Sleep issues

Christin

Advice needed!

My 7.5 month old has been struggling with sleep, especially for the last couple of weeks and waking up anywhere between 1-4 am and then staying up for about an hour. It started with a run of poopy diapers at that time and then of course getting up to change him helped wake him up and made it hard to get him back to sleep, but now even when he doesn’t need to be changed he wakes up and moves around, talks to himself, whines, etc. He hadn’t needed a motn feeding for a few months, but a couple times recently we have given him a bottle hoping that would help, which he happily drinks but then still takes awhile to fall back asleep so I don’t think being hungry is the issue. If he doesn’t wake up for the hour long stretch he wants to get up at like 5 (which then throws off the rest of his day) or will wake up repeatedly throughout the night enough to cry for the pacifier to be put back in his mouth and then fall back asleep.

He is still in a bedside bassinet in our room at night, and we’d love to transition him to his crib in the nursery, but frankly I’m terrified how that will go. I’m sure I’ve made the situation worse to some extent by constantly responding to his demands for the pacifier or putting a hand on him to help soothe him since without that his awake/lightly fussing quickly turns to crying. That’s my biggest fear in moving him to the crib, especially since I know I can’t handle a cio sleep training method, but also don’t want to be going back and forth all night.

For additional reference, he typically wakes up about 6:30 (I’d love a little later but realize that may not be possible right now) and falls asleep about 8:00. We’ve tried moving bedtime earlier but that’s been tough to keep consistent given our schedule and he just seems to wake up more at night then. He usually takes 3 naps a day, getting about 3-4 hours of sleep from those, and then 9-10 hours at night, so he’s falling on the low side of the average amount of sleep per day, it’s just hard for me to not ever get a full night of sleep when I’m constantly waking up with him. Pretty sure I haven’t had one good night’s sleep since a couple months before he was born 😩