My daughter didn’t have ANY sleep pattern for the first year. She’d sleep after exhausting herself and only then for about thirty minutes at a stretch. It was pure hell. I definitely know where you’re coming from. I tried it all. Ferberizing never took and I can’t help feeling like it may have even made her more anxious. Co-sleeping was better but only by the teeniest tiniest bit. I nursed exclusively for almost a full year so it wasn’t a food issue. Sometimes the car was good. Mig would drive me around for an hour so I could sleep too, but as soon as the car was off she’d be up and crying. Also keeping her in a room with a shower blasting was soothing sometimes.
Children are little individuals. What works for one won’t work for others. What finally worked as a very last result to save our sanity and probably hers too was a prescription. It was the same stuff in Benadryl, but a higher dose. I balked at first because I knew Benadryl made her hyper, but I guess a higher dose must have the opposite effect because it worked right away to calm her down enough that she was okay with going to sleep, and it kept her asleep for a few hours. Within about six weeks she had a regular sleep schedule for a year old child so we started tapering it off. I’d say within another month she didn’t need it at all and her sleep pattern has been fine since. She is hyperactive still though, and it looks like she’s autistic as well, but we won’t know for sure until more tests are done. This may have contributed to her sleep issues. It seems like some methods are concerned with a behavior, but you may be dealing with a sensory issue instead that needs to be addressed.
We Ferberized at 5 months. We skipped her nap those days so that she’d be extra worn out at bedtime. It took two nights before she didn’t cry for a couple of hours before falling asleep. We wore soft spongy earplugs to keep it bearable.
So, so much sympathy here. You’ve gotten a lot of good advice here…just keep trying different things until you find something that works. By that time, Baby will have grown out of it. Seriously, babies change so much so fast during the first year, it’s very likely this not-sleeping thing will not last too long. You will sleep again, I promise!
Another little tidbit…whatever your normal bedtime is for Baby, move it up half an hour. Try putting him down even if he doesn’t seem sleepy. Sometimes, by the time they start showing sleepy-signals, it’s already too late and he’ll be over-tired. Just another thing to try out.
We had to walk Beta-chan around the block at 5 to 6 months, and she would keep waking up in the night.
She still wakes up at night, sometimes a couple of times, sometimes more and sometimes night. We cosleep, so it’s really easy to get her back to sleep.
Our 4-month-old is much better than Beta-chan was at the same age. Same parents, same approach but different results with different children.
Don’t have much to add which hasn’t been discussed, but good luck!
He might be hitting the 4-month sleep regression a little late. Even if that’s not it, that there link is still helpful for all that sleep stuff! Read the comments on the posts, too - there’s a lot of helpful information in there.
He will sleep, eventually, but it may take a while - my son is 3-1/2 now, and he naps great and sleeps… okay. I’m still in there once or twice a night, but that’s a LOT better than where you are now! Hang in there, it will get better!
This. I didn’t read Babywise until Baby Smaje was about 8 weeks old, and I wish I had read it sooner!
Baby Smaje was having a tough time sleeping, and then she would get overtired and fussy and even tough she was exhausted, she couldn’t sleep. Doc told us that we needed to work on her “sleep hygiene.” He pointed us towards Babywise and The Happiest Baby on the Block by Harvey Karp. Happiest Baby is all about getting the kids to fall asleep and sleep a nice long time. Babywise is all about getting baby on a good sleep sked.
And now Baby Smaje is almost 3 months and she usually sleeps through the night. We’re talking 8-10 hours. It’s amazing. She’s bad a day time naps though, so we’re still working on it.
Good luck!! You guys deserve the sleep. And you’re right, you don’t want to raise a kid that can’t fall asleep on his or her own without singing or rocking. Sometimes Baby Smaje needs singing and rocking, but usually, she can comfort herself and fall asleep without us.
What would happen if you just shut him up in a room and let him cry himself to sleep? Eventually he’ll get tired right? I have this idea of a soundproof nursery that I plan on eventually building
And just in case it’s not ‘normal’ kidlet not sleeping in say a year or two from now, you might want to check out a pediatric sleep clinic. (Speaking from experience here.)
All of mine have hit that stage at least once. My short-term solution: Pillows and blankets on the floor of a baby-proofed room. Lay down with baby. Nurse at will, sleep. Baby can’t fall, so you can get some sleep without too much worry.
It passes. Hugs.
(BTW, the longer-term solution for Littlest Miss was FOOD. Real food. Even though all of the experts recommended waiting longer before introducing solids, and even though she was nursing like a champ, the poor little thing was freakin’ hungry! The pediatrician confirmed that Little One hasn’t come to any harm from this.)
(it does work though, a toddler day care in Council Bluffs Iowa was doing it. They were busted when the parents all realized none of their kids were sleeping at night any more)
Ya, but Benadryl amps up a small percentage of toddler. Let’s just say, don’t try this on 15 hour trans-pacific flight without having tried it out first.
