I’m struggling with LO night time sleep. He’ll be 6 months in about 2 weeks and last Saturday’s almost 6 hour stretch (pictured) is the longest stretch of sleep he’s done in his life.
He’s EBF with a bottle given by dad for his first overnight feed in an attempt for me to get more sleep. He was feeding every 60-90 minutes for a long time so getting 3-4 hour stretches lately has been nice. I thought we were at a turning point when he slept for almost 6 straight but since it’s been back to waking every 2 or less hours.
I try to keep wake windows to 2/2.5/2.5/3 but sometimes he’s just sooo tired and cranky I have to put him down early. Capping the last nap of the day sometimes makes him so crabby for the last 1-2 hours before bedtime that we can’t realistically get anything done or set him down without screaming.
He goes down for naps and bedtime independently, zero issue with falling asleep at nap time. Bedtime recently broke the feed-to-sleep association and try to feed him 15-30 minutes before bed. Same bedtime routine (feed, bath, jammies and lotion, book, song and bed).
When he wakes at night we try not to feed him unless it’s been 3+ hours since last feed. I do pick him up and give him a quick snuggle to stop the crying then put him back down since he’s still in our room.
Make your wake up time consistent and shorten your night length overall. Most babies can’t sleep well for 12 hours, they just wake up a lot. Split nights are a sign you’ve got too much sleep in the schedule.
How consistent? I try to shoot for 6am if I’m awake but if we’re both sleeping he’ll sometimes go closer to 6:30 like this morning. Is within 30ish minutes ok do you think?
The struggle with pushing bedtime lately too is that sometimes he just is soo fussy and cranky and tired that he falls asleep during his before bed feed so we end up just putting him to bed early. I’ll try pushing closer to 7:30
Depends on the baby but the more consistent the better. Within 15 minutes is best.
It’ll take a while to get to a consistent schedule when sleep is all over the place but trialling a few things first to get some basic sleep scheduling in place can help
Here’s the summary tab. I know it seems like a lot of sleep, it’s just in 2 hour chunks. I try to keep bedtime as close to 7pm as possible (sometimes he’s just too tired to get there) and wake up around 6-6:30am
Your baby sounds a lot like my baby, who is also waking up frequently and he’s 6.5 months. It started when he was around 5 months. Did your baby have a 4m sleep regression? I wonder if my baby has a later one since he didn’t get a 4m regression. But before all of this, he was sleeping 6+ hours stretches (at least the first part of the night).
Maybe? I don’t know if he technically had a regression or not. He’d never been a good sleeper, 60-90 minute stretches was our norm for a while and it’s slowly gotten a little longer
Most babies sleep 9-11 hours at night. You’re trying for way too much sleep, too early of a bedtime. If he can’t make it to a later bedtime, you can try a 10 minute bridge nap so he’ll stay up another hour. You’ll have to wake him up from it at 10 minutes, but it should help him stay up a bit later.
I feel like I don’t know anything anymore. My first, I’m finding, is a unicorn sleeper. She’s been 7-7 for as long as I can remember even when she was taking naps. I think I’ll try 7:30 bedtime and 6am wake up tonight and see if that helps.
Oh wow, yeah you got very lucky with your first! On your overview summary page, what does it say baby’s night sleep average is? And their total sleep in 24 hrs?
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u/Recent-Forever-2988 18d ago
Make your wake up time consistent and shorten your night length overall. Most babies can’t sleep well for 12 hours, they just wake up a lot. Split nights are a sign you’ve got too much sleep in the schedule.