4-5 month olds sleep club, - come and join..........

[SnowlightMcKenzie]

Hiya,

There have been so many threads lately about babies who were beginning to sleep better, but suddenly hitting this regression to newborn hell.

So I thought I would start a support thread for us all to compete whinge about how little sleep we are all getting, and tips on how to cope.

Baby Starlight was up just twice last night, but the previous night it was 6 times, and because of that I kept putting off going to bed at all last night, so even though it wasn't too bad, I still had hardly any sleep

Sorry, no time to catch up today, just marking my place as we are still not out of the 2 hourly wake up woods...

I've never done a dreamfeed. Seems pointless to wake up a sleeping babe to take a sleepy (and therefore insufficient) feed in order to make him sleep again .

Only 4 wakes (I think - does anyone else find it all a bit hazy by morning?) last night, which is def a big improvement on where we were a few days ago. Again not a lot of sleep during the day yest, but he seems not to suffer from overtiredness in quite the same way as his sister did.

Leonie you poor thing. I know you've had much more than we have to cope with, but I did get an inkling of that the night before last when DS was up twice an hour from 9pm-6:45am.

I am in agreement with you cantsleep about the dreamfeed after last night! It has been getting harder and harder to get DS to feed properly at this time, and last night he just screamed and screamed at me from the moment I woke him. I thought he had wind, but couldn't get anything up, eventually jiggled him in the pram for a moment to calm him down (always works for some reason) and looked down and he was asleep! Popped him in the cot and he slept, with only one quick resettling, till 2:30am.
Have decided to just get an early night for the next couple of weeks and feed him when he decides he's hungry. I expect it'll mean 3 night feeds for a while, but with a bit of luck he'll adjust his daytime feeds a bit and begin to sleep longer.

best night in two months - fed and to bed at 7, woke at 10 (before we went to bed), then 1.30 and 5.30 feel like a new woman this morning (almost!).

I'm undecided about dreamfeeds - he sometimes wakes naturally around the time we go to bed which is fine (as last night) but if I wake him to feed he is usually a nightmare to settle again

...and he has had two naps in his cot so far today - i am having to bf him to sleep though and carry him up very carefully - one thing at a time! Oh how I long for the day when I can put him down awake and he drifts off to sleep on his own...

I 'think' things are improving here.

We seem to be down to 2 night wakings between 11:30pm and 7am, with fairly swift resetling (okay she's fed to sleep).

Funnily enough it started to improve the day she began to roll over.

Ladies. Just a few words of support for someone who's been there and come out the other side. DS (now 9 months) started waking up every hour when he was 16 weeks. It was such a shock as he had slept 8 or 9 hour stretches from when he was 6 weeks old. I was dead on my feet, BFing all thru the night and I wanted to cry every morning because I was so tired. I made the silly mistake of weaning DS at 17 weeks because I assumed he was hungry. I really regret weaning him that early now as I realise now that it was a sleep regression and not hunger that was waking him. I don't want anyone else to make that mistake.

Just stick with it. It is torture but it DOES end! All of a sudden, DC will start sleeping well again and you won't be able to explain what made it all better - dream feeds etc seem to be irrelevant! It lasted 6 weeks for us. Then the 6 month sleep regression started...but that's a whole new thread!

That's good to hear lovelymama although a bit disturbed to hear there's a 6 month sleep regression - DS is almost 6 months and still in the 5 month sleep trough!

Anyway, the last few nights have proved that bringing him into our bed actually means less sleep for everyone. He definitely likes his space and whenever I've ended up settling him next to me out of tiredness, he's woken every hour instead of every two or three. So last night I made myself wake up properly and shh or feed as necessary and he did 12-4am no problem Of course then he crapped his leg off at 5am and was wide awake...weaning brings its own problems, doesn't it?

Urgh, another awful night - seems to be one on, one off at the moment. DS has developed a bit of a cold, which isn't helping, but he was up 7 or 8 times (not sure) between 9pm-5am, of which 3 were for feeds. at 5am we eventually managed to persuade him to have 2 hours sleep in his bouncy chair with DP bouncing it the whole time. He then had another mahoosive feed - I'm wondering whether the swallowing eases the phlegm a bit, which is the main symptom of his cold.

Cyteen bedsharing is a disaster here too - DS just feeds constantly and wakes fully every time he nods off and unlatches - we've done it a couple of times over the months and the same thing happens every time.

well, last night was resoundingly shit DP and I both shattered and niggling at each other - the "i'm more tired than you" argument is bubbling just below the surface and i refuse to go there.

Night before last good - woke twice hoorah. Last night utter shit - waking evry few min, crying, fussing. Little sleep I did get was sitting up mid-feed. Also up from about 8 when it's usually the lie-in that keeps me going. Feel like cracking up. Cried once in small hours, three times this morning. Never even got baby blues - this much worse than newborn. Crying drives me crazy then snap at her then wracked with guilt

Got up to find her covered in rash so feeling terrible Waiting for nurse to call back.

cyteen hugs - HATE the who is tiredest argument.

I know Many sympathies for your crap night also.

Oh dear, squeaking from upstairs back soon.

Sympathies for the bad nights. We actually had our best one for a long time here. Only 2 or 3 wakes for food. I'm not sure which because I woke up hours after a feed to find ds asleep lying across my chest, and I'm not sure if he'd been there for hours, or if we'd had another more recent wake that I'd forgotten about.

glad to hear some are doing better!

the most frustrating thing is that i had such high hopes for last night: DS stirred at 10 again but was easily shushed, then same at 11, then didn't actually wake for food till almost 1am Easily back down in his cot afterwards...then i found myself shushing at 2.15, 2.25, he was hungry again at 3.30, wet through at 4.45 and thus wide awake after a change, then did a massive poo at 5am...aargh. DP took him downstairs then, and when i came down i discovered that he has done the washing up AND cleaned all the crud off the hob so now i feel really bad.

Cyteen we have verged on that argument so many times recently, you're not alone there!

Last night bloody awful here too, but DS has a cold, so I now don't know how much of it is due to that. He fed absolutely loads, I guess it helped the phlegmy throat (he doesn't particularly have a blocked nose, but lots of gulping phlegm). Thankfully DP took responsibility from 2-5am, so I got one decent sleep, but he generally woke at least once an hour all night, and was up for an hour at 11, an hour at 1 and an hour at 4...
What's so awful is that if this carries on once he's healthy, I can see us inching towards the CC route at 6 months, which I really don't want to do, but I know it's in his interests as much as ours to be getting a decent night's sleep. I'm just hoping that the recent combination of constipation, immunisations and a cold has made things particularly bad, and they'll improve once he's healthy again.

things have got progrssively worse here. ds2 was waking once for about 1/2 hour, then it crept to being awake for 1 to 2 hours (lots of wriggling and squirming trying to see stuff even though the room is pitch black - tried bringing into our bed in desperation for soem sleep - no joy at all. at its worst, he woke 3 times for 2 hours each time and the last one at 5am, he didn't go back to sleep until lunchtime - aaaggh.. having said that, last night was much better, 10.45 for 1/2 hour and 4am for 1/2 hour. was up for the day at 6.30 mind but you can't complain at that. Hoping for the same tonight but we'll see.

Am hoping we are out of the 5 month nightmare - what's the 6 month sleep regression?? Also, if they are not sleeping at 5 months, can they regress any further at 6 months???

Sounds like we weren't alone in our dreadful night last night - I lost count of the number of wakes (soemwhere around 9 or 10 I think) but culminating in wide awake at 5 am and took an ohour and a half to get back to cleep - then only slept for 30 minutes!! But she only had 2 feeds so in a way I suppose it's progress
Anyway DH then took her off my hands from 7.15 till 8.45 - felt like the best sleep I've had in ages. Then bizarrely she had the biggest nap in recent memory this afternoon - over 2 hours
But the latest has been a v unsettled evening - went down at 8.35 (usually asleep by 7.15) but has woken up twice already and it's only 9.40 ish..WHat will tonight bring? Hope everyone else all set for a good night!!

