i’m actually going through the same thing with my four month old. my two year old co slept until just the baby was born. the transition was pretty smooth and for the most part she’s used to it. but the baby… seems like she’s just not content in her sleep. sometimes i just sit up and hold her, while she’s not sleeping she is quiet and calm. if i come up with a trick i’ll let you know :)

All I can really say is that I’m sorry you’re having such a hard time! Co-sleeping stopped working for us at about 2 months, but Bryce was still in our room until we moved a month later, when we transitioned to the crib with very little to-do.

I read Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child and have implemented many of the ideas in it with good success (though the author advocates extinction, which I don’t feel good about, so I ignore his thoughts on that point). Maybe an earlier bedtime would help? You also might focus on getting good naps going, which will help nighttime sleep. But if you haven’t read that book yet, you might consider giving it a chance. There’s a lot of good information there, you just have to choose what will work best for you and follow your gut.

All my love to you, Steve, and Tate. Hopefully you find a solution that results in more sleep for all of you very, very soon!

Oh man…I’m going through the same thing with my almost 4 month old. I swore I would never co sleep and I didn’t with my first, but my second was just so snuggly and slept better when we did. Now she’s waking up every two hours to nurse for comfort and its killing me. I’m so exhausted its not funny. I sleep trained my first and he slept through the night at three months. My daughter has a little cold, but as soon as it is gone, I’m sleep training her. I can’t be a good mommy unless I get some good rest. No napping for me either since my son doesn’t nap. Anyway, I know how you feel and whatever you choose, good luck!

Harper started sleeping through the night at 6 weeks, and was an excellent sleeper (12 hour stretches)…. until she was 6 months old. From then until 10 months or so, she was up 4 or 5 times EVERY night. It was brutal! For her, I think it was new skill and new teeth related. She still has sleep struggles when she learns a new thing (recently, running) or has a major language explosion. Like her little brain is just too busy to sleep well.

This change is really common at 5 months regardless of whether you’re co-sleeping or not. Their development gets really intense till about the year. You can ride it out (keeping consistency on your end of course) or sleep train if you lose patience. Godspeed.

Sleep training worked for us when cosleeping stopped working (around 4 months). Sure, it isn’t perfect (the lady is teething these days, so she wakes up twice a night), but after 3 nights (i still nursed her whenever she wanted at night, but we let her fall asleep on her own, with frequent visits to comfort her), she slept 9-10 hours straight.

I agree with Sandra, Kel, and Courtnay. It might be worth trying an extra feeding or two before bed. My little girl was always a terrible sleeper but it did seem to get worse around five and six months b/c she was learning new skills and too interested in everything to want to go back to sleep. We tried sleep training her but I couldn’t take it after a few days. Most of my friends said it only took a day or two but it was clearly different in our case and I gave up. I also started taking naps with my daughter during the day for some sanity.

I read Baby Whisperer, and it had a lot of good advice. Some was a little too sympathetic (no crying it out), and parts were a little too hard (no co-sleeping, rocking or feeding to sleep). I really shouldn’t have paid too much attention to the no-no’s in the beginning since a week old baby isn’t going to pick up bad habits immediately. I threw her into sleep training in the 2nd week, and she really never took to a routine until about 5.5 months when she learned to crawl and was tired enough to sleep more than 45 minutes for naps. We can’t get her to sleep with us when she’s having a rough night because every movement in the bed wakes her up. That may be what Tate’s going through. She started to wake up every couple of hours at night around 6 mo. At first, I fed her each time. Then I started by going in and holding her by the crib and then putting her back down. Now if it’s been less than 3.5 hours since the last feed, I let her cry a little and see if she’ll go back to sleep. Sometimes my presence seemed to make her more inclined to eat, so that’s why I let her moan for a little bit and try to go back to sleep. Hang in there!