My son is 5.5 months old and we started to implement a routine following the book about 12 days ago. It is not going well!! (I chose to do this because of his horrible sleeping habits and his visible tiredness)
7 - wake & eat
9-11 nap
11 - eat
1-3 nap
3 eat
6.30 - eat and bed
10:30 - dream feed
he does not like to nap, we are still doing pu/pd at every nap and we are lucky if we get longer than a 40 minute nap.
at bed time, we dim the lights, change his diaper & clothes, feed him his bottle while we turn on classical music and then put him down after he eats (he is bottle fed)
he eats nearly 8 oz at every feeding, except the dream feeding which is between 4-5 oz.
he usually falls asleep somewhere around 7pm and sleeps until between 1-2 am. when he wakes, I go in and do the pat/hush and sometimes it takes an hour to get him back to sleep. Then, he wakes around 5:30 and we let him talk/whine himself back to sleep until 6:30-7 am. But we never take him out of his crib before 7 am.
No teething, nothing else going on that we know of. In the past, he has peed through his diaper and clothes, so we had to buy overnight diapers. These worked on some nights, but he was peeing through those on occasions. We put a maxi-pad in his over night diaper and this seemed to work until this morning, when I noticed his pajamas were damp (but at least not sopping wet).
We just introduced cereal two days ago because he shows so much interest in what we are eating and the dr. suggested it. Just a few bites at the 7am feeding. This has not shown any changes in his pattern.
He did have a paci, but he was waking up at all hours wanting it, so we took that away 4 days ago. He actually doesn't seem to mind too much. He does have a lovie, a little blanky that he sleeps with. We also have a sound machine that plays white noise every night. He has had this since day one.
He learned how to turn over a few weeks ago, so he is constantly doing this during the night. He manages to wedge himself into the edge or corner of the crib, so I went and bought a breathable bumper pad. We have a video monitor and sometimes when I look, he has his face straight down in the mattress, which scares me to death. If I try to move his head to the side, he wakes up crying.
I haven't seen any improvement and I am not sure why??? He is a not a fan of napping and he is still waking twice at night. I am extremely tired because I also work full time. My mom watched him and she follows the guidelines strictly, so I know this is not the issue either.
Help me! He is such a happy and wonderful baby, but he is clearly tired every day. His eyes have red circles underneath them constantly!
