Angel baby turned into total fusspot in evening and swapping night for day

[Melody74]

Hi there, I'm new to the forum and this is my first post so hi and looking forward to chatting!

Got a few issues with bottle feeding and night times and would appreciate any advice.  LO is 10 weeks old and aside from some bad trapped wind in the early weeks, she has been a little angel till now!
I've read most of BW and have been following a 3 hour EASY routine starting at 7am.  She's on the 91st percentile for weight and has been happily guzzling up to 32oz feeds a day.  She wakes twice in the night although up until recently it looked like it was just a habit as she would take 1oz and go straight back down.  The first NW was around 1am and over the weeks has gone to 4.40am at the latest - so we were really hoping she was going to drop that feed soon as the next NW is always 5.30am on the dot irrespective of when the first NW was.
For the last 10 days she has changed.  She's just gone through a big growth spurt so unlikely to be that.  She has started to become very fussy and cranky on her last 2 main feeds - 4pm and 7pm, worse on the 7pm.  She jerks, cries, and can't seem to latch on to the teat, her tongue gets in the way - it's like she has forgotten how to latch on.  She then cries with frustration and it escalates to screaming and gagging.  The flow of milk is fine so it isn't that.  When she finally does latch on she guzzles greedily for a few seconds and then the cycle starts again.  Because of this she never finishes her feed.  She usually passes out with exhaustion and won't take the rest.  The 7pm gets worse - as well as the above she then starts to refuse most of the feed as the moment we put the teat anywhere near her mouth she starts crying as though she is saying please don't make me go through that again.  I know she is hungry though, but not hungry enough to want to take it.  We bath her and try giving her the rest of this feed but usually she refuses and wants to sleep so we put her down.  My OH stays up to try and give her a top up around 10pm or dreamfeed if she is asleep, but is rarely successful with either.  She basically will not wake and her mouth is clamped shut for a dreamfeed.  

Because she has now started to drop a whole feed between the last 2 feeds and now won't take her late feed she has started waking earlier and earlier because she is ravenous.  And she wants a full bottle, not just 1oz.  It's like we have gone backwards.  I don't know what to do.  Is she overtired?  How can we encourage her to take her last 2 feeds in full or take a dreamfeed?  If she gets her 32oz in the day she sleeps till nearly 5am, but she has stopped taking it in the day and now seems to want it at night.  We just can't keep her awake in the evening and she is terribly cranky and fussy.

One last Q - does her intake of formula need to increase as she gets heavier from this point?  I heard 32oz was the maximum, so if she gets the maximum but continues to grow, won't she just start waking even more?  Or is that when weaning kicks in?

Many thanks..xx

[Lolly]

Hi there and welcome to the boards!

Can you post your EASY in terms of:
 
E - times and amounts
A - how long for
S - what times, how long for

It could well be that by the end of the day she is overtired and isn't feeding well because of this. If this is the issue then a tweak to your routine should help!

In the UK I've never been told there is a maximum amount of formula they should have, the advice is always to feed to appetite and when they are draining bottles to add another oz. Babies are pretty good at self regulating and most seem to fall somewhere between 20oz and 40oz a day. What you may find is that as she gets bigger and can take bigger bottles her intake won't increase that much as the bottles space out more.

Post your routine and that will give us some more clues to help! Any other info about her generally will help too - like how well she sleeps, how do you get her to sleep etc.

Laura

[Melody74]

Thanks Laura.  She sleeps really well aside from starting to wake more at night now.  I've put some comments below - she usually self settles.  Everything changes early evening.
Her routine is:

E 7am, 5oz generally awake and happy, takes approx 45 mins
A 20 mins play
S Naps for 30-45 mins downstairs in her rocker - always light sleep, would probably skip this if I let her
A More play & activity for 45mins - quite a long play session, a very happy smiling baby

E 10am, 6oz, loves this bottle but gets very sleepy towards the end. 
A Nappy change and short play - 10 mins - only lasts this long as she had such a long session before
S 11am - in her cot for long sleep, self settles and rarely wakes up before 2 hours

E 1pm, 6oz - again loves this bottle
A Lots of play - about an hour very awake and happy
S Cat nap on play mat for 10 mins, that's it - aside from that very awake.  Tried putting her down but she doesn't seem to want to sleep because she had a long nap late morning.  But by the time her next bottle comes she is tired and this is where the problems seem to start

E 4pm - 3oz max - she is so tired she won't take a full bottle and very fussy / cries / can't latch on.
A None as shattered from being fussy, dead weight.  Put in cot.
S Falls asleep very quickly but only stays asleep for 30 mins, won't finish the rest of the bottle though - uninterested.  Stays awake or at best a 10 minute cat nap in a whole 2 hours.  Tried getting her back to sleep but not having it.

