Hi All,

I'm new to these boards and am hoping that someone has advice about some recent sleep issues we're having.

My baby is 5 months old (3 corrected) and has started to cry hysterically when we put him down at bedtime. We follow a loose routine before bed where we read a book, nurse, and put him in his zippadee, say good night and I love you. The crying starts off as kind of whiny and then escalates and goes on for about an hour before he exhausts himself and falls asleep. My husband and I stay in the room with him shushing him and stroking his head during the crying. Picking him up makes him angrier and he has never been able to be put down when rocked to sleep. If the hysterical crying goes on for a while with no break, we will pick him up, give him a cuddle and change his diaper to calm him down and see if that breaks the cycle. It doesn't really seem to help because he starts crying again when he goes back in his crib, but at least it gives us all a break and he is usually all smiles during the diaper change.

We nurse around 3am and he goes back to sleep without a problem. Total night sleep is approximately 10 hours.

A few changes that have recently happened:
- we started doing naps in the crib about three weeks ago in the zippadee. Originally we were only doing the two morning naps in the crib and I would hold him for the two afternoon naps. We've recently added the third nap in the crib and I hold him for the fourth nap as it is fairly short and he seems to get worked up in the crib for that nap. Before starting crib naps we were holding him for all his naps but it was just getting to be too much and we were worried about developing bad habits. There is a bit of crying before each nap but nothing as long or as hysterical as what we are experiencing at bedtime. Total nap time through out the day is about 5 hours.
- he basically swaddle weaned himself this weekend. Night time sleep used to be in the swaddle but he was crying, wanted access to his hands and seems to be close to rolling over so we took him out of the swaddle and put him in the zippadee for bedtime. He seemed really happy the first night but bedtime has gone downhill since. Prior to him rejecting the swaddle bedtime was easy and he'd be asleep within 15 minutes with no crying.

Does anyone have any advice or reassurance that what we're doing isn't going to cause negative sleep associations in the long run? Have we just been lucky so far with good bedtimes and have to wait it out? I now feel so anxious about bedtime!

Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post!