My 6 month old baby wakes up so many times in the night😢

[joeysmama25]

Can anyone give me any advice please, my baby boy is 6 and a half month old and he’s been in his own bedroom for around 2 weeks, he’s always been a bad sleeper and doesn’t like to nap through the day. He will occasionally have an hour nap in the day or the odd 20/30 minutes in the car. He’s going to sleep around 6:30pm and now waking around 11:30pm and waking up crying roughly every 10 minutes until about 3am. Can anyone give any advice on what I could try?

Probably more daytime sleep. How is he sleeping in the day atm? Is it in a cot or pram or contact nap?

It’s usually a cot nap but If were out he will nap in his pram but usually only about 40 mins

Try contact naps or pram naps. It might be they need a little bit of movement to continue the nap. Or pop into his room and see if you can extend it before he wakes.
Hour nap at 6 months seems really under what many babies have. Most babies are having 2 or 3 naps.

It is hard OP. In my experience if it's just a phase it will last a few weeks then their sleep changes again so I always hold onto the hope it won't last too long! Solidarity though, my 7mo DS doesn't sleep longer than 2 hours at a time at night and thinks 3am is party time at the moment.

It is likely the change in being in his own bedroom plus the lack of daytime sleep is causing problems at night. I can imagine he is very tired. Personally I just let DS nap wherever I think he will sleep best that day: contact nap, cot, pram in garden, car...I know not everyone agrees with it but I've found he is napping much better than my DD ever did who I used to insist on cot naps for.

Also, could anything be actually waking him up at night. Is he too hot/cold? Is it too light? Is there a noise you're not aware of? My DD went through a phase like this so I sat in her room for an hour or so one night at the time she usually woke up and found out it was my neighbour letting their puppy out who barked incessantly right outside her window whilst my neighbour put her DC to bed. We didn't know as couldn't hear it at the front of the house!

Yeah he’s definitely having nowhere near the sleep he should be in the day.
I also allow my baby to nap wherever he falls asleep, it depends on the day but he just doesn’t seem to like to sleep. I’m really hoping it’s just a phase that will pass because it’s so miserable for everyone and he’s so overtired. I hadn’t actually thought of that, our bedroom is the same side of the house as his and we haven’t noticed any noise but I’ll try sitting in his room tonight and seeing if it could be something waking him

Is he hungry? Bedtime seems very early so I’m not surprised he wakes up. I know weaning advice has changed, but I’d introduce foods if you haven’t. He might be more satisfied and sleep longer. I never had this phase of not sleeping but my DD ate well!

He has 7oz every 3.5 hours in day and 3 different foods throughout the day too. Is 6:30/7pm consistently very early for a 6 month old? He would struggle to stay awake any later

Does he have milk overnight OP and what foods is he having?

He has another bottle when he wakes around 11pm and occasionally he has a few ounce at around 3am if he won’t settle. We change the foods up every day but he has a rusk or baby porridge usually around 8:30am, around 1pm he will have a homemade purred veg then at 4:30pm he has what we’re having for tea but blended

How many short naps is baby having? And what do you mean by letting nap where falls asleep?

At that age should be awake for 2-3 hours at a time. So if having more shorter naps to get the sleep thats fine. I think mine did 4 x 30 min naps at one point.

At that age mine definitely couldn't 'fall asleep' somewhere. I actively had to decide to get them to nap and put some effort into getting them to nap. Be it a walk in pram, sling, contact nap. If you just leave them and wait for them to fall asleep you won't get far.

My advice would be, get a good day time routine in place.
Probably 4 naps a day if he's not sleeping very long at each one.
Do a routine of wake-feed-play-sleep so he isn't needing the bottle to fall asleep on.
Your first cycle of the morning will be shorter, if he's waking for the day at 7 then he will need to be fed, played with, changed and ready for his first nap by 8.30-9.
Ideally I'd aim for a shorter morning nap, a longer lunch time nap and an afternoon cat nap eg 8.30-9.30am, 12-2, 4-4,30 or 4 shorter naps.
Wake him from his last nap 3 hours before you want him asleep for the night.

Initially don't worry too much about how you are getting him to sleep at nap times, give him lots of help like rocking, walking in the pram, add sleep cues like a comforter or muslin to fall asleep with (remove once he's asleep), dummy, white noise, sing a special song. Just ensure he is getting 3-4 regular naps a day.

Once he's sleeping better in the day, tackle bedtime.
Don't feed him to sleep, have a routine so you do bottle, brush teeth, then go to his room with all the sleep cues (song, comforters, white noise) and cuddle or rock him until asleep then put him down and pat or rock him in the cot so he stays asleep.
Once you can do that, then cuddle til sleepy, put in his cot and pat to sleep. Pick him up if he cries and cuddle to calm him then put him down and pat.
Once that works then you should be able to just put him straight down with some patting and eventually just straight in his cot to fall asleep.

@joeysmama25 it’s early if he keeps waking up after 5 hours and will not settle. We went later because we wanted dc to sleep longer when we were asleep. He’s clearly not a sleepy baby but I’d aim to keep him very busy in the evening and how late is dinner if he’s ready for bed at 6.30 pm. I’d try and extend the day.

@SaveMeFromMyBoobsi certainly don’t leave him to just fall asleep, I’m meaning that I will rock him to sleep and he will fall asleep on me, sometimes we contact nap, sometimes I take him to his cot, if we’re out for a walk he will sleep in his pram or if we are going out he will sleep in the car

@Oliwiaathankyou so much that advice is really helpful I appreciate it

@MeetMeOnTheCornerwe have tried later bedtime and he seems to be worse. He has dinner at 4:30 then a bottle to fall asleep at 6:30pm.

I'm not sure on ways you can fix his sleep, some babies just aren't great sleepers. However, can your husband/partner and yourself not take it in shifts to sleep so that should the baby wake up, you've both got a chance at some solid chunks of sleep between you?

DS always got worse sleep (than his usual bad sleep) when he was about to have a developmental leap. It seemed like he would give us absolute hell for a few weeks and then all would be forgotten because he'd show us a new trick he'd picked up and we would just puppy eyes him.