6mo who sleeps eratically please please help - so tired!

[Naomi L]

Plese help - my lo is almost 6 mo and his slep pattern is terrible.  He used to cat nap during the day for 30 - 45 mins a time 3/4 times a day and nothing i did would sort that.  recently he has started to sleep for approx 1.5 hours twice a day which i thought would help him at night.  He has also switched himself to more or less 4 hourly routine. The problem is that I have to rock him or hold him for him to sleep, h did have a paci but I took this away and he seems to be okish without it, altho i now think he uses the bottle as his comfort.  He has had a couple of nights where he has slept well and has only woken for a feed after putting him to bed at 7, feeding at 11 and then again at 2.30 then again at 5.30 (altho these times do vary - some times he goes from 7 til 1 without a feed) then he sleeps well the following day and then that night he is so unsettled and I end up going into him about 10 times.  Any advice on how I can sort this out would be most appreciated as I got back to work in 4 weeks and would love an almost decent nights sleep before then!  Thanks

[Jaime]

hi,

i'm wondering if this might be a feeding issue.... can you post a typical day for us, including naptimes & feed times??

[Naomi L]

Hi

This is a typical day for him:-

5.30 - bottle and back to sleep
7-7.30 wake and have breakfast
9 - have bottle and sleep - used to be 30-45 mins but now is 1.5 hours
12 have lunch  solids
1 sleep for up to 1 hour
3 - have another bottle
5 - dinner
6.30 bath, story bottle and bed by 7

Normally he will then wake about 45-1 hour later wanting more milk and then goes back off to sleep
waking occassionally in between altho he has gone a couple of times until 11.30 for his next bottle:-

1.30 bottle
5 bottle

at each bottle feed he takes between 3 & 5 ounces occassionally taking 6

Even doing things like swimming during the day don't seem to make him sleepy!

Please help!
Thanks

[Jaime]

hello again,

looks like what's happened is that sleep from 5:30-7:30 (ish) has become his morning nap, and then the nap he takes at 9 is his "afternoon" nap, causing the 1pm nap to be a catnap.  i think that if you can move everything forward a bit, you can help him drop that feed and then start his day for real around 7-7:30am.  here's a link to help get rid of that 5am bottle:
https://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=46907.0
you may also need to use a bit of pu/pd to help him learn to go back to sleep and not wake to eat at that time.

once you can drop that, you can aim for a day with naps around 9am, and 1pm (like you have been), but hopefully those will both be the longer ones.  you may still need a catnap around 5pm during the transition for a little while. 

the other thing that concerns me is that you mention erratic waking... this is usually a sign of hunger, so i wonder if he's not drinking enough out of his bottles during the day.  you might want to check out the bottle forum and see if anything sounds familiar there.

HTH a little!