wakes up to play at 2am.

[sunbaby]

ds was such a good sleeper until a month ago. he is not quite 6 months old and his sleep patterns have been getting harder and harder for me to live with. not to mention, he seems tired too often and his total sleep hours in any 24 hr period dont add up to much.(10 hrs?).

he used to sleep from 11 pm to 7am most nights, plus some good naps. when he got a cold last month, he started night waking like every two hours- not ideal, but i could deal with it at some level, just nursing through it. his naps have gotten super short, usually two or three of 30 minutes or less. all this i could live through.

but the thing i feel like i just have to resolve is that in the past week, he keeps waking up around two am, nursing, and then playing niosily in be for an hour or two. i just pretend to sleep next to him, the room is pitch black, but he doesnt take the hint. he rolls around, makes lots of LOUD hapy noises and tugs on the covers. this so doesnt work for me. i have to get up before 6 every day to get dd to school, and i cant afford to miss two whole hours of sleep, plus a couple of other waking in the night. i cant even catch up during the day becuase his naps are so short.

now i am so sleep deprived and i feel so mad at everybody- ds, dh (for sleeping in the other room so ds wont disturb him), and just generally grouchy at dd becasue everything feels so hard when i am trying to live on so little sleep. i hope someone can think of a good idea to help me, because i dont know wha to do.

[ladybugchild77]

Mama!
My dd did this at around that age too. She seems to do it still when she is about to reach a big milestone (sitting up, etc.) When the "playing dead" thing didn't work for me I would actually let her get up in a dark room and bore herself to sleep! It usually took like 1/2 and hour and she was ready to nurse to sleep! HTH! :yawning:

[aprildawn]

my almost 7 mo old dd does this too. it started three or four weeks ago. it's not every night, thankfully. but she wants to talk and yammer for about an hour before she'll go back to sleep. usually i play dead and i do doze more than i realize. sometimes i roll over so my back is to her which seems to get her back to sleep more quickly than if i'm facing her. she has her own room (sleeping pallet on the floor since her crib is side-carred with our bed). sometimes i take her back to her room and leave her in there to talk herself back to sleep. sometimes i get to doze back off for 20 min or so while she's in her room before she starts to cry and i bring her back to bed with me where she relents and goes back to sleep.

so, that's all to say no one thing has worked for me. but i'm right there with you.

[Live~Laugh~Love]

Mine too, okay so I thought I was alone. My DS didnt sleep through the night till almost 3... He still wakes up sometimes. So lavender w/ chamomile really does help

[ryleigh'smama]

My dd is 8 months and a few weeks ago started to do the same thing for two nights in a row. I changed a few things, and so far (fingers way crossed) she hasn't done it again. I stopped giving her a late afternoon nap, unless it's a quicky in the car to somewhere. She was taking a nap sometime between 3-5pm. As long as her nap in the afternoon is not later than 5, and no longer than 30 min. she does better at night. The other thing was to put her to bed between 7pm and 8pm instead of between 6pm and 7pm. For the longest time the latter was working well, but now she needs to go to bed just a little later.

So, I don't know for sure that it was any one thing, and I know from experience that talking about it usually messes it all up but hopefully it will help. As far as the naps go.....at around 6 months (maybe 5months) Ryleigh started liking to nap on her tummy (I know, they aren't "supposed to", but she was rolling over on her own by then) and her naps doubled in length. Good Luck!!

[Llyra]

Oh, mama, I so feel for you. My DD did this for months and months, until I thought I was going to go stark raving mad from lack of sleep. A baby that wants comfort and nursing-- that I could understand. Wanting to pull my hair and babble loudly and climb on me at 3 am-- NO! I posted on here multiple times about it actually!

Two things that helped:

1. No matter how bad it gets, and how aggravated you feel, stick with the "play dead" ignore it approach. It took a long, long time, but it did eventually work. Baby realizes that you are not going to join in the fun, and eventually gives it up. This is really incredibly hard to do, especially when he's climbing all over you and making all that noise and grabbing your covers, but I just stuck with it. I used to sing to myself inside my head to distract myself from the racket, and to resist the urge to "wake up" and talk to her. Try and convince your DH to completely ignore the playing, also, if he sleeps with you and the baby. Be responsive if baby cries or fusses, but don't respond to playing.

2. I set up a crib in the bedroom, for those nights when I just flat out could not deal with the playing. When Julia started her late-night party, I quietly lifted her into the crib, and let her play by herself until she got tired of it, and then when she cried I brought her back to bed. And on the occasional lucky night, she'd actually drop off to sleep in there. If your baby is just as happy to play alone in the dark, this can help a lot. I don't even really see the harm in putting a happy, noisy baby in another room for awhile, someplace where you will easily hear if the playing turns to fussing.

Family bed purists might disagree, but we all have to sleep, and to find the sleep arrangement that works best for us.

A sidecar can really help, too, so that you have a separate surface to put baby on when the wiggling and rolling gets to you. AT 14 months, Julia is now sleeping in that same crib, sidecarred, and it's working really well. It was the combination of getting her on a separate surface, and ignoring the playing, that finally earned us a decent night's sleep.

There's a lot going on developmentally at 6 months, with rolling and sitting up and babbling and teeth and (possibly) starting solids, and it really does disturb their sleep.

[CB73]

I am almost afraid to post this but...my DS is 25MO and STILL wakes up for playtime anywhere between 1-3am some nights! It is so hard to deal with...esp with the early wake up times for work.

We have tried to play 'dead' / be very sleepy & slow, keeping it dark. Sometimes he settles down, but other times, he cannot be calmed and even will resort to yelling. (This is NOT okay since we have a 7 week old too!)

We taught him sign language and he started telling us that he is hungry. When he really won't settle, we do give him a snack, and BAM, he falls asleep almost instantly. Could she be hungry? Esp at 6MO old...or teething? Have you tried teething tablets, or other natural calm remedies? Does she have music that helps her fall asleep at her normal bedtime? Can you keep the music on repeat all night, so if she wakes, the conditions are similar to bedtime and she might settle more easily?
Could you convince DH to sleep near or with you again, so he can help during the very difficult wee hours? Maybe another person helping out will ease YOUR exaustion and settle DD in some way?

I agree with PP that there are so many things going on developmentally. It may be a phase - a short one, for your sake, I hope!

[mskgandn]

I'm sensing a theme here: my 7 1/2 month old does this as well. Sounds like it is just something that happens at this age as they begin to develop so many new ways to move. My problem? My ds shrieks while he is up, so there is no rest. He isn't crying...just screaming and shrieking as he tries to move around and get up into crawl position. So even if I could ignore the moving, or put him in his crib (in our room) while he is up, the noise just echos in our little room. DH has long since moved into the guest room to get some sleep (he's a teacher and needs to be "on" everyday). But that means I can't get away from ds when he's like this.

I'm there with you! We'll all get through this.

mskgandn