LOL’d. Good dog.
Well, I saw this thread this morning and was hoping **Whynot ** would come in before I got home- I agree with her advice on this issue. But she didn’t, so here goes.
Being able to get yourself to sleep is a basic skill that everyone needs to have. Everyone awakes multiple times throughout the night momentarily and goes back to sleep. When you rock your baby to sleep, or feed your baby to sleep, or lay down with your baby, or drive your baby around, or any other of the myriad ways people have come up with to get their babies to sleep, what you are doing is creating a problem for him. He is not learning that basic skill, and this can lead to years of sleep problems and disruption to the whole family. Not to mention feeding a baby to sleep can cause tooth decay. I know, it feels loving and caring and granola-loving to do these things to get little Precious off to sleepyland, but you are not doing him any favors.
At this point, Ferberizing is the way to go. It’s harsh, I know. It’s heartbreaking, I know. But it’s worth it. They may even have modified versions by now that aren’t so hard.
I’ve had three babies. The first never slept no matter how much I rocked him, walked him, lay down with him, etc. His doctor ordered me to Ferberize him and I did and it worked. The second slept a lot more but I still had to be reminded once in a while about the rules. The third one has always been someone who would hold a gold Olympic medal in sleeping, if there was such a category. I started from birth laying him down to sleep while awake and with a strict routine of the evening. He took a morning nap, an afternoon nap, and slept 12 hours at night from four months, and even now nine years later, loves sleeping and goes willingly.
Some people have a need for the intimacy that those four-hour-long bedtime rituals provide, but I had a family to tend to outside of the baby and I couldn’t afford that time for that one task. I’ve seen many couples sacrifice their family time and their couple time for their “getting the baby to sleep” time, but that’s not for me.
I would advise you to take the advice to cosleep and to put your baby on his tummy to sleep to your doctor for evaluation.
Ferberizing always sounds to me like something you do to your dry-cleaning.
Anyway, I’ve never had a rough sleeper, and I would imagine that in dire straits you’re willing to try about anything, so if you feel like you have to go the “let the baby scream until he falls asleep on his own” route, I am not going to judge. Everyone has to do what they have to do. However, for counterpoint, I will say that I’ve had three babies now, nursed them all to sleep on occasion, co-slept with all of them (yes, it can be done safely; yes, our pediatrician thought it was fine), and all three of them sleep like logs throughout the night and have beautiful teeth.
There’s a book, “The Happiest Baby on the Block,” that IMO has good advice for helping babies settle down for sleeping. It’s targeted more at newborn/infants, but I think a 5-month-old would still be in the appropriate age range.
Or you could just try what my mom did with me when I had colic as a 6-week-old. As faithfully recorded in my baby book, “We fed her two teaspoons of whiskey in two ounces of water in her bottle today, and she slept all through the night!” :eek: (Not Recommended; Do Not Try This At Home, Kids.)
It could be an allergy, but unless it’s spontaneously developed… I don’t know.
Our neighbours beside us have helpfully started banging on the bedroom wall to tell us to get the baby to quiet down. I have not yet laid neck-height trip wires for them. I know how annoying the sound must be, but I’m biting back inviting them to come over and experience it firsthand.
Re: putting him down befoer he shows sleepy signs- is it possible to adapt that for a baby who wakes up showing sleepy signs? Because I can’t put him down to sleep if he’s, for instance, rubbing his eyes in his sleep.
Healthy Sleep Habits was sort of working for about a month- I could nurse, put down, leave, and he’d fall asleep within half an hour. It never got to a minute or two of crying, the way the book said it would, and nighttimes never got shorter crying than twenty minutes to an hour.
We’re not seeing to doctor until Thursday- I got the date wrong- which, if today is like yesterday, will have me buying cereal and feeding whiskey without pediatric advice.
Things to try (maybe):
Putting down again within an hour of waking
Cereal in a bottle
Buyijng the Ferber book (will it be different from Healthy Sleep Habits?)
Waking and bedtime at the same time every day
Let himself cry himself to sleep, don’t go in, doesn’t matter if he gets to horse screaming. I’m not sure I can do that.
Lisa remember to relax. When you have another child, then you will have the joy of putting two kids down for naps and bed time. 
Yeah, I know, not helping.
Have you tried a body massage for your little spud?
Yes, but not for a while. I tried nursing, rocking, singing, and bouncing this morning. The result- sigh. His voice is starting to break again, and we’re on first nap. Which should have started an hour ago. I’m close to cracking and lying down with him again.
