Utterly exhausted. Baby’s sleep has gotten worse
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.