Desperate for help. Please.

[thomasmann]

Hi all. I've been a lurker on this sub reddit for some time. I'm a FTM to a beautiful 8 month old baby boy (he will be 9 months on May 26).

He was a wonderful sleeper as a newborn. I thought we had a unicorn.

Then, the 4 and 6 month regression hit hard ans aligned perfectly with his immunizations, COVID, and DST. He was in a pack and play in our room until 6 mo. We moved him to his own room. He slept great the first few nights. Que in the sickness, teething, leap, anything else that makes a baby not sleep.

After many sleepless nights of battling his crib, we began bed sharing. It started as early mornings, and became the entire night of sharing. I was also working evenings so when I got home at 10pm my husband already had the baby asleep as it was the only way he would sleep. At first bed sharing was great...

Now, I hate it. For all the reasons most parents hate it so I won't go into detail but it's not working for my family anymore.

I want to sleep train but I tried gentle methods and it's not working. Honestly I just ruin it by going in and comforting him after 10 minutes because he is screaming crying and barely can breath and standing the entire time. He won't be comforted in the crib he will just keep screaming and crying until I pick him up.

He is exclusivly BF and I started doing 5/3/3 to ween down on the feedings which he seems to take to pretty well. He is still up every 2-3 hours.l throughout the night, if it's night time for a feed a pat his back or rub his back and cuddle him and this works but only in our bed, not if he is in the crib.

Here's his schedule: 3/3.5/3.5-4. He's up at 630/7am. First nap: 930/10 until 11. Second nap is 2/230 until about 330 or 4. Bedtime at 730. Bedtime routine starts at around 645 or 7. All naps are contact naps and I'm fine with that for now.

Where do I even start???

EDIT: he typically only needs about 10-11 hours overnight. I'm not looking to have a 12 hour night for him, or for him to STTN. I just want to be able to have myself, my husband, or a caregiver put him to sleep in his crib and have some time alone or doing whatever in the evening and to stop bedsharing. SO any success stories of bed sharing to independent sleep is very very much appreciated. Signed, an extremely tired mama.

EDIT 2: thank you for all the kind and thoughtful responses. It seems like floor bed is highly recommended and helpful so I'll look into that. I appreciate all the suggestions and validation that I'm not alone and that my baby seems to have a good attachment with me considering he wants to snuggle me so much so I'll roll with that mentality for a while.

 

[robkatch78]

@thomasmann Floor bed in his room, snuggle til he falls asleep, roll away. Get your alone or adult time back

We take turns cosleeping with our bub in his bed by choice, but when hubby and I want our time, we just roll away and go to our room. The parent who's not cosleeping with him gets a glorious full king bed to themselves and uninterrupted sleep...

(Ours cried bloody murder against the crib at 1yo, a switch flipped and we couldn't bear his cry/heaves)

 

[ilovejesusandgod]

@robkatch78 This is also what worked for us! We had a contact napper/cosleeper extraordinaire and now she naps alone and sleeps hours the evening alone in her floor bed. She loves her bed and plays there during the day, reads books there, and generally seems to feel very positive about it which I love.

 

[robkatch78]

@ilovejesusandgod It's true, I think the safer they feel about an environment or the more fun it is, the more they lean into it. Ours threw himself into the floorbed instantly. Even when he rolled off in the middle of the night, he'd just groggily climb back up (or stay asleep on the hard floor )

 

[thomasmann]

@robkatch78 So lots of recommendations for floor bed which I'm leaning towards. Do you use any type of gate / play pen/ etc or just baby proof the room?

 

[robkatch78]

@thomasmann We baby proofed the room so he can play in his room to his heart's content. When he was 8mo it was only soft toys and books in his room. Even his portable nightlight was a soft squishy one that he liked to press on/off like disco for fun

Covered all the electrical and put the wires in tubes against the walls/baseboards.

Pushed his hard queen mattress against the corner of the room, popped a bedrail at the foot end, so I could roll away easily from the open side. Put a soft kids play mat under that side so if he did roll off, he rolled off to something to cushion the fall.

To this day, we have not gated or in any way made it so he could not get in or out of his room on his own. It's just not to his temperament, I think that would cause him to panic that he can't get out.

 

[gigaquad]

@thomasmann I totally get how hard this is. I'm going to suggest undertiredness. Your wake windows add up to 10-10.5 hours of awake time per day, meaning you're trying for 13.5-14 hours of sleep.

Average sleep needs for 4-12 month olds range from 12-15 hours in 24 and declines over the first year. So while 13.5-14 hours is definitely in that range, I wonder if sleep might be more consolidated overnight if you pushed out those awake times a bit.

Eg at 8 months my little one began doing 3,4,5 for her awake times and her sleep got infinitely better. I'm not suggesting your little one do her awake times but I'm convinced that for her doing that longer awake time each day made her night sleep more consolidated.

It's also worth thinking about separation anxiety picking up at this time that can make it trickier to get baby to be OK with being separate to you (not invalidating how you feel at all, I completely understand why you want to get them in their cot). Personally I also don't see how leaving a baby to cry in their cot is going to give them a good relationship with it so that might also take time to heal. I know it works for some people but I just don't see how lol.

