u/Forsaken-Gazelle7043

LONG POST ALERT!!

My 7 month old has NEVER been a good sleeper and I’m at my breaking point. Looking for advice specifically from co-sleeping parents who successfully night weaned or sleep trained without completely traumatizing themselves 😭

Context:
- 7 months old
- EBF
- Used to occasionally take bottles but after a month gap he has completely forgotten how
- Co-sleeps with my husband
- Eats solids 3x a day
- Nurses really well during the day (7–8 feeds minimum)
- Weight gain and milestones are great
- VERY active baby — trying to stand since 6 months, constantly moving, hyperactive temperament
- Teething currently (front tooth is coming in)

The issue is I feed him roughly every 2 hours at night but he STILL wakes every hour anyway. Sometimes he wakes even more frequently. He has extremely disturbed sleep and has literally never slept well since birth.

Current bedtime is around 8–8:30 PM and he wakes for the day around 5:30–6 AM lately.

Our pediatrician suggested sleep training months ago and isn’t concerned about calories overnight anymore because he feeds/eats very well during the day. We don’t wanna sleep-train and also because he’s a VERY intense, angry, protest-heavy baby and not easily consolable at all. Patting him or putting a hand on his chest just makes him angrier because he wants to be fully picked up.

We actually tried abruptly night weaning last night and it was a complete disaster. He woke at 2 AM and cried hysterically for almost an hour. We eventually gave up and I fed him around 3 AM because he was absolutely losing it and honestly we were too.

We’re physically so tired that we can’t even go for a walk too! I’m extremely hopeless and motherhood feels like a hell hole to me (i love my baby vv much though)

For parents who co-slept:
- How did you night wean while still co-sleeping?
- Is abrupt night weaning even possible while bedsharing?
- Did your baby eventually stop waking every hour?

Would really appreciate realistic experiences, especially from parents with strong-willed/high-needs babies.

My baby is turning 7 months in a week and sleep has suddenly become an absolute disaster after briefly getting better. My husband and I recently switched rooms and he started sleeping with the baby instead of me, and surprisingly things improved for around 10 days. Baby was sleeping noticeably better and we genuinely thought maybe we had finally figured something out. And then suddenly everything completely fell apart again.

Now his sleep is all over the place. He keeps waking constantly, especially in the early morning, and then refuses to go back to sleep. Because of that, his naps are chaotic too and the entire day feels unpredictable. He very clearly seems sleepy — rubbing his eyes, scratching/rubbing his ears, irritably crying — and he actually falls asleep pretty quickly when we put him down. That’s what confuses me. It’s not that he refuses sleep initially, it’s that he cannot STAY asleep. It has suddenly become so difficult to resettle him after wakes during bedtime and naps both. Sometimes it feels like the second he transitions sleep cycles, he’s awake again.

He currently takes 3 naps a day with around 3 hours total daytime sleep max. He also seems irritated throughout the day now, which I’m assuming is because his sleep is so disrupted. The weird part is he doesn’t seem obviously sick or in pain. No fever, eating normally, not unusually inconsolable, and it doesn’t even seem like teething. We’ve dealt with bad sleep during teething phases before but this feels different and honestly worse, like some new sleep apocalypse unlocked overnight.

I also feel so lost trying to figure out sleep schedules age-wise. How do parents even know how much daytime sleep babies should be getting every month? The moment I finally feel like I understand his naps and wake windows for one age, the next month arrives and suddenly everything changes again.

Did anyone else go through something similar around 7 months? Was it overtiredness, regression, separation anxiety, schedule issues, hidden teething, ear infection, transitioning naps? I genuinely cannot tell anymore because he acts exhausted but keeps waking constantly. My husband and I are running on fumes at this point.