Five Month Old Sleeping Advice

[matildawhippet]

Hi all,

Our five month old has been terrible at sleeping almost since day one. Since he was about 1 month old, he's been medicated for acid reflux with omeprazole (Prilosec) and domperidone, as well as a sodium alginate powder (Gaviscon).

His naps are almost always shorter than 45mins-1 hr. He's waking/fussing 1-2 times a night, not to feed. During these times, if my husband holds him with a pacifier, he will fall back asleep (most of the time).  The baby is fussy/tired all day long. His reflux seems to get worse at times, and then better, and then worse. (He receives the maximum dose for his medications).

 At three months, we tried pat-shush for a couple weeks, but this didn't do much—it often seemed to make him angrier. We have now tried pick-up-put-down, which also seems to make him angrier and wakes him up more. Rubbing his head/body also seems to make him angrier. We've repeatedly tried stir-to-wake, but this has hardly ever worked, and recently seems to just make him wide awake. When I try doing these things, he seems really ticked off—perhaps he can smell my milk? It works a bit better when my husband does them. My husband has so far missed about two weeks of work in order to stay home trying to get him to nap better, which has apparently been a waste of time.

Almost everything I've read on here seems to assume you only have one child to think about. This is our second child, and I do not have  the time or attention to try these methods for hours on end during the day. Our first is 2.5 years old, and needs lots of attention because he is potty training (another post for another day...).

Here's a rough schedule. He's napping 3-4 times a day. We aim for about a four hour cycle, but really it's usually closer to 3.5 hours. About the only "regular" parts of this schedule are that he wakes up at 7am, goes to bed around 7pm, and dreamfeeds at 10pm. Everything else is up in the air from day to day.

E: 7am
A: -
S: 8:45am
A: 9:30-45a
E: 11am
A: -
S: 12:45p
A: 1:30-45a
E: 2:30-3pm
A: -
S: 4:15p
A: 4:45-5p
E: 5p
A: -
E: 7p
S: -
E: 10p
S: -
A (off an on): 1:30a-3a
E: 3a
S: -
A (off and on): 5:30a-7:a
E: 7a

We have no idea what to do or how to help. Nothing seems to work. I'd really appreciate any advice, taking into account that I have to give quite a bit of attention during the day to a very busy, struggling-with-potty-training toddler.

Matilda

[Melissah814]

He definitely needs more A time. My 5 month old wakes up at 7 & takes a nap at 9:30 which is 2 & a half hours A time compared to your 1 hour & 45 minute A time. I don't think he's tired enough! 😃

[lily_layne]

Those nights are actually pretty good for a 5 month old with reflux 1-2 night feeds can be normal for that age.

Do you feel his reflux is under control? If not, I would tackle that before you tweak his routine. Also, has he ever done longer naps? Some LOs really just only have short naps until 8-9 months.

It does look like he could use more A time in the morning. My guess is that he's a bit UT for the first nap and then doesn't nap well and then is OT by the time the second nap rolls around and the A times are a bit long following a short nap. At around 5 months, I went to set naps with my DS and it worked really well for him. I also have a toddler so I liked the predictability (not that he still didn't throw a wrench into some plans ). At 5 months, our routine was something like this:
WU: 7ish
S: 9-10:30/11
S: 1-2:30/3
CN 5:00/5:15-5:45/6
BT: I can't quite remember but I think it was around 7:30. You may want to stick with 7 since it works well and just shorten the CN if needed.
If his am nap was short, I put him down half an hour early for the next nap and if he had a tough day I did allow for catch up with the CN.

Do you think something like that might work? Once you get the A time right, he may start going to sleep easier as he won't be OT or UT but it may take a bit for him to catch up on sleep if he's been short napping for a while.