Hoping someone out there can give me some much needed advice as I'm slowly falling apart. I'm having serious problems getting my 5 month old to sleep through the night and don't know where I'm going wrong or how to help him learn how to soothe himself to sleep. Here is some general, background info:
- How old is your child? 5.5 months
- What’s his/her daily routine? Bottle at about 7am. Daycare at 7:30am. 2 hour nap in a.m., 2 hour nap in p.m. Bath/bottle 7:30pm. Bedtime is 8pm.
- What’s nap routine? Generally two naps, two hours each (one in the a.m., one in the p.m.)
- How long are naps? 2 hours each
- What's bedtime routine? Time? 8pm bedtime. Bath at 7:30pm, followed by 8 oz bottle.
- Do you bottle or breastfed?? Bottle/formula
- How much? or how long? He eats 8 oz each bottle - once upon waking, once late morning, once in the afternoon, once at dinnertime, once before bed. AND he wakes up at 2am wanting more!
- How many wakes per night? One
- What’s your LO like when waking at night? How long is he/she up? Very upset, can be up for 2 hours unless I feed him.
- When you go to him/her is she fussing or crying? Or is it a mantra cry? Fussing, crying, tears.
- What have you tried to settle?? Rocking, singing, walking around, patting back, changing diaper, feeding water... Continually screams until fed formula!
- Are there developmental issues such as teething or milestones? Perhaps teething, a little drooly.
- Have you introduced cereal? Why, how much, and how many times a day? (for LO’s under 6 months) Yes, eating 3 stage 2 meals a day (breakfast, lunch, dinner). Introduced foods because he is always so hungry. He's also a big boy, born at 8 lb 10 oz.
- Do they have a prop? If so what is it? No
- Do they have a lovie? No
So here is the problem - my son is waking up between 2am-3am every morning. He will scream, no matter what I try. The ONLY way to soothe him is to feed him. I think I have tried almost everything and am at the end of my rope.
He's already eating 4-5, 8 ounce formula bottles during the day - PLUS three feedings of stage 2 food! I'm concerned about feeding him another bottle at 2am because 1.) he has no other way of getting himself to sleep other than having a bottle, and 2.) he's already drinking *40 ounces* of formula a day PLUS 3 feedings of solid food! Isn't adding another 8 ounces just too much??? He currently weighs about 16 pounds.
I thought maybe he was just going through a growth spurt with all of the eating, but this has been going on for weeks.
Over the past few weeks when he wakes up at 2am-3am, I've been trying everything under the sun to try to help soothe him back to sleep. NOTHING WORKS. Sometimes I'm up for over 2-3 hours, with him screaming and crying for that entire time - then I give him his bottle at about 4:30a.m. - trying to stretch him out as long as I can. Of course, all of the screaming wakes up our 22 month old in the next room. I'm now at the point where I want to give up and just go in there when he wakes up and feed him to spare myself, my daughter, and my DH from being up ALL NIGHT LONG. It would just be easier and we could all get some rest. But then I'm afraid I'm teaching him that he needs to eat in order to soothe himself. Last night I tried to let him CIO but it went on for 2 hours. I gave him 3 oz. of water, he still was screaming. DH and I got into an argument about it, so I just gave him a 6 oz bottle of formula. He was asleep 5 minutes later!!!!
DH and I both work full time, and we are both completely exhausted. We are arguing all of the time - and the arguments always end up with threats of divorce and us saying things that we just don't mean. I'm frequently getting migraines due to lack of sleep, which render me basically useless for the entire day. Our DD is having problems sleeping, and is cranky all day long at daycare. I'm having problems concentrating at work; DH is always going into work late and leaving early. The last thing we need is to lose our jobs, or to have our marraige fall apart, or both. Neither of us are good parents due to severe sleep deprivation over the last 6 months - all of this cannot be good for the children.
What can we do to instill some healthy sleep habits? FYI, we didn't have this problem with our DD, guess we were lucky with her (she slept through the night by 4 months) - so this is all new to us.
Is dreamfeeding at around 11pm an option? I could cut down the ounces on a couple of the other daytime bottles. I'm so afraid of overfeeding and creating poor habits..
Thanks in advance for any help, support and advice!
Deena
