In desperate need of help to get 6mo to go to sleep for the night

[Fleur]

hmm, no advice sorry
I was going to start a similar thread tonight
For us it has been the last week or two, daytime sleeps are better but still not great.

Good luck here's hoping for a magic bullet huh

[Ryatha]

we have been having the same problem here as well Self settling til the silly season and now needs cuddles and feeds to go to sleep.

But we have made her bedtime later and changed the routine a bit. I also cuddle/feed her until she is nearly asleep then pop her in bed. if she wakes up again, I burp her and repeat the routine.

Sounds like what the pp have suggested are really good ideas, I might use them as well.

Goodluck!

[sloane]

hmm, no advice sorry
I was going to start a similar thread tonight
For us it has been the last week or two, daytime sleeps are better but still not great.

:yeahthat:

for us, we've started our bedtime routine just a little bit earlier (after lots of disruption over xmas) & have now added some solids before bath time - so now it's quiet-ish play, solids, bath & then feed to sleep. DS is still waking lots but at least we have been able to eat dinner in peace with him in bed for the last two nights!

oh - we've also had better day sleeps in the last two days as well & i think he's almost ready to go to 2 sleeps rather than 3. how many day sleeps is ash having? if it's 3, maybe he's ready to drop one?

small consolation, but at least it seems that lots of our baby buddies are having the same issue!

[Miss E]

Thanks everyone! It's nice to know I'm not the only one who is going through this at the moment. I tend to agree that it is probably a developmental thing and think we'll try mixing things up a bit tonight to see if we can trick him.

He still has a lot of sleeps during the day, either 3 or 4 depending on when the day starts and how long his naps are. I would love to get him to 2 naps, but I just think he's not ready. He really can't go much longer than 2 hours before the tired signs come on strong and he needs to go back to bed. He's a really active baby who doesn't stop moving when he's awake (and he is desperate to start crawling) so I think he burns up his energy pretty quickly.

[Miss E]

I wanted to say a big thankyou to you all... We had our first bedtime without crying in weeks tonight!

We took a bit of everyone's advice and mixed up the routine and then cuddled him till he was starting to close his eyes. I put him down and thought he'd gone to sleep, but a few minutes later he started chatting away... Oh no I thought... but then after ten or so minutes it stayed quiet. Went and checked on him and he was sound asleep Thanks ladies, I seriously can't remember the last time this he self settled for the night!

we can make this happen again tomorrow night...

[Miss E]

Bugger... I knew it was too good to be true, he just woke up crying after only 40 mins

Guess the change in routine made him think it was a nap instead of bedtime

[Fleur]

argh
you had me thinking you had found the solution! Never mind it's all progress I reckon
Fingers crossed he settles soon...

[*Infinity*]

Oh dear its so frustrating isn't it. I bet you'd just settled in to relax too

You know it could be something completely unrelated to whether he has a routine or not. I'm pretty sure our unsettledness at bed times recently was due to a number of things - primarily teething and just all the big stuff happening for their little bodies developmentally. It doesn't help that they are things that are mostly out of our control and we just have to roll with. Try not to analyse it too much, you just end up doing your head in even more in my experience.

Good luck