My little one does her naps in her cot if we're home and then does her first stretch of the night in her cot. I'm not traipsing up and down the hallway multiple times a night so she comes into our bed when she wakes up.

This is an article that really helped me at this time: https://sarahockwell-smith.com/2015/11/18/what-the-heck-goes-wrong-sleep-wise-at-8-10-months/

 

[robkatch78]

@gigaquad That's so true, it's such a blur now, but around 8mo is when separation anxiety kicks in

 

[thomasmann]

@robkatch78 Seems like this is exactly what is going on with my babe

 

[thomasmann]

@gigaquad Wow this was extremely helpful. Thank you for the article. I needed to hear all of this. and I will definitely consider some changes in WW and schedule overall!

 

[robkatch78]

@thomasmann Oh and the contact naps stopped around 1yo...he wanted to be put down so he can lie comfortably on his own. It just happened (and I never thought it would...)

 

[2reshane]

@thomasmann My third baby was very clingy and never slept more than a handful of hours outside of my bed (we would start with crib sleep from about 7-9/10pm then move to bed sharing).

At just shy of 12 months we moved his crib to his own room, and did the chair method. It did not work at first, and definitely did not work all the times I tried before he was almost a year old. The only reason why I think it worked is I accidentally did extinction one night. We were bed sharing and it had been several nights of him waking up at 2 am and he thought it was time to have fun. After a few nights of this I felt very strong anger, so I put him in his crib in his room and said ai would be back. He cried. I hated it but I needed a short reset for myself. I fully intended to return after 10 minutes. I could hear him but it wasn’t loud. I was so tired. So. Tired. I laid down and fell asleep. I woke up 4 hours later and felt horrible. He had been awake the whole time, and upset the whole time (based on the video monitor recording). It was terrible, but…I realized what had happened, and I realized that while I was absolutely not going to let him cry it out again, I did need to do it differently going forward. I figured the stress that caused him should be used for something beneficial, and that extinction can work so…the next night I committed to rocking him to sleep each time he woke up. I knew I could rock him and transfer him and it would be fine. I knew I may need to go to him every 2 hours doing this. And I did, for a few nights.

Then it started getting harder to transfer him, so I tried the chair method. Though I just sat on the floor next to the crib. I patted him if he needed it. I sat there for as much as 45 minutes before he would fall asleep. After 3 weeks or so he started going to sleep much faster. Then I started leaving before he was fully asleep. And now I feed him, rock him, and lay him down when he’s falling asleep. Some nights he wakes once or twice. Some nights he sleeps 13 hours. It’s been about 3 months since that accidental extinction night. It’s going really well.

I mention the extinction because I don’t know how much that mattered to the process. It could be it mattered to him, in terms of his ability to sleep alone. It could be it mattered to me because it gave me a reason to stick to rocking to sleep for night wakes. It feels important - I don’t know that the rest of it would have gone so well without this. There were no lasting negative effects, so if I could go back in time, I think I would do it the same.

My biggest suggestion is to stick to a strategy as long as the situation doesn’t seem worse. So hysterical crying to me is a bad situation. I’d change strategies then. Intermittent crying that makes me uncomfortable but objectively doesn’t seem terrible? Maybe stick with it. Like if check ins make it worse, don’t do them. If no check ins means it’s still pretty awful, find a different strategy. But if it’s tolerable to you, stick with it. Use all the sleep training techniques with modifications. I didn’t phase out the chair method, I just let it happen on its own. I rock and feed to sleep, going against sleep training methods. Consider the techniques and modify to suit your needs, or ignore them completely. None of this process is set in stone.

For the record I did Ferber with my first two kids and it worked in days and they were great sleepers right away. Third baby is completely different, which has taught me that all babies are unique and it is true that not all strategies will work, or won’t work, on all babies.

 

[keithparagon]

@thomasmann Another advocate for floor bed, sounds like it would work well with your bib. Hope it gets better soon x

 

[thomasmann]

@keithparagon Did you just set up a bed on the floor or did you have it in a play pen or with a gate around it or anything? Seems like maybe just baby proofing the room with a camera and motion sensors alert system is what is being recommended.

 

[keithparagon]

@thomasmann It’s a very small room so I literally just have her mattress and one chest of drawers that’s child proofed. Tbh when she wakes up I just hear her on the camera and she’s waiting for me in bed, she’s never gotten out, but this might change when she can toddle

 

[temirlan]

@thomasmann I sleep with baby in a floor bed but put a camera on and leave when I want to.

 

[dallila]

@thomasmann I was in the same situation when my daughter was 5-10 months old. I couldn’t handle the sleep deprivation any longer and had tried everything (floor bed, bedsharing, different wake windows, different nap lengths, bedtime routines, etc etc). Nothing helped my daughter stop waking every hour.

I made the incredibly difficult decision to do sleep training. I hired a sleep consultant who walked me through implementing the “chair method”. After 6 difficult nights, she started sleeping through the night. My mental health is so much better, I am a way better parent now that I’m getting adequate sleep.

Hope you can find a solution that works for you and your family.