Routine Worries

[fiffle]

My baby is 5 months old and I'm exclusively breastfeeding. He has virtually no routine and never seems to sleep lately. Especially at night.

He doesn't tend to go to sleep until around 3am no matter what I do.

A typical day for us; I get up at 7.30 and to get my older son ready for school and baby is usually fast asleep in his cot so I leave him there while I get my older son ready, then wake baby for a quick change before setting off for school.

Baby always falls back asleep in his pram. When we get home I take him out to get his coat off. Sometimes he sleeps through this, sometimes he wakes and wants a feed and usually falls asleep on the breast. I then put him in the carrycot downstairs where he will sleep until 11/12 o'clock.

I then change and feed him and then is usually playful for about an hour before becoming cranky, I then feed him and he goes back asleep again usually between 1/2pm.

I have to leave the house at 2.30pm to pick my older son up from school and again baby tends to sleep right through this and usually wakes up as soon as we get home again at 3.30pm.

From here it all seems to go haywire. He seems to be cranky all evening, he will bit feed, take a cat nap, wake up screaming, feed a little bit more, have a few minute where he's happy, suddenly become cranky again, feed a bit more, fall back asleep, wake up 10 minutes later, feed, play, scream, feed sleep... and in between all this i'll be winding him and changing his nappy and general playing a trying to guess the problem.

This goes on until well into the night. Usually at around 1am he suddenly cheers up and wants to play and giggle and babble away with himself, until around 2.30am. I then feed him in my bed and put him in his cot and he goes off to sleep by himself.

I've tried taking him up to bed earlier but he still only takes cat naps and wakes up demanding to be brought back down. I've asked my sisters and health visitor for advice but all they say is "oh he seems to have gotten himself a bit upside down, you'll have to try to get him to go down earlier" but how? It's not like I can keep him awake during the day at his age, it would be cruel. I'm really beginning to struggle on only 4 hours sleep per night. I'm getting nothing done around the house. I struggle to find time just to get a bath every other day. I can't help feeling like I'm doing something wrong.

HELP!!!!!

 

[New Mrs W]

Im no expert but I think you need to make small changes over a period of time. If he normally goes down at 2am, try putting him down at 1:45 instead. Do this for a couple of nights then move it to 1:30 am etc. It will take a while but I've heard of people being successful with this before.

From a personal point of view, Mickey wasn't going to bed until 11pm (when we went up) and I found that I was just holding him all day and night. He would wake for a feed when we went upstairs but would then sleep until 4am. I started putting him down at 8pm because I wanted my evenings back. This was fine but he started to wake at 1am and 5am which was a bit of a killer as his brother would often wake at 6am. But I stuck with it. He now usually sleeps 8-4, sometimes a bit longer, sometimes a bit shorter. He goes back down after until about 8am. I refused to bring him down stairs after 8pm. A few times it meant that I was upstairs with him for a couple of hours before he would settle but it got easier quite quickly x

 

[tinytabby]

Don't be so hard on yourself. Some babies are good sleepers and some aren't.

It sounds like you do need to implement a really rigid bedtime routine early in in the evening. Ours is dinner at 6, bath at 6.30 and milk/sleep between 7 and 7.30. We've done exactly the same thing practically every night since LO was 2 weeks old.

Sometimes it means we had to sit with her all evening trying to get her to sleep and I pretty much always fed her to sleep although she got better and better at self settling. Eventually though she got the idea that it was bedtime and although she still puts up a fight sometimes she fairly predictably sleeps 7-7 most nights.

I really do believe in the rigid bedtime routine - I think it doesn't matter how you get babies to sleep but you have to be clear what you expect from them.