Please help. 7 month old takes hours to go down at night

[CosyMintWriter]

I’m a FTM to a 7 month old girl. I exclusively breastfeed and we’ve been co-sleeping (she sleeps next to me on the bed) since she was around 5 weeks old.

She has never slept through the night so I’m used to feeding her a round 3-4 times throughout the night. Until recently she would also settle with a pacifier.

In terms of actually getting her down at night … up until around she was 5 months old I would breastfeed her to sleep or bounce her to sleep on a gym ball and she would usually go sleep within 30mins. However this seems to have changed dramatically over the last month and a half.

For about the last month it seems like nothing works. Our schedule is quite routine. We usually wake her up by 4:30 if she has had a late nap. Then she plays with either my husband or I for around an hour before we have dinner. Then after dinner we sit with her on her playmat for some quieter playtime. By 6/6:30 she usually shows sleepy cues (rubbing eyes, yawning, getting irritable). We then usually give her a quick bath or some nappy free time on the bed, then story and lights out.

Our room has blackout curtains and we have a white noise machine.

Once lights are out I usually then feed her while side lying. She will feed for about 30-40mins and I will feel her breathing slow and her arms get heavy. She usually closes her eyes and drifts off. Then she will unlatch and about 5 minutes later wakes up wide awake.

I try to let her resettle by patting her or sometimes leaving her to just thrash around a bit. This usually lasts for about 5 minutes and then she will start crying and screaming.

My husband and I will then try to either bounce her to sleep on the gym ball or walk around with her. With both methods she will ‘fall asleep’ … her limbs will be heavy and eyes closed. The minute we stop walking or bouncing she will wake up - again wide awake.

This continues for hours and when we are bouncing/walking around she will push, grab, fight against us while screaming and crying. She screamed so much one night her voice went hoarse. She also won’t let me hold her upright to sleep either. It’s like nothing works. Usually we manage to finally get her down by like 10/10:30pm after battling from around 7pm.

I’ve taken her to the doctors and physically everything is fine. Both the doctor and health visitor said it’s ’probably a phase’.

we’ve given calpol in case it’s teething or discomfort but it makes not difference.

does anyone have any tips? I feel like I’m losing my mind

There isn’t anything wrong so nothing a doctor would be able to do?

Health visitor once said to me all the bouncing, rocking, patting and falling asleep while feeding will mean baby is never able to self soothe and needs something to do that for them.

I don’t but into cry it out but I think maybe trying to out baby down while awake and not doing the other stuff will mean she learns to self soothe.

all of my babies didn’t have a bedtime until closer to 1

this all sounds just like having a baby to me

at 7 months they were feeding, snoozing and cuddling and just hanging out with us. Usually they’d just snooze on our chest whilst we watched something by about 8ish.

why do you need to put her to bed?

Hey girl, sounds to me like she is getting a nap when you first go to bed at 7ish, 40 min or so nap and then wide awake for a few hours.

I coslept with my breastfed babies and it's tough I'll admit.

Have you considered keeping her up until later say like 9, and then just going to bed with her. Once she gets used to falling asleep easier you could gradually move bedtime back.

But id think if she wakes at 4pm from nap, she's not ready to go bed at 6.3/7 as its too soon after nap. Even if she is yawning etc.

She's very lucky to have parents that are putting in so much effort and thinking so hard on all of this. This is a phase, it will pass and you guys should know that you are doing a great job.

Sounds normal for 7 months. It’s quite an early bed time for that age, mine were put to bed around 8.30pm at that age and before that downstairs with us. I’d take her cues, if she’s not going to sleep for hours then put her to bed later.

When she unlatches(and wakes up a few mins later) do you roll away? Or are you lying next to her when she wakes? I usually stay laying next to my DS for around 20 mins after he unlatches to make sure he's in a deep sleep. Everything is a phase!! She'll probably crawl soon or something.

Personally I would stop feeding her to sleep as she’s using you like a dummy.

Thats really interesting. Everything I’ve read says that it’s important to establish a routine. Our health visitor said the same thing - that a routine will help sleep get better (regular naps and a steady bedtime routine)

No I stay right there beside her. I sometimes have my arm cuddling her or patting her but she just wakes right up

Thank you for saying that.

I’d like to keep her up until 9 (I don’t love going to bed at 7!) but everything I’ve read has been saying a routine is important and that 7:30 should be the latest she’s up!

Sometimes you've got to adapt though.

Yes, in an ideal world, the baby will be fast asleep before 8. We don't live in an ideal world. We went through this with our son and tried doing everything possible to get him to go to bed early. In the end he was mad, we were tired, nobody was enjoying it. We were spending hours trying to get a baby to sleep who didn't want to. So we thought screw it - let's enjoy this time when he's awake and wants to party with us for an hour or two longer. So we just went with the later bedtimes, sometimes 10PM, then they just gradually started shifting backwards naturally. He's not even a year old yet but will go down to sleep around 7PM most nights with no bother at all. No co-sleeping needed either, he self soothes.

Now, in terms of practical advice, the afternoon nap, ending at 4.30PM, seems too late for a happy 7.30PM bedtime to me.

There are a lot of people with a lot of skin in the game, to flog books or sell you stuff or just because they believe ideologically that babies should bend around the parents and be on some sort of clockwork routine.

Thankfully my health visitors and most people I have encountered haven’t mentioned a thing about ‘routine’

Some babies will respond to the bath-bottle/boob-bed thing, but these babies probably have high sleep needs, are less fussy and their dispositions mean they are just ready to sleep independently and at an early time.