Allergies are spontaneously developed. It’s not like an infection, where you must have been in contact with a bug. It is possible to have an allergy or allergy-like condition and never know it because you never come in contact with the allergen.
calming thoughts for Lissla and sleep-well thoughts for Nat
Lissla, I was thinking about your situation as I went to bed last night, and a couple of other things occured to me:
I think the idea of starting the day at the same time every day and ending it at the same time is an excellent idea and very important. I also think it might be a good idea to keep a detailed log of his day for a day or two to show the pediatrician. You know…slept from 2:00 to 2:45, cried from 3:00 to 5:00, etc. My Mom did that for me when I was a non-stop screaming, colicky baby and the pediatrician looked at the log and immediately ordered me into the hospital for evaluation. (Turned out they couldn’t find anything wrong, but at least my Mom knew she wasn’t crazy for thinking it was excessive.) It’ll just help the pediatrician get a complete picture of what’s going on, and they might be able to spot an obvious problem more easily.
Another book you may want to take a look at is the Babywise book. It’s somewhat controversial, since it was written by a fundamentalist Christian (of which I’m certainly not), and some people think it advocates strict scheduling and letting your baby starve to keep to the schedule. I read the book when I first had Kate, didn’t agree with everything in it, but it did give me some helpful tips. Things like following a sleep, eat, awake pattern instead of awake, eat, sleep, and trying to keep to a regular schedule (although they emphasize many times that if your baby is hungry, you feed him–but just not to offer the breast or the bottle at every little cry.)
Anyway, hang in there! Hope your day gets better!
I sympathize greatly. My 8-month old, who used to give us 5-9 hour stretches, now sleeps an hour at a time in the crib or two hours at a time in our bed. He’s just learned to crawl and is pulling up on everything in sight. I think he practices both in his sleep and wakes himself up.
There’s no way I could ever make him cry it out (including ferberizing). My brain/biology just won’t allow that. Every once in a while, my husband lets him cry a little while holding his hand and reassuring him, and I can’t even handle more than 5-10 minutes of that. He has a hysterical, frantic cry that just pierces my heart.
I keep meaning to try more No-Cry-Sleep-Solution (NCSS) tips, but we’re on such an erratic schedule that I feel like I should work on consistency first.
In any case, if you’re like me and don’t want to cry it out, use formula, etc, then check out the forums at kellymom.com. There are lots of attachment parenting folks there who can give you advice, sympathy, research links and general reassurance. There are also plenty of moms there whose babies sleep through the night without ever having cried it out – nice to read about when you’re wondering if you’ll ever sleep again.
Hallgirl2 had baby Addison six weeks ago. All was well until last week when he hit a growing spurt and all of the sudden, all he wanted to do was nurse and cry. When he wasn’t doing one, he was doing the other. No, no sleep in there either. I suggested giving him rice cereal in a bottle of breastmilk–just a bit. (He’ll take a bottle without any problems, even if she gives it to him, but does prefer to nurse.)
The kid was out like a light–all night, from about 10:30 pm to 6 am. It works like a charm and has continued working.
Of course, most pediatricians will tell you NO SOLIDS until 4-6 months, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
Yikes. Like Shodan said, sympathy but no advice. Except: if you are blaming yourself at all, or anyone else is trying to blame you – forget it!
Sleepwise my son was a fantastic baby, but he certainly had his own quirks and behaviors designed to drive us mad in other ways. When people acted like it was OUR fault, and if only we’d change our behavior as parents the problem would be solved, I wanted to smack them. We no more deserved blame for his shyness than we deserved credit for his excellent sleeping.
Good luck.
The “Happiest Baby on the Block” book basically recommends trying to re-create the womb environment, because that feels comfortable and safe to babies. (Those of you readying your fingers to type out a derisive post about how granola and stupid this is can just stop now, thanks.) I can’t remember all of the techniques, but I know that one was tight swaddling - and I do mean tight - and one was white noise. Saying “SHHHHH” loudly, directly into the baby’s ear, is the kind of thing he means. Or running a vacuum cleaner, etc.
I haven’t read the Ferber book myself but from what I’ve gleaned from other people who have used it, the idea is that you teach your baby that you are not coming to help them when they cry, so they have to self-soothe. I can understand where people in desperate straits might turn to a solution like this, but personally I find it… a bad idea, I’ll just put it that way.
Setting a routine CAN help, so getting him up earlier might work. Also, 5.5 months isn’t really too early for solid foods. I know a lot of the literature is pretty forceful about saying “not before 6 months!!” but if you have a chunkamunk like a couple of mine have been, starting a couple weeks early is not a big deal and can be quite helpful.
If you lie down next to him to get him to sleep, will he stay asleep if you get up again? If so, that might be a solution for now.
