I hope someone can give me some insight to sort this enigma out, because I'm beginning to lose it...
DS has always had a feed somewhere between 4 and 5am. At first he was wakening fully during the feed, so much so that it'd take him well over an hour to fall back to sleep. Sometimes it would be almost time to get up by the time he dropped back off again. So on the general sleep board, I was given the idea of dream feeding him, which we've been doing for the past couple of weeks. The dream feed has actually been hugely successful and I can put him straight back in his bed after keeping him upright for just 15 mins or so afterwards (because he's a refluxer), however it has triggered another problem.
He has his dream feed around 4am, and then he's generally back in his bed by about 4:45am. He drains a 120ml bottle (during the day he takes 150ml per feed, but I don't want to overstuff him at this time of night because of his reflux). Unfortunately this sleep only lasts for about 45mins and then he wakes up crying, and once again it takes me ages to get him to go back down, usually somewhere around 6:15am. At first we thought it was the reflux flaring back up or gas (or both), but after observing closely he doesn't actually have either. There have been a couple of times where I've managed to settle him back fairly quickly, but that's doing AP in my arms which I'd really like to avoid. And still, those times he'd end up waking back up around 6:15am and wouldn't resettle, so we'd have to start our day (which I'd also really like to avoid). However the last two mornings around 6:15, he hasn't woken fully, but is doing his "doggie panting" (I suppose he's self soothing?) in between short blocks of sleep and has finally woken fully at 7am.
So basically I'm awake from about 3:30am onwards (when my alarm goes off so I can prepare for his dream feed), except for a few short spurts of sleep when DS drops back off, and I don't know how long I'm going to be able to function like this. We've also been having 45min nap problems which I'm correcting by doing W2S, so for the moment I can't even nap when he naps during the day.
To give you a bit of background, DS is 12 wo and is on a combination of 3 and 3.15 EASY. I know that his 45min nap wakings are probably being caused by not enough A time, so we've upped that to 1.30 in the morning and 1.20 in the late afternoon. Could this also be having an effect on the night time problem? I just really stumped - and really tired - so any ideas would be most welcome. TIA!
