My 6mo is literally never tired! I’m at breaking point!

[Lalarosex]

My 6mo old has been awake for 5 hours straight this morning followed by 30 mins sleep in the car. And now he’s wide awake again and refusing to nap.
I try rocking him to sleep and he is just so nosey, looking around all the time.
He also wakes every hour at night and often is laughing, thrashing around in his cot excited at 3am.

How can a baby who sleeps so little have this much energy? I keep reading about wake windows and there’s no way my child would sleep after 2-3 hours!

But is he awake and crying or just awake? If the latter why do you need him asleep? If he is content and in a bouncer or on a mat/somewhere safe, you don’t need to be entertaining him constantly. He can just be looking about.

Overtiredness can look a lot like not tired, especially if they are a bit manic.

Does he drop off if you go on a longish car journey or buggy ride? If so then he is actually tired but just struggling to drop off/stay asleep, the motion helps.

@minipie yes he is definitely a motion baby! Falls asleep in the car and pram, and needs rocking at home. I wondering if that’s why he can’t fall asleep independently in his cot?

Yes - combination of overtired and having learned that motion = how to sleep.

Had exactly this with DD1

I would suggest try to reduce the overtiredness first by lots of long buggy walks or car drives (walks best as you may have to keep moving to keep him asleep)

Then once he’s caught up on sleep and is bit more relaxed you could try sleep training - controlled crying worked very quickly for us.

Sorry should say the sleep training is to teach him he can go to sleep or get back to sleep by himself and unlearn the “rock to sleep” association

Good news is that a rock to sleep association is a lot easier to fix than a feed to sleep association as you don’t have to worry that they will be hungry

As long as he's not crying I don't see the problem

Just get him on the floor, wriggling around

Swimming is awesome at this age, if you have the strength