Help a sleep deprived mama!

[rosieg90]

Hi! My little boy has just turned six months old and his sleep, which has never been brilliant, has got worse than ever. He’s exclusively breastfed and has started solids in the last week. During the day he tends to nap well and to a fairly standard schedule. But a night time could not be any more different. He tends to go to sleep at around 7:30 pm either being breastfed or sleepy and put in his cot and will self settle. But anywhere from 11pm and 1 am, he will wake up and will not want to go back to sleep in his cot. I have tried to ignore him, but that seems to work him up even more. I have resorted to bed sharing at times so I can get some sleep but even that isn’t cutting it at the moment. He’s wanting to feed constantly and when I do get him back down, he’s perhaps only sleeping for another hour before waking again. I’ve got a little girl who is six so I know that this doesn’t last forever, but I’m absolutely exhausted and I’m just wondering, what I can do?

I’ll also add that his daytime sleep tends to be in a pram. And seeing as he was an autumn winter baby most of the time he was in a snuggly warm snowsuit. I know he’s not too cold at night though but his flailing arms are potentially a problem.

I hear you. I raised 4, youngest is now aged 6 and they are all good sleepers now (but weren't at 6 months!! 🤣)

Keep going with his initial bed time, settling in his own bed. This is awesome, and will be very helpful when you are ready to night wean.

Keep bringing him into your bed and let him feed for the 2nd half of the night, and rest as much as you can (lying down and dozing is better than nothing) try not to get up properly til whatever time you deem feasible (I think I aimed not to do breakfast before 6am). For now, it's just about survival for you.

Night weaning is what gets them to actually sleep through. You will decide when and how you are ready for that. I started working on it at around 10 months. It was a 2 stage thing - stage 1 was getting them used to re-settling without a feed during the night, stage 2 was about getting them used to sleeping in their own bed.

But it's a very personal and emotive/potentially controversial subject!

I had an episode like this with my daughter and just tried reducing her naps from 3 to 2 during the day which did the trick! She never followed the average sleep needs of others and cut out naps completely at 18 mo. She now goes to bed at 5:30pm and sleeps until 7am.