My DS is 5 months old. About two weeks ago his sleep changed drastically, literally from one day to the next, and it keeps getting worse and I am really starting to lose it as he's also high needs and so we both need our sleep to make it through the day!
Up until recently, he was a STTNer, from day 1 (I know, we were so lucky with that!). We would put him down for the night around 9 and he'd be up briefly about 1.5 hours later but easily soothed back down and then sleep through until 7 or 8am. He would only nap for 30 minutes at a time, but very consistently 4x/day. I would nurse him down in the glider and sing to him, and then transfer him into our bed (we cosleep at night), swaddle him, and that was it.
Well, all of a sudden that all got blown to pieces. He refuses to be swaddled anymore. He wakes up and whines the second I transfer him to the bed (after having been asleep), and he wakes up throughout the night many times. The napping thing is annoying but we can work around it, sort of. He can nap on me (which I don't really want to become a habit but it does work), or I can nap with him, and he also will nap in the carrier when we're out, or in the stroller. During the night wakings, he does not want to nurse...sometimes I can pick him up and sit with him in the bed and nurse him back to sleep, but mostly nursing doesn't help and he'll even refuse the breast. At first it was a few times per night, like 3 or so, but now it's pretty much all.night.long. Last night he had small interludes of sleeping but was up whining the whole night. We finally gave up and got out of bed around 5:30am.
I cannot feel or see any teeth coming in, but I am giving him some homeopathic teething remedy I have just in case. Can he be on the verge of getting a tooth and I not be able to feel or see it? BTW all this is exactly synchronous with him becoming more mobile. For a couple months he's been army-style crawling, but at the time all this sleep stuff changed, he started what I call advanced army crawling ~he can now direct where he goes, change direction, and crawl all over the house, whereas before he was sort of randomly going around in circles in one room. I know babies change sleep and sleep worse when they're making a developmental jump. So that makes sense, but I thought (and have seen in him before) that it only lasted a few days...not a few weeks or more!
I guess I'm just looking for validation here, that this is normal. I am hoping to hear that this will pass and we'll get our good little sleeper back someday. I'm hoping I will get a good night sleep again in the next couple years. If not, I wonder what I'm supposed to do here. I know I've been lucky so far and this may just be it, my time is up and this is part of being a mom, get used to it! But I worry because I can see I'm a much worse mom and my tether is shorter and I have less compassion for him (poor guy!) on zero to little sleep.
Please help me if you've BDTD. I'm kind of losing it here. TIA!
Up until recently, he was a STTNer, from day 1 (I know, we were so lucky with that!). We would put him down for the night around 9 and he'd be up briefly about 1.5 hours later but easily soothed back down and then sleep through until 7 or 8am. He would only nap for 30 minutes at a time, but very consistently 4x/day. I would nurse him down in the glider and sing to him, and then transfer him into our bed (we cosleep at night), swaddle him, and that was it.
Well, all of a sudden that all got blown to pieces. He refuses to be swaddled anymore. He wakes up and whines the second I transfer him to the bed (after having been asleep), and he wakes up throughout the night many times. The napping thing is annoying but we can work around it, sort of. He can nap on me (which I don't really want to become a habit but it does work), or I can nap with him, and he also will nap in the carrier when we're out, or in the stroller. During the night wakings, he does not want to nurse...sometimes I can pick him up and sit with him in the bed and nurse him back to sleep, but mostly nursing doesn't help and he'll even refuse the breast. At first it was a few times per night, like 3 or so, but now it's pretty much all.night.long. Last night he had small interludes of sleeping but was up whining the whole night. We finally gave up and got out of bed around 5:30am.
I cannot feel or see any teeth coming in, but I am giving him some homeopathic teething remedy I have just in case. Can he be on the verge of getting a tooth and I not be able to feel or see it? BTW all this is exactly synchronous with him becoming more mobile. For a couple months he's been army-style crawling, but at the time all this sleep stuff changed, he started what I call advanced army crawling ~he can now direct where he goes, change direction, and crawl all over the house, whereas before he was sort of randomly going around in circles in one room. I know babies change sleep and sleep worse when they're making a developmental jump. So that makes sense, but I thought (and have seen in him before) that it only lasted a few days...not a few weeks or more!
I guess I'm just looking for validation here, that this is normal. I am hoping to hear that this will pass and we'll get our good little sleeper back someday. I'm hoping I will get a good night sleep again in the next couple years. If not, I wonder what I'm supposed to do here. I know I've been lucky so far and this may just be it, my time is up and this is part of being a mom, get used to it! But I worry because I can see I'm a much worse mom and my tether is shorter and I have less compassion for him (poor guy!) on zero to little sleep.
Please help me if you've BDTD. I'm kind of losing it here. TIA!
