My son is just 7 months old (although he was 5 weeks premature) and has recently started to have a major sleeping issue. He started sleeping through the night at 2.5 months but has recently started waking up MANY times during the night - with good reason. Brief history - He spent his first month in the hospital from a major illness when we brought him home we were encouraged to keep him in our room (we were planning to anyway) we did that until he was 4 months old (he slept great!) and then we went away for the summer. Due to limited space he had to remain in our room - he started some minor night waking at 5.5 months but just needed to be given his pacifier and went right back to sleep. When we returned back to our home he was 6 months old and we started him in his new room (sleeping alone for the first time) our first night home. He did okay, then we started to do three meals a day with some continued breastfeeding - until this point it was all bfing with a a bit of rice cereal. Around this time he also started sitting up, rolling over both ways and generally hitting a bunch of milestones at once. So for the past month his nighttime sleeping has gone from bad to TERRIBLE we even bring him in our bed halfway through the night so we can all get some sleep - and sometimes that doesn't even work. He will sometimes go down for a nap but usually he needs to be rocked totally asleep first.
I KNOW i have made him into this sleep monster by spoiling him by keeping him in our room so long and by always rocking and soothing him to sleep. I know that he needs to learn how to sooth himself to sleep but letting him cry it out (even in small increments) isn't working. He gets so hysterical he spits up and screams himself into a frenzy and then won't got to sleep for hours.
He also still just takes 4 small naps instead of 2 longer ones - and those are often hard to get him to sleep for even though he is clearly pooped!!
I am at my wits end. For so long we were so grateful for his amazing ability to sleep through the night at such a young age especially since we were exclusively breastfeeding. Now, we are both exhausted!! HELP!!
Our routine
7:30am/8am - Breastfeed then breakfast (oat cereal and a fruit) - this boy can eat!
8am -10 awake and in good spirits
10/10:30 - nap about 30-45 minutes
10:30 - 12pm - awake and happy
12pm - 12:30 short nap
12:30 - 1:30 awake and happy
1:30 - Lunch - rice cereal, fruit, veggie and breastfeeding
afterlunch - 3:30 - awake and happy
3:30pm - nap - about 30/45 mins (hard to get down)
4pm - 5pm - awake and usually still sleepy
5pm - his last nap - A TOTAL BEAR to get him down for about 45 mins.
6:30 dinner - rice cereal, large veggie, breastfeed
7:00 playtime with mom and dad
8pm bath
8:30 breastfeed and goes right to sleep
He will usually stay asleep until after midnight and then be up every half hour after that! Sometimes I can just give him a pacifier sometimes I can only bring him to bed with me to get him to sleep.
Grateful for any help!