E 6.30-7pm - Start last bottle.  Ravenous by this point but starts to cry and be fussy almost immediately.  Appears in pain, screaming (like clockwork at 7pm) without the milk even touching her mouth.  As soon as the teat introduced she starts to yell, then tries to latch on but her tongue always in the way moving around rapidly and she gets frustrated because she can't feed/latch.  If she does manage to latch she sucks greedily for a second and then starts crying again.  I calm her down and she stops crying but replaced with making her hunger noises and trying to suck my neck.  We try again and she starts screaming immediately, usually as soon as I rub the teat on her lip.  This cycles for 10 or so times and we have to give in as she is tired and distraught - however the amount she is taking on this bottle is getting less and less as the days go by. I've considered reflux but she doesn't actually take any milk when she cries and it's only on this bottle, no other.
A We break for a tummy tub bath - she loves it and it really calms her - 30 mins
E Try to give her the rest of the bottle, she sometimes takes an oz but sometimes is the same as above.  Either way she is shattered and we have never been able to give her more than an oz after her bath.  Probably all in all takes 4oz.  By this time she has dropped 3 oz from the 4pm feed and 2-3oz from this one - a full feed.  She is also upset and cranky and needs to be comforted to sleep.
S 8.30pm-9.15pm - keeps waking, doesn't settle.  Sometimes seems content too after a while but if we do try to offer her the rest of the feed it all starts again so from experience we no longer bother.  Finally falls to sleep around 9.15pm

E 10pm - OH attempts a dream feed - he says she will never take it or wake either for a normal feed.

Each day she is taking less and less milk in the evening.  It screams to me she is over tired, but I then don't understand why she doesn't nap when I put her down in the afternoon for longer than half an hour.  Also wondered if the dream feed attempt isn't late enough, hence why she won't wake.
I have never come across a baby screaming blue murder at the evening feed - she must be ravenous but it's like she can't latch on.  This only started 2 weeks ago  - she was fine until then.

Any advice appreciated.

[Lolly]

Ok - I think she is very OT by the end of the day, her first nap is too short and then she only has a 10 min nap in 3 hours+  between her 1pm and 4pm feed. I think you need to tweak her routine a bit from the start of her day to get hep napping more evenly which should hopefully help the OT cycle at the end of the day.

At 10 weeks she should be doing 1hr/ 1hr 15 ish mins of A time so if she is waking at 7am then you want her asleep by 8.15 (or 5/10 mins later if she is on the higher end of A times, same for all sleep times) for  between 1.5 and 2 hours. Her 30ish min nap could be a slightly under tired nap which is why she sleeps lightly. So, assuming she wakes around 10 for her next feed then she would need to go back to sleep around 11.15, hopefully for another 1.5 - 2 hours. Again, 1pmish feed and then back to sleep around 2.15pm  - if she naps well here she should be better rested for that 4pm feed. She would have her catnap around 5.30ish to get her through to bedtime.

You want to get a 12 hour day/ night too, so if she is waking for the day around 7 then around 7 needs to be bedtime too. I would do the bath routine after her catnap and have the 7pm bottle as the last thing in her day so she goes straight to bed after it. She isn't settling because she is overtired by then. I know with my DD, even now if I don't hit bedtime at the right time she takes ages to go to sleep but on nights like tonight we lay her down, walk out and she goes straight to sleep without a sound.

Here are some examples of routines which may be useful to you http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=164253.0

What do you think?

