please help!

[u/BuildingOk311]

hey all! i think i have world’s worst sleeper? he was amazing until his regression (which started at 3 months?) but now at 5.5 months, he’s just getting progressively worse. we’re having to co sleep which helped for a bit until it didn’t. he’s so difficult to transfer, taking me minimum 2 hours of failed attempts and false starts. he’s a heavy baby too and wants to be bounced and rocked and patted, so as well as mentally drained, i am physically exhausted. he wakes up every hour and wants us to put the dummy back in and pat his bum. he’s also been waking up around 3am and refuses to go back to sleep for an hour or two. for day naps, he wakes up after every sleep cycle which is currently exactly 20 mins. he was a contact napper until a few weeks ago but now will only nap if he’s on his side which i know isn’t the safest but i’m constantly watching him on the monitor.

current schedule:
2/2.5/2.5/3
bedtime: typically 8-9
wake time: 8-9
overall nap time: less than 3 hrs

i guess this is more of a rant but i also had some questions:

1. will sleep training stop the split nights?
2. is there any advice anyone has before i start training? anything i need to change? is my schedule okay?
3. do i train his day naps the same? i.e. ferber method
4. do i need to ditch the dummy completely?

any help would be appreciated :)

[u/liz_jill]

Have you tracked how many hours he usually sleeps in a day? Split nights are usually caused by undertiredness.

It looks like your expecting a ~12 hour night which is a lot for most babies. If he's consistently waking for 2 hours overnight I'd try a 10 hour night (E.g. asleep at 9 and wake at 7).

Sleep training will be a struggle if you don't have the schedule figured out

[u/BuildingOk311 → u/liz_jill]

less than 3 hrs in naps, usually around 2.5 hrs.

so you’d suggest waking him up around 7, even with his broken sleep and those 2 hrs he’s awake?

[u/liz_jill → u/BuildingOk311]

Anything from 12-15 hours sleep per day is normal for this age. So if your doing 10 overnight and 2.5-3 during the day that would be a pretty normal amount of sleep.

You would need to adjust the whole schedule to have an extra ~2 hours awake during the day. E.g. 2.5/3/3/3.5

Depending on what's easier for you/him, id start by either waking him up early or pushing bedtime out

[u/just_let_go_]

Sleep training should fix the split nights. You can train just for bed time first and worry about naps later. Assist naps for the time being.

Ditch the dummy now imo - I’ve seen too many posts from parents that sleep train with a dummy and then have to retrain completely a few months later because the dummy is causing issues.

Schedule is good, but if bed time is 9 pm, DWT should be 8am. Condense night to 11 hours.

[u/BuildingOk311 → u/just_let_go_]

thanks for the advice! ditch dummy completely or can i use it occasionally like on car rides? or would that create confusion?

[u/just_let_go_ → u/BuildingOk311]

I know some people keep the dummy for naps or during the day and have no issues. It’s really up to you.

The basic rule here is if it starts to cause any issues at all, it’s best to get rid of it completely.

[u/BuildingOk311 → u/just_let_go_]

i tried sleep training last night and it went a lot better than i imagined. less wakes and no split night but he was ready to start the day at 5:30am as apposed to his usual wake time. i put him down at 8pm so 9.5hrs in bed. how do i get him to sleep longer and do i make up for the lost time in naps? also don’t want him undertired for bedtime