First off, it sounds like you have a normal 5-month-old. Normal babies want and need to be by their parents, especially when they are tired. If co-sleeping doesn’t work for you, could you put the crib in your room at least so that your baby could at least see you at night? That might help, it might not. Have you tried white noise to cover up some of the sounds? My daughter used to make all sorts of weird sounds at night, but she stopped around 4 months or so.
If the crying thing doesn’t work for you or you don’t want to (I personally can’t stand to hear my baby cry like that), there is a book called the No-Cry Sleep Solution. I’ve read the version for Naps, and it has tips for transitioning from in-arms sleep to in-crib sleep. It might help give you ideas.
For the record, my daughter is 9 months and sleeps 7 or 8 hours a time at night, but we co-sleep because it’s what works for us. She started sleeping 5-6 hours at 6 months without any sort of training, so honestly whatever you do, in a month things might get better just because your baby will get better at sleeping. That is what I am hoping for you anyway. They really do change so fast.
Most of the babies in my Mums Group all went through this around 4.5 - 5 months. It comes with a change to their sleep patterns whereby they wake fully after each sleep cycle (around 45min), and don’t yet know how to put themselves back to sleep. For example, at this age my daughter who was sleeping through the night (with a dream feed) from 8 weeks or so was using a dummy to go to sleep which would drop out once she was out. 4-5 times a night at that age she woke screaming and I had to wake to pop it back in because she couldn’t.
On the advice of a friend I stopped the dummy use and started sleep training - no CIO since I couldn’t stand that, but we stopped rocking her to sleep, would go in to pat her on the back etc to help soothe her to sleep etc. Maybe a week or two of this, and most of the kids managed to sort their sleep out.
Remember, this too shall pass! (Right in time for the 8 month sleep regression…)
If I can suggest a useful book: Bed Timing (which is only about the best times until age 4 to sleep train, rather than recommending a technique) and 2 useful online resources: Ask Moxie and The Sleep Store.
Also, you’ve probably tried, but there are babies who will sleep in their swing or their carseat, but not lying down in their crib. Daycare used to nap about half the babies this age in the swings - they wouldn’t sleep any other way.
You’ve got to be kidding right? Your actual pediatrician recommended Babywise. He must be a heretic. Your baby must be malnourished. Start a thread asking for recommendations for lawyers to sue your doc for malpractice now!
Update: We’ve made a little progress, it seems! Yesterday, Little Bunny had four naps; two were an hour long, one was about 40 minutes, and one was 30. And he fell asleep in the crib for every nap. The routine was to put him down in the crib with a pacifier when he seemed drowsy, and basically stroke his tummy and back until he drifted off.
So last night, we tried the same thing. I went in to feed him twice, at 11:30pm and 5:00am, but all other times, we just petted him back to sleep. I think he got up twice before the 11:30, and maybe just the once after that, at around 2:00. His dad could get him back to sleep in just a couple of minutes, but I tried it at the 2:00 and it took over an hour (including a diaper change). Not fun. But - we did not pick him up except for feedings, and he did seem well-rested this morning. Also, there were a couple of times early in the evening where we could hear him kicking in his crib (it sounds like orc drums when you’re in the room below), but he didn’t wake up and cry. He’d only make a little noise, and then get quiet again. So it may be he’s figuring this out.
Thanks again to everyone for your suggestions. I might PM some of you if I have questions.
My post was generalizing because it was a condensed version of the current knowledge of doctors and scientists. Doctors recommend that you DO NOT let a baby cry because it is NOT GOOD for the baby. Doctors recommend that you DO NOT let a small baby sleep alone - in its own room or in the same room, but far away from a parent. There is a very real psychological need for the baby to feel the same primary person they have became atttached to during the first months and year.
This has nothing to do with how the child will behave at 2 years old.
These things have been exhaustivly studied in the past decades, using several different methods and fields. It’s not just my perception that “letting a baby cry” or “let it sleep alone” is harmful for the baby.
Yes, the baby will eventually stop after receiving a deep psychological trauma. The message the baby learns before it can even talk is “I need somebody to hold me, but nobody does. I need to be fed/ changed, but nobody does. My tummy is hurting, so I need a belly rub, but nobody gives me one. Nobody cares about me, nobody loves me, nobody helps me”.
If you want to raise a mentally and emotionally stable, healthy person as child, one of the very first thing the child needs to develop is the so-called “basic trust” - that somebody will always be there for it, that the world is a safe place, and that there is trust. From this starting point, confidence and curiosity to explore the world will develop; confidence to trust people for relationships develops; the ability of the child to trust the parents, enabling the basic bond that allows real parenting forms.
If you want to raise emotionally crippled, insecure people without trust, you start with letting the child cry because it’s good for them, as doctors mistakenly believed in the 50s, and continue with cruel authoritarian discipline. It will fit right into your society.
constanze, doctors are not a monolithic entity, and while some of them do believe and teach as you say, some of them don’t. The current recommendation in the US from the American Academy of Pediatrics is strongly **against **co-sleeping, as they believe it’s associated with a higher incidence of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome)
And as for the crying issue, the AAP recognizes that dealing with a crying infant is incredibly stressful, and will sometimes lead to infant abuse. In their physician module on addressing crying with a new baby, they advise healthcare workers:
