Almost 5 Month Old Not Sleeping Well, Short Naps and a Lot of Night Waking

Comfort him when he needs it. You won't "spoil" him, I promise :) Also you may want to consider 2 naps a day. Keep some of the homeopathic tablets handy for the pain/waking if you think he is teething - which he very well may be. This too shall pass!

Buy a copy of 'Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child', it's an absolutely must have book. I read and re-read it whenever I have questions like the one you've asked. :)

both of my children had a terrible "half". my formula baby just plain stopped sleeping more than 4 hours a night. the breastfed baby was breastfeeding nonstop all night long at that age. there are many homeopathic remedies to help with that, but i did not discover that until much later.
Good Luck
V.

Hi. My daughter is the same age (born 8/15/09). She is not on a strict schedule. However, I do notice some trends in her eating / sleeping. She really doesn't sleep much during the day either. She doesn't really get fussy, she just doesn't seem to need a lot of sleep. On average, she will nap for 30 min. - 1 hr in morning, sometime between 11 - 1 pm (usually her longest nap) and again in the afternoon/evening. This varies depending on what we're doing. Ex. She'll sleep more if we go for a walk or a drive. But if we have a long day with family or friends, she'll only nap for a little after nursing and not much more. Thankfully she sleeps great at night. Since she was about 8 weeks, she would only wake up 1x a night - usually around 4 am. For the last few days, I've been putting her down about 15 - 30 min. later and she has been sleeping through the night. But...she's done this before. She'll sleep through the night for about a week and then go back to her regular pattern. I asked the doctor about her sleep schedule and he said there was no need to try and force a schedule/nap time until she's about 9 months old. Tricks and advice I've received that seem to help: Some babies just don't need a lot of sleep. Just be consistent with whatever works for you and your baby. Develop a naptime/bedtime routine so they learn to understand it's time to sleep. Make sure your baby knows the difference between day/night. At night, keep the room dark, keep talking/engaging with baby to a min, etc. Also, you may want to try bottle feeding (if you're pumping) and increasing the ounces before bedtime so baby stays fuller longer. Seems my baby goes through phases (good and bad) of everything. Hopefully, this is just a phase for your little one.

Hi M.,

As others have mentioned, it could very well be teething pain. Is he showing any other symptoms? Try a little orajel or tylenol and see if that helps.

Sleep patterns...I read Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Weissbluth. LOVED it. I followed the napping patterns that he suggested when we started "sleep training". We started working on nap patterns more seriously at four mo., then did the CIO thing at about 5.5 mo. after the patterns were beginning to be established. Our schedule at 5 mo. was (of course, ALL these times are approximate! we're talking about babies ;))up at 7. Naps at 9 and 1 for about 1.5-2 hours, a briefer nap at 5 (around 30-45 min.) and to bed for the night at around 7:30. IMO (and that's all it is!), 4 naps is too many at his age. I know it seems hard since his naps are short, but maybe trying to establish a 2-3 nap day will help get those a little longer? Just a thought. Oh, I also nursed, but I nursed upon WAKING, instead of nursing to sleep...excepting that I also nursed at bedtime. :)

It will get better! Keep working at it mama!

I just posted a question just like this except my son is 7 months. He could be going threw seperation anxiety, be in pain from and ear infection, or from teething. Alot of women say their child got an ear infection while they were teething. And the first and second ones are the worst!! Try giving him some tylenol or teething tablets for the pain. My son also was sleeping very well, threw the whole night actually!! Now he is waking up at least 3 times a night. At night i would try a bedtime routine. Give him a bath, put some sleepy time lotion on him, and then give him a bottle. Everynight so he'll know what to expect when its bedtime. You are not alone! Hang in there, your doing a great job!

Hi M., If you don't mind some old school advice, let me share how i did things. First let me tell you that my kids are 26 (son) 23 next month (son) and a 20 year old (daughter)
being a mother was and still is my greatest joy. I personally never believed and still don't that a baby should have to put themselves asleep (just an opinion) I always rocked and sang my baby's to sleep, for night time and nap time, holding and rocking my baby's are some of my most treasured memories from when they were baby's, I just couldn't see laying an awake baby in the bassenet or crib to fall a sleep on their own. My baby's always always fell asleep feeling safe, secure and loved, because they feel asleep in the security of my arms and with the sound of my voice, I think this is one of the reasons my baby's slept through the night at 6 weeks old. I also started giving them rice cereal at bed time, baby's sleep better with a full tummy. My mom, a mother of 5 gave me that advice. Your baby at 5 months very well can be teething, here's where you get in between a rock and a hard place, because if your baby is in discomfort, you want to comfort them, but at the same time if you start going to them when they are supossed to be sleeping, they start to rely on that and it becomes a very bad habit, for some reason teething bothers baby's more at night than any other time, I believe because they are still it's quiet around them, where as during the day, they have the sounds of life going on around them, TV, talking every day stuff, so they don't notice it as much. Breast feed baby's don't usually sleep as well as bottled fed baby's, I have got that from almost everyone of my daycare parents of new babys,so no one blast me for saying that. They breast fed for 6 weeks only cause they had to go back to work and can't be up all hours of the night, and they all told me when stoped breast feeding their baby's slept through the night. I never breast feed my baby's for MANY reasons, and I never had sleepless nights with my baby's. Another thing I did, I have a fish aquarium in my baby's/childrens rooms, had a blue light in the aquarium which served as a night light s well, the blue light and the movement of the fish and water was very relaxing so if they did wake up. I believe that helped them fall back a sleep. This is old school I know, but I never had any, and I mean any of the sleep, behavior, issues that the moms write into mamaaource about. There were no such thing as the CIO cry it out method, that I ever heard of, myself nor any of my friends used pacifires, I knew no one at that time who breast fed, there was no such thing as co sleeping, swaddling I never heard of back then, all these things are being used and done now, but the mom's today seem more stressed and more frustrated than I or my friends ever were. When I was a young mom, I got advice from my mother and grandmother, not others moms who had no more experience than I had, but today that's even different. take my advice for what it's worth, and enjoy being a mom, it goes fast, and then their grown, and everything you say and do, will determin what kind of people they will be when they are grown. J.