My LO has recently turned 6 months old. He's been sleeping through for the past 2 months and I thought we had cracked it. Until the start if this week, he has been waking every night at 1:30am. I've recently started weaning at 5 months by giving him purée once a day with his bottle. I've slowly increased this so he has a little fromage frail in the morning with his bottle then a small purée veg dinner at lunch followed by his regular bottles. I've tried increasing and decreasing his food, feeding him earlier and later, giving him warmer and slightly cooler baths before bed, and warm milk as his last bottle. Also he wears a Pampers nappy at bedtime so he doesn't wake if he wees etc. I've checked his room temp and mde sure he's in the right clothing and also dosed him up with Calpol and Neurofen before bed for his teething. I am at the end of my tether, last night he went to bed at 7:30 then woke at 11:00 so I gave him a bottle and he fell straight back to sleep, but then woke up at 3:33 loudly talking to himself. I've left him to self soothe but he just gets louder and louder.
Does anyone have any advice? I'm taking him to the Dr on Monday to check he doesn't have an ear infection or something....just wondered if anyone has gone through something similar...
Thanks
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MummyK
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My son is 11 months. He slept through the night from 5 weeks old to 17 weeks then suddenly, waking in the night again. Though he never woke for feeds. Now he sometimes sleeps through and sometimes doesn't. It seems common with all the other mummies I speak to as well with babies the same age as mine. It may be a developmental period or growth spurt that has disrupted the night sleeps now and I'm afraid there isn't too much that can be done about that. I don't do sleep training with my son so I can't offer advice there. I just get up when he needs me but like I say, his sleep pattern varies. Normally coincides with some form of spurt or teething, etc x
My daughter is now 1 year 3 weeks, and I have been one unlucky mum with routine. She started sleeping through at 5 months (which means from 7:30 until 5:30) and that routine broke when she was at a growth spurt at 7 months (no the spurt was not for more food but for more learning, so she will wake up in night to practice crawling and babbling!) For some day I was excited and join the babbling party at night, often my babbles will end with 'blah blah blah yup thats right now lets sleep' and then i would pretend sleeping or snoring and after few days she again got bored of it so decided to sleep through.
Than comes recently (well a month ago is not that recent even!), my LO wakes up in the middle of the night to tell me a story (oh! yes the babbling has become so expressive that it can probably easily convey the dream that we were having, we were on a mountain of strawberries with all the lego blocks!).
After a while, she started waking up and sucking her thumb right in my ear (hmmmm mummy I am hungry fix me milk) one of the milk demand days i ignored and pretended sleep, so my little one opened my eyes with her tiny fingers!
Oh! BTW I am co-sleeping the baby and doing a bit of attachment parenting (just in case you wondered how she reached my eye).
But now we are planning to move her to her room (if she agrees ofcourse) and hopefully my sleepless nights would end.
So well, hang in there, it could be anything from excitement of learning a new stuff, maybe a nice visual in a dream (not sure if babies always dream but mine laughs a lot in her sleep so must be something nice and funny!) or plain hunger
I have a friend whose third child still wakes in the night at 4 years old, the older two slept through from when they were quite young, she's done nothing different and her husband is a GP, some sleep, some don't, it's nothing you're doing right or wrong. It could be developmental, teething or just that's how they are. Don't beat yourself up over it, do whatever works for you regarding sleep training, co-sleep if that will work for you, try cry it out if you want. They sleep through eventually, just wait until they're teenagers and don't want to get out of bed and you have to get them up for school!
I agree all babies are different so it's hard to generalise. Could he be hungry and needing more solid feeds? My lo is 29 weeks and has four bottles and three solid meals a day. Baby porridge and fruit puree for breakfast, veg puree for lunch and usually something like chicken and veg puree for dinner. But you know your baby best, so go with your gut feeling. Mine sometimes wakes and chatters to himself for a bit, but settles again if left to it. They can be noisy little chatterers can't they! Oh, and I use bonjella for his teeth. Hope you crack it, its so hard when your sleep is disturbed. X
I feel your pain! My LO is nearly 6 months and is also struggling a bit with his sleeping having been pretty good up until 4 or 5 months and we've been a bit puzzled why. Similar thing as your LO - waking for a feed at 11 ish but by 3.30/4pm awake again and taking 1 1/2 hrs to settle - he doesn't seem hungry at first but by 5am he has become hungry!
Has it coincided with your LO becoming more mobile? Mine's a really active baby. I have tried upping the milk feeds and starting solids now like you, but not worked so far so I think it's probably him getting stranded on his tummy disturbing his sleep. Possibly one of those things to ride out until he's better at flipping back onto his back.
It could just be a habit - The Baby Whisperer suggests this when it's the same time every night and recommends you have to kind of half wake them about half an hour before they normally wake up to break their habit (she calls it "wake to sleep"). We used it with my older one when he was a baby waking up at the same time every night and amazingly it seemed to work so we're going to give it a go this time. Whatever you do I hope the sleep gets back on track - would be good to hear an update!
Hi, no experience personally but a work colleague had same problem. Driving them mad until a family member suggested changing the mattress - which they did to an air flow mattress which adjusts to changes in temperature. Apparently it solved the issue over night. Miracle. Worth investigation.
No advice but I'm interested in the advice given. My LO is nearly 20 wks and has just started this after going from 9ish to 7ish. It's hard work. Fingers crossed you get sorted soon xx
Sound exactly like my 5 month old. She's definitely hungry when she wakes up because she's having a full bottle then going back to sleep. She won't stay up past about 7.30 at night and never drinks her full bedtime bottle. I've tried feeding her later, earlier. Hv said to persevere. Sorry I'm no help. At least we're not alone lol x
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