Some advice that may help

Hiya,

I thought I would share some advice I was given recently that worked for me re: my 6 month old sleeping at night.

I stopped swaddling ds at about 4 months, it didn't seem to affect his sleeping and he liked to play with the blanket to get off to sleep so I didn't think anything more of it. From 4-6 months his night sleeping was very sporadic, sometimes it seemed like he was starting to sleep through the night and then he would quickly regress again.

I had to do a bit of controlled crying at one point as he was waking up every 2 hours seeming starving and I was starting to not cope with the lack of sleep, it made a difference within a couple of days and he slept through the night a couple of times but then started to wake a bit again. I have never rocked or fed him to sleep so he has been able to self-settle for a while, and by this point I had broken the association of having to have a full tummy to get back to sleep, but he was still waking at about 11am, then 3am, then 5am and we were patting him back to sleep in his cot (or by 5am I had started getting him into bed with me as nothing else seemed to work).

Some ladies in my coffee group had previously suggested swaddling him again but I wasn't too keen as I knew he liked to play with his blanket to get to sleep and I felt mean restricting him like that. A week ago I decided I may as well give it a try, and I have had a great little sleeper ever since! I put him down at 7pm, give him a dreamfeed at 10pm and then he will sleep through until at least 6am, when I give him a 4 minute feed and put him back to bed until 7am (I hope to be able to phase the 6am feed out soon but am not too worried about it).

He also sleeps much better for his day sleeps when he is swaddled. I realise this may form an association with being swaddled to get to sleep but I think it is well worth it if it means he gets some good sleep for a while! And I figure as he gets bigger he'll probably just start breaking out of the swaddle himself.

ds is a big boy, over 9kgs at 6 months, but my sister-in-law gave us some Aden & Anais wraps which are still plenty big enough, or just a square metre of fabric is good too. The Baby Whisperer Sharlene Poole has a trick to swaddling which I found makes it pretty secure (it's a bit hard to explain though).

So I thought I would share in case this works for someone else, I was very reluctant to go back to swaddling but now I'm very glad I did!



ETA

Edited by kaybee

Makes me feel alright about still swaddling Lily! People have told me I shouldn't but she won't sleep without it. My mum told me to swaddle until she crawls...

nkap9 wrote: Makes me feel alright about still swaddling Lily! People have told me I shouldn't but she won't sleep without it. My mum told me to swaddle until she crawls...

 

I'm the same, I'm not ready to get rid of swaddling yet and recently bought a bigger one for my DS. I dread the time when I need to think about weaning him from it. Although he isn't a great sleeper by any stretch of the imagination.

Lily doesn't sleep, literally unless she is swaddled and this does worry me. She also isn't sleeping through but I wasn't expecting her to anyway! She goes down for sleeps without problem so I am grateful for that lol!

I am still swaddling Jamie.   He's a terrible sleeper, and would be even worse without it, so it definitely helps with my sanity!

I remember still wrapping Sam until at least 8-9 months and I'll be doing the same this time around.

We swaddled until about 10 and a half months old.

I would just say that give it a go if you are having problems with sleep and see how it works. You can always stop it again if it doesnt work out.

We were the same as you Kalimirella, Chelsea hated being swaddled from very early on. But then around 3months she started waking herself up with her arms so started swaddling her and she loved it! We stopped at 7months when she started fighting it and went into a pillow case (with a hole cut out for her head obviously ) for a few months and then a sleeping bag, and now (15months) she's just in the sheets/blankets for sleeps.