure she had a good feed each time, started a dream-feed at 10.30 at night before i went to bed, then if she woke up before her next feed (ie sooner than 2.5 or 3 hours) tried to get her to settle back to sleep without feeding her. That last bit does mean listening to a bit of crying, i wouldn't advocate leaving a baby as young as this to cry for more than a minute or two at most before you go back in and comfort them, then leave again for a minute or two, you might be surprised at how quickly he settles. Certainly that worked for us when NCSS and all that pickup put down stuff was really unsettling and didn't work at all. Also at around 5 and a bit months i remember a big growth spurt with dd up every 1.5 to 2 hours at night for a couple of weeks, on top of her first 2 teeth arriving, so it could be something like that going on with him. Because it was her first teeth, we didn't realise what was going on until they appeared! But i can't stress enough how getting dd to self-settle at that stage made an enormous difference to how settled she was at night.

That sounds great. Thing is he just won't go to sleep on his own. I have tried but he just screams the house down. I was going through a stage of rocking him back to sleep so I wasn't feeding him all the time but he's getting too heavy for that. I tried just patting him in the cot but he just ends up very awake and grumpy.

I sympathise so much Stefka, it could be me writing your posts! My dd is 6 months old and slept brilliantly at night at ages 3 and 4 months. Then something happened around 5 months and she's been a nightmare sleeper since, though there do seem to be some signs of hope on the horizon. Not through anything I've done I don't think, perhaps she's just working her way through a phase? We are getting some good nights and some not so good now.

Like your ds she won't usually go to sleep on her own and needs either rocking or breasfeeding to sleep. And then have to put her down soooo carefully so that she doesn't notice. But then today she fell asleep in her highchair between spoonfuls of food!!! I was so shocked I thought I'd poisoned her for a moment. So who knows what she'll do next. Hang in there, things seem to change overnight with babies sometimes.

yes countryhousehotel that self-settling is exactly what I mean when referring to CC earlier in this thread.

I agree it's essential to go in often to comfort (by a repeated sentence , e.,g. 'it's time to sleep now' and a pat), but both my DDs have only learned to do it when I made myself leave them alone instead of picking them up, stroking, hand-holding etc ad infinitum. The PU/PD stuff was useless for us too.