My baby screaming almost 6 hours wanting to claw my face to sleep

[FlyingHighFlyingLow]

Baby just shy of 6 months old. Suddenly decided must claw my face to get to sleep. My nostrils, inside my mouth, eyelids, all scratched up and bleeding. It's painful. So tonight I've set the boundary. No scratching my face. I'm rocking, shushing, cuddling but he's not touching my face. He screamed 3 hours straight, slept 2 hours, woke up and we're at 2.5 hours of screaming again. I'm breastfeeding and he's got free access to that, but he comes off and cries when I won't let him latch onto and twist my face. He has a dummy which he's had in throughout. I've offered him comforter, my hand, arm, clothes. Nothing will do but the face, he just keeps screaming. Help!

You poor thing! I’d get him checked out. It sounds like he could be in pain.

Mine is almost 2 y/o and still loves to claw my face and pull my hair when falling asleep and when breastfeeding. It's so painful and I get so agitated by it. He screams for hours if I don't lay him. Commiserations

I wondered if it could be pain but the second he touches my face the crying stops. I wouldn't mind if it was just touching, but he scratches and pinches and twists. My face is a mess as he wakes every 2 hours at night anyway and he'll play with my face for ages before falling asleep each time. He's finally just stopped screaming and fallen asleep 3 hours and 10 min later.

I would 100% sleep train the baby in your circumstances

I don’t have an answer except you don’t have to accept that. I don’t really know how to phrase what I’m saying - I suppose, it’s ok to hold that boundary. Don’t feel like a bad mum or anything like that.

I did a gentle form of sleep training by a lady I found on Facebook who does free courses. DM me if you want her name.

Just to add, he lost a lot of weight due to CMPA and dropped from 80th to under 20th centile. He's still is quite skinny (worked him back up to about 30th centile weight so far but his height is off the charts as he's so long!) so I'm not really in a place to sleep train as he probably does need the calories of waking often to feed at night still. It's that he won't feed well/go back to sleep without the clawing. He could be teething I guess so I've got calpol on hand if same happens tonight to see if makes a difference.

Is he on any food yet, other than milk? Maybe ask your health care professional if your db can have pablum now? Maybe he will sleep better.

O you can get these amazing hand protectors off amazon, gloves that go round the back, toddler glove things, my daughter has them to stop herself hurting herself but they might work for you as they can still touch your face but nails will be softened.

they are called mitten sleeves for kids with exzema

Another vote for scratch sleeves. I used them for all my breast feeding children for this exact reason.

@JoniBlue yes, due to the issues we started weaning at 4.5 months with GP input. He's doing really well on solids and now has 2 meals and a snack a day, with milk offered before and after. That's the only way we started getting weight back on him.

I'll look up the scratch sleeves! Probably good for him anyway as still got his allergy eczema hanging about.

Sleep training and night weaning are different things, so you can sleep train i.e teach him to fall asleep independently but still do several feeds a night. Weird Q but hes not overtired is he? We went through a bit of a violent phase at 4 months, lots of thrashing and I calmed it down by reducing his wake windows, think I may have temporaily even added a nap back in , took me ages to realise he was just chronically overtired! Otherwise sort of agree with others might be worth getting checked out with dr, may be in pain/discomfort.