6 months old, waking every hour - Please Help!

InfamousQBert

i haven't been on the bump in many months, so i apologize for just jumping in, but here we go. i need help. it's a bit long to read, but i hope someone here has advice.

my son is 6 months old, totally healthy, ahead of the curve on all milestones EXCEPT sleep. we bedshare/cosleep and he was EBF until we started solids a few weeks ago. from about 6 weeks to 4 months, he slept in 3 hour chunks that i was totally handling. at 4 months, he got a bad cold, which made eating and sleeping tricky, since it was hard to nurse with his congestion. that set him back to 2 hour stretches, which slowly devolved to nights of waking every 45 minutes - 1.5 hours. that's been going on for over a month now, and it's killing me. i have to be up for work around 5:30 and i'm really not doing a good job lately.

i read the No Cry Sleep Solution, and have been trying to put those ideas to work for us, starting last Monday. we usually pick him up from daycare between 5:30-6:00 and, due to a sucky commute, are home between 6:30-7:00. he falls asleep in the car, so if he stays asleep through getting inside, i leave him in the carseat until he wakes up. sometimes that's 15 minutes, sometimes it's an hour. when he wakes up, because it's already so late, i change his diaper to an overnight diaper, put on his pjs, rock and nurse in the glider, and let him start to fall asleep. some nights, he really gets drowsy while nursing. some nights, he never does. after i rock for a while, regardless of his sleepiness, i go into our bedroom and lay down in the bed with him. i'll comfort nurse him until he's ready to fall asleep, which is typically not until 8:30, no matter when i start. i do the NCSS trick where i wait until he stops sucking actively and then delatch and try to get him to take his thumb. it usually takes 4-5 tries, nursing for 5-10 minutes each time, before he takes the thumb and actually stays asleep.

this past week, i've been so exhausted, i've just stayed in the bed with him and gone to sleep myself, sometimes without dinner. on GOOD nights, he doesn't wake again until 11:30ish. then, he's waking up still at least every 1.5 hours. about half the time, he only needs to find his thumb, and doesn't want to nurse. this is great. it's progress, but the way he wakes up is so violent, that it wakes me no matter what. we have a king bed, so there's plenty of room in the middle, and i've tried putting him in that space in the middle, so he's not right up against me. this doesn't seem to make him sleep any longer, and often lengthens the amount of time it takes to resettle him, since he tends to wake up and want to nurse again when i try to shift him out of my arms. if i try to put him in the cosleeper (which is not attached to the bed now), it's the same story. his wakings involve a loud cry out, and lots of thrashing, even when he just needs to find his thumb. there's no way i'd sleep through that.

so, how do i get him to actually SLEEP longer, not just not need to nurse? i know i'm not to the 10 day mark yet, but it was night 7 last night, and i'm just not thinking i'll see a sudden miracle in 3 nights. i'm afraid i'm still doing something wrong with this. he's a tension builder, so even trying to leave him fussing for just a few minutes alone in the cosleeper has never worked for us. i've tried it multiple times, just to see if something has changed. i don't think i could handle any of the CIO methods. they just seem so cruel for an infant. but i've got to find SOME way to get him sleeping longer. it's causing me physical and mental distress and just getting worse the longer it lasts.

TiffanyBerry

Outside of making sure he's not hungry, uncomfortable from a wet diaper (oh, multiple middle of the night diaper changes aren't fun, but they're better than the fussing that ensues from not doing them on a baby who cares about the difference), too cold or too hot, or in some other way physically uncomfortable, I don't know there is a lot you can do.

There are some things you can't MAKE a baby do - sleep, swallow (without extreme force), poop/pee.  These are things you just can't force another person to do.  And it's tiring (oh, I know it; DD still doesn't sleep well, and at over 2 years old is still up 2-3 times a night, which, for a kid who sleep *maybe* 10 hours overnight, that means at least every three hours most of the time).  But it changes.

You might try him on a different bed from you (perhaps on the floor).  You might try to work on partial night weaning (that helped us some, but didn't solve the problem of course, and I did it closer to 12-15mo).  You might try swaddling if you haven't been or not if you have.  You might try some ambient sound and either making it darker or lighter.