Baby Refusing blanket or even warm clothes waking repeatedly at night
Q: I wrote to you when my baby boy was 7 month old saying he was a bad sleeper. Your advice was to get sleep sense and coach him to sleep. Well it worked for a while but lately now that he is walking, despite at least a 1km walk in the afternoon (which he runs through in a matter of minutes!) and sometime 10minutes in the swing he does not sleep through. He sleeps at 7pm easily in his own bed, (sometimes wakes us at 10pm, all we need to do is go to him shush him back to sleep), but he always wakes up after an 8 hour stretch (which is at 3am). At 3am he refuses to go back to sleep in his own cot. If we bring him to our bed, he is asleep in less than 10 minutes. Thereafter he will wake up between 6 and 7am. So he does get his 11 hours, it is just broken up into 2 sometimes 3. If we try to repeat the night routine to let him self soothe, we are there for 2-3 hours. We tried this for over a week. The easy way is to take him to our bed, we do know though that is not what we want in the long run. How do we break the 8 hour sleep break. During the day he only sleeps once for 2-3hours. He refuses a doodoo blanky.
And Oh, I think he is cold at 3am but he refuses to put on a blanket or even warm clothes, we tried the sleeping bag and did not succeed and have now resorted to a panel heater, an electric blanket and underfloor heating, just to keep the room warm.
A: Hi
A few things I would rule out:
- Is he having sufficient protein – make sure he has 2 – 3 T of protein per meal with veg, fruit or starch
- How does he actually fall asleep? He needs to fall asleep with a doodoo – you say he hasn’t taken to one yet – well, you need to encourage him to take to something so he can use that to fall asleep.
- Use a room thermometer to see how warm the room is – if it is over 23 degrees, he does not need a blanket or a sleeping bag. If it is not warm, you need to warm the room up if he won’t tolerate a sleeping bag.
- When he wakes at night, wait 5 min before responding, give him the chance to use his doodoo.
- If he is waking at 3, he is probably cold, needing a doodoo or needing nutrition. You will need to establish which.
- If he has been sick or snotty, ask his doctor to check his ears. If they are clear and you have dealt with the above, you will need to sleep coach him