Hello all,
Please forgive me for not using the acronyms - I'm new to writing messages to this board and I haven't learnt them yet!
My son Corey will be six months old on 10 January. He is happy and healthy and weighed nearly 17 lbs at his last weigh-in, which is exactly at the 50th percentile. I would put his EASY schedule in, but it varies (I know it shouldn't) and always has. He wakes up at 7am, almost on the dot, and his activity times are usually 2 hours. He has three naps, two 45 mins and one 1 1/2-2 hrs, though I never know which of the three will be the longest (it's usually the first or second). He wakes giggly from all his naps, so I think they're the right length for him. Early attempts to lengthen the shorter ones were disastrous, and he seems to have his own little internal clock.
He slept through the night for the first time the day he turned three months old, and for the next two months either slept through or woke once and went down again quite easily. However, the four-month sleep regression hit very hard, and he was waking every other hour. We managed to get that sorted until he was waking twice - once early on, when my husband put him back down again, and once later, when I fed him (he is breastfed). PU/PD worked very well with him.
However, over the last two weeks his sleep has gone completely haywire. He goes down at 9 (I know that the book recommends earlier, but we can't - we live in a noisy flat - and when we have tried he slept very badly), and pops back up within an hour. I initially thought he was overstimulated, but that is no longer possible - we've slowed down his evenings to a crawl, with no effect. When he does wake, he screams and screams, and PU/PD has no effect whatsoever - I think it might even be making it worse. I eventually feed him, and he takes a full feed - but he would eat all day if it were up to him, so I don't know how indicative that is. He doesn't drop back off to sleep easily, either. We're often up for nearly two hours trying to get him back down, and he wakes again 2-3 hours later.
Last night we bought some Actamil and gave him a bottle, and he downed 2/3 of it after already having been fed for the night, but it had no effect on his sleep. When he woke I fed him again and then got him to sleep by putting him down 'asleep' and then holding his arms lightly for 15 minutes until he was deeply asleep - which I've never had to do before. (He puts himself down for naps now by sucking his thumb until he drops off. He does't seem to be able to do this at night). I'm destroyed, but he's his usual cheery self this morning, as always!
I was wondering about a growth spurt, but previous ones have lasted less than a week. He doesn't act hungry during the day, but he would literally eat all day if given the choice, and has always been a good eater. He's not hot or cold, his nappies aren't dirty, I've dropped his stimulation to nearly nothing, I think he might be hungry but I can't tell. I've never left him to cry it out. I feel like I'm doing things horribly wrong but I don't know what. Please, any suggestions would be wonderfully helpful!
(By the way, we're moving to a house next month, and hopefully that will leave us a bit freer when it comes to noise!)
Thanks for any thoughts,
DualTracy
