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Babies: 3 - 6 Months
ddembinska
member
Napping tips for a 5 month old
ddembinska
member
My son is about 5 1/2 months old. He has always needed to be swaddled to ever sleep. Whenever he wasn't swaddled, it was an all day and all night cry fest.
he has just recently begun this ritual where he busts out of the swaddle, rolls over, then gets pissed because he's on his stomach. He doesn't enjoy being on his stomach too long, especially when he's sleepy. Issue is, I can't keep him from rolling, so I have to just keep going in there and turning him back over until he finally stops doing it. He won't take naps in his swings or on his playmat. He sleeps HORRIBLY with no swaddle. we have tried long sleeved sleepers, short sleeved onesies, long sleeved onesies with legs exposed, short sleeved onesies with long pants. We were afraid that him being cold or hot was the issue, but that doesn't seem to be it. We put his pack n play in our room, put it in his, used white noise, used no white noise, none of it helped. He only takes 10-15 minute naps during the day, so that makes for a cranky, sleepy baby. Is there another sleep idea that I'm missing? He doesn't sleep any better in our bed...I have tried.
he sleeps through the night technically, but we get up a few times a night to him crying because he rolled. pretty much the same as the day time, just more spread out.
any advice is appreciated.
Andrew Karol-4/10/2010
Jase Eli-3/10/14
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Napping tips for a 5 month old
She still gets upset a bit, but less and less as she's getting closer to crawling. Also, she can roll back to her back on her own now so that has helped some, but she likes to sleep on her side and belly now. Although this makes me nervous, everything I've read says once they can roll on their own, there is no (SIDS related) need to turn them back on their backs. She's not a good napper either (30-45min), and I've heard that swaddling after 4mos is not in their best interest as far as needing to move in their sleep due to growing bones, joint development, etc. I know that doesn't "help", but hopefully, if you're in the same boat we are, he'll settle down as he gets used to not being swaddled and tummy time muscles strengthen... Good luck mama!
Here are some other tips that worked for us:
1) He needs to nap every 2 and 1/2 hours. When he doesn't we have no hope for night time sleep. Our son was also a very poor napper but we eventually got him to take three naps a day. Even if we can't get him to sleep we kept trying by rocking, singing, playing white noise and laying him down for the entire hour. It took a lot of patience. At first he'd scream if we tried to lay him in his crib, so we'd hold him and place him in it when he slept (creating a bad sleep association). When he woke up 10 minutes later, we'd repeat until it was an hour. In the beginning it was up down, up down for an hour three times a day. Eventually he came to accept he was going in the crib. Once he was willing to be in the crib we started putting him down awake and holding his arms next to his side (like they were swaddled) until he fell asleep. Today he goes down with no issues, unswaddled three times a day (VICTORY!)
2) We didn't want to do the "Cry it out" method so instead we used Dr. Harvey Karps Happiest Baby on the Block sleeping techniques book. (Both the book and the White Noise CD is worth it's wait in gold). We would feed and snuggle him until he was all the way asleep and then lay him in his crib and do a quick wake up, enough for him to look around and see he was in his crib and then soothe him (in his crib) back to sleep. This was also a test of patience. Several times the "Wake Up" would wake him all the way back up and we'd have to try again. The thought being that a baby who falls asleep in your arms and wakes up some where else is confused and will cry. Also, the baby isn't learning to soothe himself to sleep on the initial sleep and then can't soothe himself back to sleep when he wakes up again. Every single time he woke up at night (sometimes 8-10 times) we would soothe, lay him down, do the wake up and soothe in the crib. Eventually putting him down with less and less time being held after he fell asleep making it easier and easier to do the wake up and sleep thing. Now we can put him down tired but still awake and he can self soothe.
3) The type of white noise matters. We were using a machine from Babies R Us that worked well when he was younger but as they get older they need a hard low pitched rumbling noise. Last night we did Dr. Harvey Karps Rain Sound from his CD and the baby didn't wake once, unswaddled and in his zipadee zip.
I know it's different for every baby but I hope this helps a little. We are not going to work on getting him out of the zipadeezip!
TTC #2 01/01/15 BFP 4/24/15
Healthy Baby Boy Delivered in March 2014
"Courage is not absence from fear but rather and understanding; that what you desire is greater than what you fear"