Baby wakes up crying

[lovepiggie]

My 5 month old baby wakes us up in the nighttime with crying almost every night. He's a very happy baby otherwise, but usually will wake up screaming around 4 am every night. It starts out with a high pitched wail, and then he just cries and cries until he is completely awake.

We co-sleep, so I try and soothe him as much as possible, but the only way to get him to stop crying is to pick him up and gently wake him up. He's happy again once he's awake. (If we do not pick him up, he stays asleep... I've tried to offer him the breast and such, but it doesn't work. He won't latch on, and he just cries and cries)

Sometimes he wakes up again like this around 8 am.

Does anyone know what might be causing this? It's so upsetting hearing my baby cry like this every night

[Beauchamp]

Well, for us, when she wakes up crying, it means she's still tired and wants to be back asleep. When she officially wakes up, she's happy, and just opens her eyes, smiles, etc.

It took a while (still takes tweaking as she changes things up on us!) to figure out what could help her fall back asleep. If nursing doesn't work, it's usually music + Ergo. If that fails it's tummy rubbing and sssh-ing, until she's ready (finally) to nurse again.

[SLPmom76]

AGree with pp, my DS wakes up mad when he's either hungry, or more likely in his case, still tired but can't figure out how to put himself back to sleep.

[LadyCatherine185]

Ditto to the PP's.

Could also be teething, my DS got his first tooth at 5 months.