That’s great if that’s the baby you have, for my kids, at that age- they wouldn’t have been tired enough and we would have then had fights and hourly wakes until midnight.

I didn’t put my babies down in their own cot ‘for the night’ until about 11 months when they had dropped to one nap a day, and were ready to go off in their cots without a massive amount of fuss.

Breastfed, coslept for chunks of the night, just had normal toddler wake ups of 1-2 a night.

By age 2 and the nap was dropped, they were sleeping the night through in own beds, minus the odd wake for a wee/drink/mightmare.

That’s not to say that will your experience, some poor parents have frequent wake ups until 5- but me and DH had zero routine, flexible bedtimes and just went with the kids…no rods for our own back here. Everyone happy.

Sleep is only a fight if you make it one.

Do a nice bath time and pyjamas but then just have her up with you. Don’t make it a battle. You might find she’s passed out on your chest or in a Moses basket knowing you are near, and then you can always attempt a transfer to cot.

If you don’t want to go to bed at 7pm don’t.

Having a routine is about helping you know/recognise when they are tired and them differentiate between day and night.

With respect, everything you’ve read isn’t working. So develop your own routines. There isn’t a right or wrong way to do things. If you don’t want to go to bed at 7pm, keep her up later. Unfortunately your baby can’t read the manual. Rest assured it’s unlikely she’ll need you to bounce her to sleep when she’s 15, she’ll get older and a more established routine will emerge. FWIW neither of mine have ever gone to bed for 7, unless they’re really tired, and they’re 15 and 2.

That’s too early for her bedtime if she’s napping til 4.30. She will be getting annoyed you’re trying to get her to sleep so early. You either need to cut day sleep/end naps earlier; or just accept a later bedtime.

Thanks for all the responses so far. It’s given me a lot to think about!

I didn’t start with a routine until she was about 5 months. I started noticing that if she was up beyond 8pm she would get very irritable and it would take us ages to get her down. It was then everyone started to tell me she was sleeping too late and that’s why I started trying this routine and getting her to sleep around.

She will usually start rubbing her eyes around 6:30/7 which is when I now usually try to put her to sleep. Should I treat this as a nap instead (I.e wear her and watch some TV?).

One problem we have is that she doesn’t ever just ‘fall asleep’. She will scream and whine and cry for hours but she won’t just lie ‘drowsy but awake’ and drift off. She actually never sleeps if she’s not next to a person (she won’t even do a next to me crib), she has to be touching a person constantly. That’s why we started co-sleeping.

I also never know for sure if she’s ready for bed or it’s just her sleep pattern. She wakes multiple times a night and while often she’ll feed back to sleep, sometimes she refuses any kind of feeding and we have to walk around with her for 30 or so minutes minimum.

anyway I’ll be giving the later nights a go with the hope I get more than a couple of hours sleep!

I had one like this. Shes now 15. Hours and hours trying to get her to sleep at a normal bedtime - she just refused. She now goes to bed later than me - Shes just a night owl. I am genuinely not lying that she went to sleep before 8pm less than five times. All of those times she was unwell

Can you feed her to sleep or has that stopped working too?

I find if I put mine down as soon as I feel she’d asleep, she stays asleep. If I wait 5 mins she wakes immediately.

What's her total sleep in a 24 hour period?

Tbh I think in this scenario -
she usually shows sleepy cues (rubbing eyes, yawning, getting irritable). We then usually give her a quick bath or some nappy free time on the bed, then story and lights out. - you're drawing out the routine too much. If she's already giving all those cues you don't want to then bath her and read her a story - just put her to bed.

I also read that a routine was important, and that I needed to have baby in bed 7.30 but I think that is nonsense - it depends on when the baby woke in the morning, how much sleep they have in a 24 hour period and their sleep needs (by which i mean it varies from child to child rather than all children turning into pumpkins at 7.31pm)

How many day rime naps is she having and when is she waking for the day?

Sleep train. Saved our sanity at seven months.

Nap is far too late. My DD didn’t sleep until 10pm every night despite changing naps and getting up times! Some are just not tired and don’t need much sleep.

Work out how much sleep she needs in a 24h period by noting how much she sleeps each day for 5 days and averaging.

when you know this amount cap her naps to leave you with 10-11hours at night, with the last nap ending 4 hours before target bedtime.

eg if she sleeps on average 13h per 24h

6:30am wake

two naps during the day adding up to no more than 2.5 hours. Last nap to end 3.5h minimum before bed.

8:00pm bed

Whilst it is good to have some routine, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest a baby needs at 7:30pm bedtime, someone has pulled that out their arse. It is totally arbitrary. It the amount of sleep the baby gets, and getting some consolidated chunks to sleep, that matters.

the key thing here is that she needs to have long enough periods awake to be tired enough to go to sleep. Even if she’s rubbing her eyes in the early evening, that doesn’t mean she’s tired enough to go to bed for the long sleep. Babies get bored. Keep her busy and entertained. If you want her in bed at 7:30pm last nap needs to end by 4pm, or ideally 3:30pm really.

once we got my son onto a schedule that fit his sleep needs and sleep trained he was asleep within five minute of going into the cot every evening, because he was appropriately tired for bed.

Have you tried her in a cot? My dd liked a cot in her own room where it was dark and quiet better than co-sleeping. I think with cosleeping I just woke her up every time I moved 🤦‍♀️

Soothing music also helped, I used Mozart for babies.

Personally I would feed and put her to bed sleepy but not asleep, if she’ll take a dummy then use that.

Then gradually leave her to settle, a little bit of moaning/crying as they settle is okay and you can reassure if she starts to get upset.

Could she just chill with you and then try later? It’d clear she’s not tired?