Oh, also, if the problem has increased a lot in the last few days to week or so, it might be that he is having 1) a growth spurt or 2) about to hit a developmental milestone. Mine have always been pretty good sleepers overall, but even so they’d start having night wakings and fighting sleep more when they were either having a growth spurt, or about to start rolling over/crawling/walking/etc. So that might be a contributing factor, I don’t know.
Jeez - I forgot all about the solids! I agree that starting on solids might be a good idea. I had made another promise to myself when I had our son - “No solids before six months!” But by five months, he was growing so quickly and was hungry and rooting about every 45 minutes. So we tried him on some cereal and he started sleeping through the night and magically became a much more pleasant kid. It was our magic bullet until he got RSV at 8 months when he refused to sleep through the night until he was 22 months. It may not be a magic bullet for you, but it could help. Obviously, you’ll want to talk to your doctor first, but the solids can occasionally help with the barfing, too, if reflux is an issue.
I was also anti-cry it out. It always seemed like, especially if your kid’s primary fear is that you’ve gone away and have no plans to come back (which was what my kid seemed afraid of), the worst thing you can do is make that fear come true. That said, some babies need to fuss for a while - that’s how they settle and it’s not separation that’s causing them distress, but a need to calm themselves. So it can be a life-saver for a lot of people. Just depends on your kid and his temprament. Sometimes you need to try different things over a number of months until something clicks. The sucky thing is that you’re never sure - unless it’s a drastic, sudden change - whether it’s their development or your behavior that worked. In some cases, it’s probably a combination - they got mature enough to sleep through the night and you just happened to work alongside them at the same time to provide that environment. Tricky, very tricky.
It is totally against everything I believe as a mostly AP mom, but I found the routine recommended in Babywise helpful for my (now) 13-year-old daughter. (See? I made it through and am alive to tell the tale!)
This child-rearing method is very routine oriented, and has been accused of being too disciplinarian for young babies, and also for causing some babies to be underfed. So take this advice FWIW.
But – like you with my daughter I could never tell what she wanted. Was she hungry? Tired? Bored? When I got her on the schedule, I found I could predict it much better. I quit the feeding on demand, which resulted in a baby that wasn’t really ever hungry, and fed every three hours. Awake time, and then down for a nap.
It’s been a while so these times are just from hazy memory. But I do remember buying an inexpensive daily diary calendar and everyone who was responsible for her care (me, husband and SIL babysitter) dutifully chronicled her feeding and nap times.
Google babywise and you can find some information if you’re interested.
overlyverbose’s post reminds me that you should ask your doctor about the possibility of reflux. Throwing up from overfeeding seems a little unusual for a baby that age (it’s more common with newborns) so I wonder if there aren’t some broader gastrointestinal issues going on. That could definitely be contributing to the sleep problems, as well.
I’m not a parent but I am a reader of Ask Moxie, and I recommend reading some of her archives regarding sleep issues. She and/or her commenters have a lot of good stuff to say about baby issues in general and I know she’s written quite a bit about sleep.
We went to a walk-in clinic. The walk-in doctor said it’s probably just teething and blocked ears. I think it’s probably that plus not being a good sleeper plus possible hunger issues. He’s only a couple weeks shy of six months. I’ve bought orajel, cereal, and ibuprofen. I’m going to start trying to schedule, plus occasional painkillers, and maybe try cereal today or tomorrow.
We’re still going to our regular doctor next week for a more thorough check-up. I didn’t think he was teething because he’d stopped drooling and doesn’t seem to chew, just suck on random things. (Get your minds out of the gutter!)
Any ideas about how to prop a crib mattress up a bit?
Stick a rolled-up towel under one end.
He has blocked ears? Blocked with what? Did the doc suggest any remedies for this?
Just painkillers. He said that when babies teeth their tubes block up, but he didn’t get specific as to why.
You say he’s nearly 20 lbs? That’s a big kid!
My dd used to get hot easily, too. Much sooner than I. Keeping her cool was tough. She teethed early, too.
Mine were both on cereal about that age. Bananas are good, too, just mash 'em up with a fork, you don’t have to buy the ones in jars. Avocadoes are excellent.
I can’t remember what mine slept like at that age, whether being sleepy upon waking was typical. It seems unusual. As does the easily overfed part. But there are a million variations on normal.
I do remember, though, going on a Big Family Zoo Outing w/the in-laws and trying to sleep in the woodchips. Me, I was the one curled up in a heap in the middle of the afternoon (and in front of Company!), when my twins were about that age. So you’re not alone. It passed.
We used Happiest Baby on the Block when mine were newborns, it was excellent!