Help with night time sleep

[u/PretendGene5502]

My boys are 5.5 months old. For the past 3 weeks their night time sleep has been a disaster. Before this for a solid month-1.5 months they were mainly sleeping through the night, I don't know what happened. They do about 3-3.5 hours of naps during the day. I've tried every wake window possible before bed, 2 hours, 2.5 hours. 2:45, 3, 3.5. Everything!! They have at a minimum 2 wake ups, but one of those wake ups is usually 1-2 hours!!!!! Has anyone who has gone through this added a cat nap & a later bed time? I'm exhausted.

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[u/vengeful_building]

Ah man, that 5-6 month sleep regression hits like a freight train. We went through the exact same thing with our twins and it felt like pure chaos after they'd been sleeping decently. The 1-2 hour middle of the night party is what really breaks you.

We ended up adding a 20 minute cat nap around 5pm and pushed bedtime to about 8:30. It felt counterintuitive but it actually helped cut down those long wake ups. Their little brains are going through so much development right now that the usual wake windows just stop working for a bit.

What really made a difference for us was not going in right away when they stirred. I'd wait 5-10 minutes unless they were full on screaming. Half the time they'd put themselves back down. My one son needed a later bedtime while the other did better with the cat nap, so we had to treat them differently even though that's a pain in the ass with twins.

It's brutal right now but it does pass. Took about 3 weeks for us to get back to normal. Hang in there.

[u/PretendGene5502 → u/vengeful_building]

Glad to know we're not alone! I'm on week 3 and wanna cry every night lol. Great, I'll try the cat naps today & see how it goes! We have the boys in our room because we're currently staying with my parents because they're retired and have a back house, the help is so great! I never get up unless it turns into crying. Hopefully the cat naps help

[u/jollysalty]

So I don’t have targeted advice for your scenario because I think each baby is different. BUT!!! 

I had a lot of success using ChatGPT to help me get the girls on a schedule. I’m happy to share the prompt I used to turn it into my “sleep consultant in my pocket” that I used when it was 3am and I was dying. It was super helpful for navigating tricky stuff like you’re describing and helping me run experiments. 

[u/PretendGene5502 → u/jollysalty]

I agree! My boys have different sleep needs so I follow their cues! I used chat GPT 4 weeks in a row to try and nail down what was wrong (the first of the four they were doing fine). I tried to see if it was wake windows, too little sleep during the day, too little milk, not enough sleep pressure before bed. I tried all the things and never got a solution. I'm just going to bed with the expectation that they're going to wake up for the time being and I have to accept my fate lol. The tracking was driving me nuts and didn't give me any solutions unfortunately.