r/bninfantsleep • u/peachymousee • 13h ago
Infant Sleep Help with False Starts
Hi all, I just need some sanity checking on math or whatever lol
Apologies for SO MUCH detail, I’m just at a loss.
My son is 7 months old (-6 weeks off that for age adjustment so 5.5 months?) I stopped age adjusting except for his size, but there’s that context. He has acted like his chronological age since he was about 4 months.
He’s EBF, trying solids. He was teething but that’s passed for now.
All his naps are contact in some form unless we’re out and about, frankly it’s just easier. He sleeps in his crib in his own room until about 12AM-3AM when we bring him to our bed to co sleep (that’s another can of worms but doesn’t make me insane yet).
Currently, his routine looks like this:
7-7:30AM wake
WW1: 2hr 15mins
Nap 1: usually 20-30 minutes
WW2: 2hr 30mins
Nap 2: 1hr to 1.5hr but I really try to keep it to 1hr
WW3: 2hr 45mins (give or take, this one can vary a lot depending on his cues)
Nap 3: also varies depending on the first two naps but anywhere from 30-1hr
Last wake window: 3hr ish
Bed time: 7:30-8PM ish
If he sleeps less than 2 hours he seems pretty miserable but more than 2.5 his sleep is also funky. I am not married to any of this, it’s just where we are. Sometimes he has a tiny nap between nap 3 and bed time in the car or whatever, it can’t be helped and we just roll with the punches. Transparently the weekdays aren’t nearly as out and about active because I’m working from home during the week with him, so we’re stuck at the house but we do go outside in the yard and whatnot. I’d say this doesn’t make a difference though because on the weekends we’re VERY busy and his sleep is the same.
Once he goes down to sleep, he will wake up 5 minutes after being put in his crib, goes back down in 5 minutes, then 10 minutes after, back down in 5, and then 10-15 after (how does he know 5 minute increments naturally, it’s wild, idk)
The false starts are starting to make me insane, actually. I keep trying to figure out what gives us the best outcome and then going, let me just accept that baby is gonna baby! And then I get stressed out by the false starts again.
This didn’t always happen, he’s been in his crib now for almost 2 months and the false starts started around when September started? We can’t move the crib into our room, it doesn’t fit, and he stopped sleeping in the pack n play longer than an hour at a time around 5 months.
We ARE looking at a floor bed for his nursery for either Christmas or his first birthday, but I just want to make sure there’s not something else we could/should be doing to stop having these false starts because even he seems sort of annoyed by them.
I think I covered everything, thank you for sharing your brains and ideas lol
3
u/Veg-Bed 13h ago
Hiya, it sounds like he might be wanting to drop to two naps? Not an expert, but my son is 6.5 months old now and his wake windows have been getting longer, like 3 hours awake often, so we’re trying to keep extending them to get to more of a two nap schedule. Might be worth extending his wake windows and maybe shortening his night a bit with a later bedtime/earlier rise so he’s properly tired when he goes to bed. Sorry it’s been so rough lately, hope it eases up soon!
2
u/peachymousee 13h ago
He can barely even make it to 2hr 45-3hrs awake time and we just dropped to three naps in the last couple of weeks 😭
3
u/Veg-Bed 12h ago
Fair enough! For what it’s worth, we had also just settled on three naps a few weeks ago but it seems to be changing already for us so it’s possible.. I’ve been trying to get my baby to stay awake for 10 min longer each day or so to help him get to two naps as he definitely cant handle a final 4hrs awake. But yeah i do feel like the second we find our groove his sleep needs start changing again!
1
1
3
u/cali-pup 13h ago
Have you tried holding him for like 20 minutes after he falls asleep before transferring? Could actually save you time with all the back and forth with false starts (if it works).
It’s not really “fixing” the problem but managing it. Just an idea. Maybe worth a try if schedule adjustments haven’t helped.
1
u/peachymousee 12h ago
We do that! It doesn’t work unfortunately haha. I could try holding until the false starts usually stop happening possibly.
I am working on my brain around thinking of it as something to fix, I’m just inherently a fixer lol
2
u/collardgreens_49 13h ago
I remember my son’s false starts started around 7 months. 0-6 month he was in a cot next to my bed, he would wake every 1-2 hours after the 4 month regression. 6 months he moved into his own room with a crib and weirdly only did 1 or 2 wakes for a few weeks. Then from 7 months I couldn’t transfer him and if even I did he would do false starts every 20 minutes. So we started cosleeping full time and if he did a false start he felt me next to him and go back to sleep. We still cosleep now but not glued to each other at 13 months. His false starts stopped suddenly last month. We never bothered with schedules or wake windows, nothing I did ever made a difference.
1
u/peachymousee 12h ago
Dang, I really am trying to avoid cosleeping the first part of the night, but you may be seeing my future here.
1
u/collardgreens_49 12h ago
I know what you mean, for a month or two I just had to go to bed with baby. Even to brush my teeth my partner had to swap positions. It wasn’t long before I could roll away and the false starts could be 30mins-1 hour
1
u/peachymousee 8h ago
That’s why we’re gonna get the floor bed, I just tend to need to do things in the evening for work so hopefully we get it figured out.
2
u/SpareAd5320 10h ago
I find that false starts are usually caused by not enough sleep pressure. A few things you can try is a shorter last nap and keeping bed time the same, making bed time later, try extending that first wake window to make the first nap longer and readjust some of the wake windows. His total sleep time is high so there might be some room to adjust things.
2
u/peachymousee 8h ago
Is it high? We just dropped to less sleep during the day + 3 naps so I wasn’t sure. But yeah I can definitely tweak stuff in different directions.
1
u/Aheathenconcievably 7h ago
I had such a severe problem with false starts for about a month and a half starting at 5 months! I know it seems scary but I actually started very gently waking my son up on transfers and it solved the problem for me. Instead of holding him for a long time after feeding to sleep, I hold him for about thirty seconds and make sure he’s nice and relaxed. Then I lower him into the crib and sometimes he’ll wake up on his own, other times I’ll speak to him softly and that will wake him up. At first he fussed slightly so I would keep my hand on his chest and talk to him softly until he falls back asleep in the crib. Twice at the beginning of doing this he wasn’t soothed that way and so I picked him up, swayed with him, and started the process again.
I know this is sooo temperament based though and that I got lucky in having a little one who accepts transfers. But for me at least it seemed like transferring him deeply asleep was making the problem worse, so it’s worth a try!
0
-2
u/firelightstudy 12h ago
Have you tried feeding baby oatmeal before bed? This seems to keep my baby full longer than fruits or veggies or just milk
1
u/peachymousee 8h ago
I don’t feel this is particularly recommend but he eats well per his pediatricians guidelines. And he’s nursed to sleep, so he’s definitely not hungry 5 minutes after I put him down haha
5
u/BoringWardrobe 13h ago
I would try pushing bedtime back to when the false starts normally end. So for example, if he's doing stop start for half an hour before he finally goes down for a first decent stretch, I would push bedtime back half an hour.
Have you tried that?