sleep help (long)

[7costanza]

My son is 6 months old and I am getting desperate for a good night sleep and will take any advice you have. Before I went back to work in early November he was sleeping from about 9:00 pm - 7:00 am. That lasted a week after I returned, he went to daycare for four days, caught a cold and has not slept through the night, or even longer than 3 hours at at a time, again. He's still in the RNP in our room, even though he's almost 19 lbs and starting to get mobile so we really need to get him in his crib or at least PNP. We finally stopped swaddling at 5 months. 

He will not sleep in his crib/PNP. If we put him flat on his back, he wakes up after 15-30 minutes. He has never slept on his back for longer than 30 minutes. He will usually go down between 7:00-9:00 (we follow his tired cues), but without fail is awake and super wild from about 10:00-12:30. Between going down and his wild time he wakes up every 20 minutes or so. This happens whether we are in the room with him or not. Once he goes down at 12:30, he wakes about every 2 hours. When he wakes he sometimes wants to nurse, and sometimes just falls back asleep after snuggles/rocking. Besides when he first wakes, he doesn't cry. 

He takes 4 naps a day, under one hour each. Very occasionally he will sleep for longer than an hour, mostly if someone (me) is holding him. He is very happy and active during the day, and the pedi isn't concerned with his sleep - I am doing all night wakings since he is EBF (started solids this week) and just need to sleep for my own sanity! Last night was especially hard because my H has a cold and was snoring like crazy, I don't know if he was waking up the baby or just me but it was brutal.  H is sleeping in the basement tonight. We also tried to transition to the PNP last night, and finally gave up at 3:30 and put him back in the RNP.

We have a good bedtime routine down and have for several months - diaper, lotion, vitamin D drops, jammies, two bedtime books (the same every night), nurse to sleep, and transfer to RNP. He gets a bath before bedtime about once a week. The bedroom has white noise and we keep it dark. He doesn't use a pacifier to sleep, but I recently introduced a lovey, but it seems to rile him up because he wants to pull it and put it in his mouth constantly. His little hands never stop moving! We haven't tried CIO/Ferber because I hate the thought of letting my baby cry (I know, who likes that thought) but I might be getting to the point of trying it. 

In summary, his main issues are:
-Goes down ok, but cannot stay asleep.
-Will not sleep flat on his back for longer than 30 minutes. 
-No matter what time we put him down, he is wild from 10:00-12:30. 

[Deleted]

Thoughts:
How close to rolling is he? Have you tried tummy sleep?
Move nursing earlier in the routine and stop nursing to sleep. I know, I know, it works, but it also makes frequent wake ups worse because every wake up is a "where's the boob?" You don't have to jump straight to CIO, but I would try to transition from nurse to sleep as it's not working.

[dcn]

Have you checked out troublesometots.com? I found her really helpful to figure out if we were in cio territory or not.

If it were me, i would move him out of the rnp and into a pnp or crib. Is he rolling? Around 6-7 months ds would roll around and get comfy, and eventually started sleeping on his belly. Also how long is he awake before bedtime? Ds consolidated to three naps right around six months, and he was awake about three hours before bedtime if i remember correctly.

Around six months i also stopoed nursing him to sleep because we had an obvious suck to sleep correlation problem. He could not go back to sleep without nursing and i was at my wits end. We switched up the routine so that i nursed him and then dh did stories and put him down. It made a huge difference.

[7costanza]

Jan 25, 2014 12:38:24 GMT -5 @tokenhoser said:

Thoughts:
How close to rolling is he? Have you tried tummy sleep?
Move nursing earlier in the routine and stop nursing to sleep. I know, I know, it works, but it also makes frequent wake ups worse because every wake up is a "where's the boob?" You don't have to jump straight to CIO, but I would try to transition from nurse to sleep as it's not working.

He rolls from front to back like once a week, hasn't rolled from back to front yet. He doesn't seem to have any interest in trying. I haven't tried tummy sleep but certainly can!

[7costanza]

Jan 25, 2014 12:40:24 GMT -5 dcn said:

Have you checked out troublesometots.com? I found her really helpful to figure out if we were in cio territory or not.

If it were me, i would move him out of the rnp and into a pnp or crib. Is he rolling? Around 6-7 months ds would roll around and get comfy, and eventually started sleeping on his belly. Also how long is he awake before bedtime? Ds consolidated to three naps right around six months, and he was awake about three hours before bedtime if i remember correctly.

Around six months i also stopoed nursing him to sleep because we had an obvious suck to sleep correlation problem. He could not go back to sleep without nursing and i was at my wits end. We switched up the routine so that i nursed him and then dh did stories and put him down. It made a huge difference.

Thanks for the site! I haven't heard of it but will check it out. I think we do need to stop nursing to sleep, he screams if DH tries to comfort him at bedtime and the constant nursing is probably why. He's awake for 2-3 hours before bedtime.

[ktw]

We had some of the same issues, and did Ferber a few weeks ago. I'm not going to tell you that my kid never cries before bed (she does), but I will tell you that after one night of crying when we laid her down for 1.5 hours (with checks), and 2.5 hours in the night (again, with checks), she went from being rocked to sleep for all naps and night sleep, and waking up 4+ times to be resettled by us, to going down awake (albeit with some tears, but 95% of the time she cries for 10 minutes or less), and waking up once, eating, and going back to sleep. She now sleeps 7pm to 6-7am, with one wake up around 3-4am. Occasionally she wakes at night, fusses, and puts herself back to sleep.

It's not easy, but it really worked for us. If I were you, I would cut all of the habits you don't want for the long term, put him where you want him sleeping, and settle in for a couple of difficult nights. But, if you can get through them, you will be amazed by how fast he learned to be a far better sleeper!

[ktw]

Oh, and my dd was also taking 4 naps for about 45 minutes each until about two weeks ago. I started stretching the time between naps, and now she takes 2 1.5 hour naps and sometimes a 3rd 45 minute nap in her crib. The only thing I did (aside from using Ferber to teach her to put herself to sleep in the crib a few weeks earlier) was keep her up for 2-3 hours between naps.

[everafter07]

There is a 6 month growth spurt. DD was up during the night for about a week to eat. She has RSV now and has been waking 1-3x a night. It's miserable, I'm sorry I'm not much help. Just commiserating.