Laura

[Melody74]

I will certainly be trying that Laura thanks!  My only concerns are that she can never stay awake after her bath which is why we try and give her last bottle (most of it) before.  She also has never slept as much as what this routine would suggest - she does a fab long nap mid morning and over lunch but the rest are 10-30min cat naps.  We've tried putting her down but she is just wide awake - however obviously crashes early evening.  Maybe some more perseverance on our part will help her nap better in the day, crossed fingers!
So far this morning she had her bottle at 7am and I could only keep her awake with activity to 8am (she's used to falling asleep then) but I did put her in her cot and she lasted a little longer than normal - an extra 15 mins.  She woke at 9.00am, so her bottle isn't due till 10am.  We will just play and cuddle till then. 
The major change will be to try and get her to nap longer around 2.15pm... it's been almost impossible or she only does 30 mins.  She then just wants to stay awake until 6/7pm.  But the second she tastes her milk off she goes.  I know if she napped longer mid aft she would be fine.  Maybe shorten her long lunchtime nap to 1.5 hours rather than 2 - would that help do you think?

[Lolly]

How did the day go? Did you get better naps?

I know it looks like a lot of sleep but a well rested baby feeds and sleeps a lot more easily than on over tired one. A baby's sleep cycle is about 45 mins so anything less than that isn't enough and 45 mins usually leads to OT quite quickly which is why they need 2 sleep cycles to get properly rested.

What did you do at the end of the day - did it work to do bath earlier and then bottle/bed or did you do something different? How were the afternoon/ evening feeds today?

Laura

[Melody74]

Thanks for the support Laura.  Things have improved in some areas but not in others, I guess it takes time.
We have tired to stick exactly to that routine, it's the classic 7am 3-hr EASY routine in the book isn't it.  It's only been 2 days.  The first day she went into her cot for the early morning nap and I had to wake her for her feed at 10am!  Before she only did 45 mins so that was good, she definitely naps better in her cot that's for sure.  Had her bottle and lunchtime nap as usual.  Came to the afternoon and put her down when she showed signs of sleepiness which was around 2.30pm.  This is where she usually only cat naps till the evening - she only lasted 30 mins.  I tried getting her back to sleep and in the end just left her in her cot for a further 20 mins as she was wide awake, happy and babbling!  I hoped she would go back off but not a chance.  But of course the problem started again at her 4pm bottle - fussy, upset, can't latch on, getting frustrated and falling asleep cycles.  She left half of it.  Tried keeping her awake after and she managed 10 minutes but was shattered.  She only did another 30 mins and woke well before her evening bath and bottle at 7pm and this again is the problem - by the time we do this routine she is exhausted and the extreme fussiness starts.  She left half of her bottle again and even getting her to take that was a nightmare - she just screams the moment we put the teat anywhere near her.  She made up some of her milk quota in the night, but each day the total amount taken is getting about 1 to 1.5oz less than the day before.
Yesterday, very similar except I didn't let her sleep for 2 hours at lunch, I woke her after an hour and a half.  This time on her 2.30pm sleep she slept, not just for 30 mins but for nearly 2 hours!!!  She took her 4pm bottle absolutely fine.  I should probably have only let her had an hour and a half as then she wouldn't sleep in prep for her bath routine and we had the same issues as usual on her 7pm bottle.  The only breakthrough was that I put her in her rocker to calm her down and tried giving her bottle while she was in there - for some reason she latched on and fed!!!  Odd, but if it works!  She took 3/4 of it which is more than she has done for nearly 2 weeks.  But it was 8.30pm by the time she went down in her cot and she wouldn't take a dream feed.  But she did last till 3.15am and then usually she wakes again on the dot at 5.30am but this time it was 6.10am.  Which is brilliant. 

The tweaks I'm trying today are that I have brought her 7am EASY back half an hour to 6.30am with the aim of bringing it back to 6am over the next few days.  I think it will be much easier and then we can do her bath routine earlier and get her in bed by 7 - 7.30pm.  Hopefully she won't be too tired and she has the chance to have 11-12 hours in her cot, hopefully with only 1 night waking as last night!  Also - I'm not going to let her nap more than 1.5 hours instead of 2.
Crossed fingers and thanks for your help!! Will let you know how it goes.  If you have any other suggestions by the way, please let me know..xxx

[Lolly]

Sounds like you are doing really well - it looks like OT was a big factor in not taking her feeds! Well done for your progress so far!

If you feel that 1.5 hour naps are long enough for her I think that's fine - it's 2 sleep cycles and if she is not needing you to re-settle at the 45 min point that's great!

With the DF try it for another week or so but not all babies will take it - neither of mine did and if they did take the feed they woke more after it . We tried with both but gave up and just let them wake when they were hungry.

Let us know how today goes with the earlier start and we can look for further tweaks if you are still having problems although it can take a few days to get used to a new routine.

Laura