Rolling over -- disrupting sleep -- help!!

[eb1]

My 4-month-old DS has learned to roll from his back to his stomach. He can't go in the opposite direction yet. I don't know whether he is trying to practice the new move or is just doing it in his sleep, but he wakes me up now, with very shrill cries, countless times throughout the night when he gets stranded on his tummy.

I have gotten over the fear that he will suffocate if he sleeps on his stomach, but I'm still not comfortable with him rolling over at night in the crib until he can roll back as well. But all that aside, judging from the ear-piercing screams he lets out, he does not want to be on his stomach.

What to do? Is there anything I can do? Is he too old for a sleep positioner? (He is very active in his sleep.) Or is it likely that in a few days he'll be able to roll the other way too, and that will calm down everyone..?

We skipped getting a crib bumper and now we have the related problem of him getting on his stomach and wedging his foot between the slats (he knows how to extract his foot when he's on his back, but hasn't figured it out when he's on his stomach). He protests very very shrilly about this as well. Isn't it a bit late to add a crib bumper now, to solve this part of the problem?

I'm going a bit nuts. He still BFs a couple times during the night anyway and I was considering myself lucky to be down to only two nightly wake-ups, but now with this rolling over business, I'm up ALL night long. I'm also worried that because I respond now to help him back on his stomach, he's going to expect me to keep helping him get back to sleep during all those non-feeding middle-of-the-night wake-ups. (We'd just gotten him good at going back to sleep in the middle of the night when it wasn't time for a feeding.)

Any advice/anecdotes/encouragement would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[miki]

We had this for a few weeks. DD would wake up very upset because she rolled over. I'd have to go and calm her down, nurse her, and then put her on her back. It didn't make her wake up any more often just because I was helping her turn over and it stopped pretty quickly. Good luck.

[eb1]

Thanks -- it's good to hear that she resumed her sleeping patterns after the rolling over issue was conquered...Maybe if I nurse him when this happens, that will help him go back into a deeper sleep and minimize the reoccurence. I've just been working so hard to not feed him more than twice nightly, since he does not need the extra calories and I wanted to work towards that fantasy of everyone sleeping through the night!

Also, I hope no one interprets my message above to be all about MY sleep being disrupted (though it is that!), but DS's sleep is obviously very fragmented now as well. The only one sleeping is my DH.. ;)

[mommd]

This also happened with DD when she started rolling over, and lasted a little over a week. Once she was comfortable rolling over she stayed on her stomach to sleep. The sleep positioners I've seen all say to stop using when the baby can roll over. It will get better! :)

[kristenk]

We just went through this with my 4.5-month DD. We were so excited that she learned how to roll from her back to her tummy until she started doing it at night and getting VERY upset about being on her tummy. She was still swaddled (1 arm out) at the time, and we ended up swaddling her with both arms out so she'd have a little more control if she rolled over. I was going to buy a sleep positioner until I saw on the package that you weren't supposed to use them when the baby could roll over. After many nights of getting up all the time when she rolled over, we rolled up handtowels and put them on either side of her. She can get over them if she wants, but they seem to really help her stay in place. And we don't put them up very high on her - they generally go up to waist level or so.

We had the same issue with getting feet stuck in the crib slats. I ended up buying a mesh bumper. Well, actually we got the mesh "crib shield" version b/c it looked like it would stay up better. Unfortunately, the crib shield doesn't fit our crib very well, so we had to do some alterations.

She's definitely sleeping better now. HTH!

Kristen