Hi all,
I feel like I always post on here, whinging about how badly my lo sleeps. He is now almost 9mo and is even more spirited than ever before. It feels like everything has gone wrong with his sleep and I am not sure where to begin to get it back on track. Seriously considering paying a lot of money to a sleep consultant to get some help. I am so totally exhausted - he has never ever slept through the night and the nws and ews are only getting worse. Because he is so spirited EASY has never been easy for us, often the advice did not apply to Alex. I hope someone out there can help me.
I am so sorry for such a lengthy post but better to give you all the info you may need to help make suggestions as to how to improve things in my very tired house. My dh does all that he can to help but i just feel so utterly shattered.
Alex is 8 mo (9mo next week) and has always been spirited, especially when it comes to sleep. Early on we used shush pat to help him to settle and felt we had come a long way. He went from only sleeping for 10 minutes to 25 mins to 45 mins. Gradually this extended further. He always goes to sleep independently, although he is lightly swaddled (in a sleeping bag with arms sewn up) and has a soother (only for sleep). His room has a blackout blind and is quiet.
Alex was a serial 45 min napper until about 6mo. He then started to extend some naps and recently we had naps of between 1 hour and 2 and a half hours. Two weeks ago I was so plaesed as he was taking 2 long naps in the day rather than the 4 naps we had been used to earlier on. However, during the last week or so the naps have decreased again (some are as short as 25mins). These awful naps are not always because he is OT. We think he has been teething again, had a short growth spurt and suffering a bit from separation anxiety. We have been working on extending A times as he has never managed the times for his age because of the short naps. At the moment he has become so hard to read that it is difficult to know when the right time to start wind down is. He was managing 2 hours 45mins A time before the first nap and was sleeping for 1.5 hours. He then was managing 3 hours 15 mins A time and then sleeping for 1 h 45 mins. Now it is just awful. I feel like our routine is shot to pieces. I don't know where to begin with getting back on track.
Is this just a phase I need to work through or do I need to start the sleep training all over again?
He also has terrible ews, sometimes as early as 4am. I have posted about this before and received some good advice but nothing seems to be working so far. We have tried early bedtimes, later bedtimes etc but so far nothing is working. In the last week he has also started waking more often at night absolutely screaming. Often he doesn't want feeding but needs us in order to resettle with teething gel, soother and a very quick cuddle. Are we becoming a prop?
He still is fed at night (we are working on dropping feeds) although we had managed to drop the early morning feed. Unfortunately the growth spurt put paid to that! I have had some good advice on the bottle feeding board about dropping the earlier feed first because it may actually be better to do this so that the ews may stop.
On a good day our routine looks like this, although wake up time varies from 4.30am to 5.45am. Therefore times have to vary so that he doesn't become ot.
Milk feed 6am (5-7oz)
Breakfast 7.30am (cereal/toast/fruit)
Nap 8.45am (after 2 hr 45 A time) for 1.5 hours
Milk Feed 10.30am (6-7 oz)
Lunch 12pm (meat or fish/veg/ bread/ fruit)
Nap 1.30pm (after 3 h 15 A time) for 1.5 hours
Milk feed 3pm (4oz)
Dinner 4.30pm (pasta or veg/ yoghurt)
Bathtime 5.45pm
Milk feed 6pm
Bedtime 6.30pm
Milk feed between 11pm and 1am. Sometimes he needs water at about 3am.
He always falls asleep on his own after about 5-10 minutes of being in his cot. This is true for both naps and nightime sleep.
He has recently learnt to crawl and is constantly pulling up on me or furniture. Could this be affecting his sleep?
I do hope someone can help. I really feel like I have lost control. I have shed so many tears over this and am sick of feeling like I have somehow failed my son. I felt like we had made such good progress but now feel like I am back st the beginning again.
Many thanks in advance
Jo
