Sleep training for 5-month-old?

[bean612]

Just to be clear from the off, I'm not talking about CC or anything that involves leaving her on her own, but about sitting by her cot while she learns to get herself to sleep (and cries a lot in the process, I guess). I'm also not talking about cutting out night feeds altogether either, as she's only just turned 5 months and might still need them.

Basically she's never learned to get herself to sleep and for the past 2 weeks has basically woken up 6 or 7 times a night, ie. every 1-2 hours. It's not about hunger most of the time, but about waking up not in our arms/on the bottle/breast where she fell asleep, and I know we need to break this habit sooner or later and can't face months more of this.

I'd be really grateful for advice. I know she's too young for CC but surely she's old enough for controlled comforting (I think that's how this method is known)? It's for her sake as much as ours - she gets really tired in the daytime now and can't nap effectively either (she used to nap really well, albeit in my arms/the sling/buggy etc), so she's basically knackered all the time.

Might she be teething? My dd got her first teeth at 5 months, and slept & napped dreadfully.

Lacking sleep during the day will probably be affecting her nighttime sleep, so if I were you I would be concentrating on seeing if I could get her napping again, including trying to get her back to sleep if she wakes too soon.

Personally I thnk 5 months is too young for sleep training. Have you read 'The no cry sleep solution' by Elizabeth Pantley? I found it very soothing to my nerves when I thought I couldn't cope with the sleeplessness anymore.

Hi Biccy - I guess she could be teething as she's certainly chewing things a lot (mostly her hands and parts of me ). But if she is, she seems completely undistressed by it, ie. not in pain or crying about it, so surely she wouldn't be bothered at night either?

As for the napping, she started waking all the time at night long before she started napping less in the day, so I don't think that's the cause (though I'm sure it's not helping).

I do worry, like you say, that 5 months is a bit young, even if I never actually leave her to cry. But I can't help feeling that we're going to have to do it eventually and that the longer we leave it, the more embedded her sleep associations will be, and the harder it will be to change them...

Hi,
My ds is 6 months and has a simliar sleeping pattern. I just wanted to second the no cry sleeping solution book. I am just starting to work on some of her suggestions so its early days but think I am seeing some general improvements. Having read a few different baby books, they all seem to agree on the theory that good daytime naps mean good night time sleeping. We were in the habit of 3 half hour naps during the day and recently have managed to get 2 naps of 1 1/2 hour - though not every day and actually not today but I will persevere !
Get the book as there are other things you could be doing.
hth

Hi bean; I've been thinking about you during the day and wondering if there's anything I can say that might help, and I've found the following snippet from my NCT book on helping your baby to sleep.

"How Long Should I Go On Accepting That My Baby Wakes Me In The Night?
It's up to you, but it's best for your baby if he can easily disturb you for the first six months of his life, and it may help him if your available for the hext six months as well. Babies need to wake at night in the early months for food and because their immature bodies need contact with a nurturing adult at regular intervals just to keep going....."

It's quite a balanced book (Help Your Baby to Sleep by Penney Hames) and suggests either 'the kissing game' or 'gradual withdrawal' if you do want to do some behaviour management before one year.

Maybe you could start with trying to get her to go to sleep in her cot rather than your arms/on the breast etc. This is quite difficult to do, as you'll need to get her really sleepy and then gently lay her in the cot, and you may find yourself there a long time as she crys and you need to comfort her again. I did find that warming the sheet before putting dd down helped, and continuing to hold her body quite firmly while she was in the cot, and/or rubbing her back while she went to sleep.

Thanks Biccy, that's really nice to know and am very appreciative of your help

I guess it's not so much the night wakings that are really hard (I've come to accept those) but the fact that she wakes so often in the early part of the late evening/night. We just have no time to ourselves, no chance to eat dinner, sit down together etc as one of us is running upstairs every 20 mins to soothe her back to sleep. And then I feel guilty and selfish about being annoyed about this, because at the end of the day she's just a little one who needs cuddles. I guess also I'm disappointed because I thought at 5 months it would be better. It's not as though I expect her to sleep through the night, I don't mind the wakings to feed, it's just the wakings every time she gets to light sleep - and that's not even her "fault" because we never taught her to go to sleep on her own - she had bad reflux for the first 3 months of her life and cried all the time, so we couldn't face crying at bedtimes as well. (She still has the reflux, but it's being well managed by medication now.)

Now, the getting her to sleep in her cot is exactly what I meant in my OP, so I'd love to know if/how it was successful for you. What I wonder is, if/when she manages to get to sleep in the cot but with you beside her, what happens when she wakes up and you're not there (ie. in the evening when you're downstairs)?

And thank you jumpingjojo, too - I think I'm going to get hold of a copy of the NCSS tomorrow...

Sorry, I didn't tackle going to sleep in the cot by self thing until I was physically unable (due to her size and weight) to walk her about the room in my arms, singing, until she went off. It sort of sorted itself out once she got old enough to enjoy stories at bedtime, and once I stopped breastfeeding (20 months), so she could sit on my lap drinking milk from a cup, listening to stories and getting really sleepy, then go into her cot/bed.

If she's waking every 20 minutes in the evening, it doesn't sound as though she's getting to deep sleep, as her sleep cycle would be 1.5 to 2 hours I think. Without knowing the ins and outs of your routine it's hard to work out why she would be waking so often - is she too tired to feed properly at her last feed and therefore waking up after a 'nap' becuase she's hungry, but then because she doesn't get fed, the cycle goes on until she does get a feed? How long after her last nap is she going down - is it too early, or too late? From memory, at this age, she can probably only last awake for a couple of hours, so if you want her to go to bed at 7pm, she needs to be waking from a nap around 5pm.

Could you manage one night to stay with her after she's gone to sleep so you can watch and see what happens? You may be able to catch her just as she stirs and a 'shh' with a back rub may be enough for her to resettle, and then she may learn to sleep better for that early stretch?

Oh well, fair enough. I just remember life becoming loads easier when I cottoned onto the fact that when dd cried 2 hours after her last feed, she didn't need another feed, she needed to sleep. They're all different aren't they?

Biccy, my DD is the same - 2 or 3 hours after waking she needs to nap again, especially in the morning. And like you, it took me blinkin ages to work that out (actually I think I even read it in a book/on a website somewhere rather than working it out for myself, yet it seems so totally obvious now). If she was up for 6 hours before her first nap of the day, she'd go absolutely mental! They are indeed all different.

And I must say - I'm in awe of your patience, carrying your DD around for 20 months before tackling getting her to get to sleep on her own. I feel humbled now. To be honest she has been much better the past couple of nights (fingers crossed for tonight) - she must have read this thread and decided to be kind . I'm pretty sure it's not hunger that's waking her, I think it's just a case of "I fell asleep in my mummy/daddy's arms and/or with a nice bottle/boob in my mouth, and now everything's changed and I don't like it"

Oops, there she goes now...