How can I make him sleep longer?

[Tsia]

Hi all.. Hope your all having a babyliciosous time. lol

My Liitle Mylo is 18 weeks on sunday and his sleeping pattern is still more or less the same since he was first born.

Sleeps 8-9pm for a few hours..
12 midnight stirs and accepts dream feed but only takes about 40 mls
then somewhere between 3-5am wakes again.. maybe another 40 mls or just dummy and goes back to sleep..
then 7am.. wakes.. same thing but maybe take more like half a bottle (90mls)
8-9am wakes.. same thing again.. by 10 am I am exhausted but give into defeat and get up.. Mylo smiiley and giglly til noon where he'll have a full bottle and go back to sleep!! grrrr

the after noon naps are never the same. if I am busy and I go out in the car he'll sleep.. if I am at home.. he'll enjoy jumperoo and wont sleep..

If I put him in his cot when hes not even remotely tired.. he'll cry till I fix the problem. Sometimes there isnt even a problem.. and lately I have noticed he is cutting his first tooth.. (little white dot on bottom gum, lots of drooling and fist biting)

So I gather now we are entering the teething zone.. shall I give up on trying to will him to sleep for longer intervals?
Hes not yet weaned but tried him the odd morning on fruity porridge which he is still gagging on as hes not used to lumps in his throat so maye not quite ready. So I aint pushing it.. even though I read somewhere that once they wean onto the thicker food.. they sleep better? is taht true?

Please help a mummy at the end of her rapidly fraying rope!

 

[nikkip75]

mylo sounds pretty much the same as eden and shes 20 weeks, her longest sleeps in the day can be anything upto 2/3 hours but sometimes she just wants to play,jumperoo,roll around on her mat or sit on my knee and watch tele.I dont really force her to sleep at a set time, unless shes crying then i will help her to get to sleep but otherwise if shes happy i just leave her to it.

BUT from talking to other mums from playgroups and stuff anyone who has a little boy seems to say they hardly ever nap through the day! one lady has a little boy same age as eden and hes awake to whole day! where as i have 3 girls and they have all had good long naps through the day

oh and you get up at 10am!! you are soooo lucky, eden was babbling away at 6.30am and when she did eventually go back to sleep 30 minutes later my 3 year old got up and woke us all up if its not one its the other lol

 

[Foogirl]

Does he feed well during the day? You could try cutting down on the night feeds and feeding more during the day.

Do you have a proper bedtime routine? You could introduce one about 7 o' clock and deal with any night feeds with no fuss but try to settle him down before offering a feed.

You could also introduce a nap time routine, same idea as a bedtime routine but shorter, wind him down.

When you put him down to nap, is the room dark?

Does he show any tired signs at all during the times he is up? There is a theory that there is a 90 minute cycle they are on. After 90 mins they will be tired but if you miss that window you've got another 90 minutes! Abby can't be up for much longer than 90 minutes without a massive hissy fit! The other thing to be aware of is if he has bundles of energy, it is possible he is over tired as certainly as they get older it might seem like they aren't tired when in fact they are knackered!

 

[dom85]

Have you tried cutting out the midnight dreamfeed? If he's only taking 40 mls it doesn't sound like he's really hungry.Brady used to wake at the same kind of times, the HV suggested he wasn't hungry and said babies wake a lot in the night.

I left Brady for 10 minutes to see if he would go back to sleep (he wasn't crying though) and he did, when he wakes at 4 am I give him his dummy, sometimes he loses it a lot because he's half asleep so I spend 20 minutes keep putting it back in.

Now we have bath, bottle and bed at 7-8pm, dreamfeed at 11pm and he's been going through to 7/8am. If he's teething you could give him some calpol around 11 (or whenever you go to bed) and see if this makes him go longer.

 

[Foogirl]

I forgot to add, you will likely have a much easier time with teething if he is otherwise sleeping well so I wouldn't wait until that's done. Plus it could take months!

 

[Laraa]

your routine is exactly the same as myn..my little one wakes up constntly no matter wot i do..and shell have the longest afternoon nap and like urself i cant sleep i do my housework instead