Help ! 5mth old is suddenly waking about 8 times in the night

[Ruthiebaby]

My ds is 5 and a half mths old. He used to be sooooo good when it came to sleeping. He would go to bed about 10ish and sleep till 6 or 7, sometimes even 9 all the way through.

Recently though he's started waking something awful !

Last night for example he went to bed at 9. Woke up at 9.30 until 10.00. Woke up at 1.15 for a feed (still breastfed), and dropped back off straight away. Woke back up when I placed him back in his cot and cried. Managed to get him back off, woke up 10 mins later and cried. Did this dozing off and waking and crying until 3am. Woke up again at 5am for another feed. Went back to sleep half an hour later. Woke at 7am for another feed then dozed and woke up several times until I finally got up with him at 8.30am.

It's been like this the last few nights. I don't know why.

It's a bit worrying as I'm going back to work in 4 weeks time.

Also, finding it very difficult to get him to go to sleep now in the evenings and days. Thinking of doing controlled crying.

Anybody know why my son has suddenly started doing this waking thing, and whether controlled crying may help ?

Ruthie, it does sound like a sleep association thing. I think you can start cc at 6 mths. Have a look at Ferber's Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems. He's very clear and reassuring.

Feffi - the pick up, put down thing looks like worth trying first. I actually did this just now as ds was crying in his cot before his morning nap and he's just dropped off !

Bakedpotato - thankyou, as he's not 6mths yet I'll try with the pick up -put down first.

God it's awful when you're sleep deprived.

My ds is 7 months old now but went through a phase like this about 2-3 months ago and it just about killed me! Granted, it was right after moving here from the states so he was going through some crazy sleep adjustments. However, I tried using a dummy to help him settle and that worked at times, sometimes picking up then rocking a bit them putting down worked. I was also still swaddling him at that point to get him down as he typically thrashed around and woke himself up almost everytime I put him down and it took me up to 3 times putting him down to get him down. But, if I had a blanket wrapped around him his back stayed warm and he didn't fuss when I put him down - I just had the blanket under him while I nursed then wrapped him when he was asleep. However, just to give you an idea, he's not swaddled anymore and is sleeping much better - waking up that many times in the night won't last forever!!

My DS went from 6-8 hours stretches to 2-3 hour or less at about 14 weeks and it was caused by teething discomfort. Things are very gradually improving now as 2 teeth came through a few weeks ago and he is a much happier baby day and night (he's 6 months now).