Hello can I come and join the worst party in the world? DS is 16 weeks and although a nightmare to get to sleep, once asleep he would normally stay that way or if he woke would resettle himself or settle immediately after being fed. It's all gone tits up over the last few weeks though, aided by a growth spurt then a cold.

After his cold I realised he was waking expecting to be fed to sleep (would fall asleep within seconds of being on the boob, stop feeding after about a minute then have no interest in first feed of the day), so have bene weaning him off the boob during the night if he isn't actually hungry - am convinced he isn't hungry because he will be soothed by dummy/water etc and once asleep again will sleep for another few hours, though I always check to make sure he isn't hungry cos last thing I want is to starve him!

The dummy is now a major issue though, I don't know if he's waking up for it and I think I'm more addicted to it than he is. He's waking every few hours, crying (though starts off as just shouting) so I don't think he's in pain from teeth or wind (on a few occasions he clearly is in pain so been giving him teething gel which calms him down).

Usually the dummy sends him back to sleep but he'll wake a 2-10mins later when it pops out so it actually can take up to an hour to settle him, sometimes he settles immediately.

Had our best night for a while last night, fed to sleep in what's normally our dream feed (which btw I don't wake him up for normally), slept til 3am but before I even got out of bed he'd gone quiet so seemed to settle himself (hasn't done that in over a month), 4am took 2 goes of putting dummy back before he went down (so 20mins to settle) then at 5 settled immediately when dummy went in, woke at 7 for the day

god, reading that back it sounds like an awful night doesn't it!

I really don't want to do controlled crying, anyone tried the whole pick-up-put-down thing to get through this phase, or do we just need to ride the storm? Am wondering if I can get him off his dummy, then he'll learn to settle himself again?

GWTMH - hello! Do pop back to our post natal thread for chat and comparisons on all things baby related - we seem to have lost you!

Any night where the baby doesn't wake til 3am is bloody fantastic in my book! Ds has never managed that (yet, she says optimistically). You are approaching the BIG growth spurt that many of us are going/just been through, so you really should expect your nights to get worse rather than better very soon.
If it's taking you so long to settle him with a dummy, would it not be easier to try feeding him back to sleep instead? At least then you will be in the habit and have upped your supply before the growth spurt hits.

Another okish night here, except that ds decided to stay awake from 4:15am-5:20am, and then woke with wind at 6:20 - the same time that his sister decided to come bounding in for a feed and to start the day.

I was feeling very bleak this morning - lots of "he's never going to sleep more than 3 hours at a stretch EVER" type thoughts. Everything hurts, especially all the joints in my left arm. If only I could get a decent stretch of sleep, I know they would clear up...

ok ladies, I am scared now - what is this 6 month sleep regression? I cannot go back through what I've been through since 1 Dec 2008, no way! DS is 6 months in 1 week

Yes, I am cowering in the corner about that as well.

How is everyone doing today? Last night was actually ok-ish; DS still woke quite a bit but it was less complicated. Shushing at around 10.30pm, fed at midnight, then he was straining and grunting for about half an hour at around 1am - I was too knackered to get up and pick him up so just crawled to the end of the bed and shushed him in his cot, rubbed his tummy etc. I didn't think it would work but miraculously he did go back to sleep! Had a few more times like this, then fed again at 4ish, then DP got up with him at 6am.

I hadn't realised how much the actual getting out of bed and picking him up was doing me in - despite being awake several times I feel so much better, physically. DS is a big heavy boy and dealing with him all day is hard work, so being able to rest at night is obviously more important than I had thought. My joints are so much less painful and creaky, so I am happy

Morning... gosh it does help to know that I am not alone in this. DD was basically up from 2.45 last night, Grrr, waking every 30 minutes or so and just not settling She did go from about 10.30 to 2.45 when she started her feed so that is something. I also find the settling down in the evening tough - any ideas? It can basically take most of the evening to settle her down (starting around 7), every time i put her in her cot she wakes again