Help, sleep deprived and confused

[lochiesmum]

My DS is 4 months and 2 weeks old and about 15,4 pounds. He has never slept through the night except for when he was quite young (he would give me about 5 hours), however at the moment he is awake every 2 hours from about 1 to 2 am. His day looks like this (usually)
6am - 7am usually awake in his cot fussing
7am - morning feed (usually breast but bottle fed yesterday to find out how much he was drinking) 6 oz
8.30 - 9am - down for nap, usually easy, falls asleep within 5 minutes of being wrapped up, sometimes needs a dummy to settle
9.40 - 10.15 - can be unsettled and need to be patted / dummy to go back to sleep
10.30  - 11am - wake from nap, usually happy
11am - feed, typically a short breastfeed, was only 4 oz on the bottle
11.15 - 1 teaspoon only of prepared rice cereal with dose of Losec (Dr's advice)
12.45 - 1pm, down for nap, can be a little more difficult to get to sleep at this time but usually will go down within 10 miunutes
1.30 - 2pm - unsettled in nap, needs pat / dummy to go back to sleep
2.30 - 3pm, wake from nap
3 pm, feed, again is typically a small breastfeed and was 4 oz on the bottle
4.30 - 5pm - down for nap, usually quite tired by this time and will often sleep for 2 to 2.5 hours before waking
7pm, feed, usually a longer breastfeed and was 7 oz on the bottle
bath and bedtime, usually in bed by 7.30 to 8pm
THEN................................
awake at 9pm, have been giving a small feed here, but not sure if it is a good idea, has made no difference to night sleep
dream feed at around midnight, husband does this for me (6 to 7 oz)
awake at 2am, not really hungry, just trying to suck his hands through the swaddle, reswaddle and try and get back to sleep
awake at 4 to 5am, same as for 2am
6am awake in cot, no way he is going back to sleep at this point, so I try and keep him low key in his cot until 7am, does not always work, this morning we started the day at 6.30 am and he was not really hungry, had to give him 6 oz over about 40 minutes
When he wakes at night, he initially sounds as if he is hungry and will latch on to the breast as if he is starved, but then not suckle well, he will however suckle for 10 to 12 minutes and fall asleep if I let him (which I dont)
I will also post this on the feeding forum to see if they can help, but really would like him to sleep through at least the early hours of the morning, even waking once would be fine, I am due to return to work soon and really need to fix this if I am to function in the workplace.
Any advice will be appreciated

[lochiesmum]

sorry, forgot to say that he rarely wakes crying at night, it is usually just fussing / mantra cry that if I dont attend to will become wailing

[Samuel's mum]

OK here are a few of my random thoughts (though I'm no sleep expert)

1. I'm guessing from the use of losec he has reflux. (Have you checked out the reflux board by the way? https://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?board=13.0). My first thought is his waking could be related to that. Are you elevating his top half e.g an elevated mattress? Are you happy about the effectivess of his medication? I think that's the first place to start as it does sound as though his wakings aren't hunger related if he does go back to sleep without a feed or with a short feed.
2. I think that very long late nap could be having an effect. If he's going down at 4.30ish for 2 -2.5 hours and then back down at 7.30ish then to be honest that is kind of when his night is starting! Am I reading that right? He could be waking up again at 9 because he's already had that big block of sleep. And then restless in the early morning for the same reason. I would try and get the larger block of sleep earlier in the day and try and have less sleep so close to bedtime. Have a look at some 4 month old schedules on the EASY board:
https://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=10385.0

As you can see those later naps are very short compared to yours.

3. At night if he takes very little then I think it's worth trying to settle him in other ways. Hopefully with a shorter afternoon nap he will then sleep till later and you can do a proper dreamfeed at 10.30/11ish and then he will go through until more like 3/4ish. Then perhaps one feed if he needs it until morning but perhaps he won't.

HTH

[lochiesmum]

Thanks, I know he has quite a long nap in the afternoon, but he is so tired and grumpy by this stage, sleep is all he wants to do. He naps 1 1/2 to 2 hours twice earlier in the day and to be honest it can be a stuggle to get him down for those. His matress is elevated and I have only just recently checked his Losec dose with the doctor (he tells me it is ok). I was worried about the amount he was drinking, but it seems to add up to an ok amount over the day. Yesterday I tried a slightly different feed regieme, 2.30pm, 5pm, 7.30 pm as well as the two dream feeds and it made no diffrerence to his night wakings, so I am now more convinced than ever that he is not waking because he is hungry (well, maybe only once), are there any tricks to pushing his day along a bit so he can shorten that afternoon nap, I am sure you are right about that being the start of his night, because when he wakes at 7/ 7.30 he is really wanting to go straight back to sleep.
We have both been up on and off since 2am so we are a bit tired and emotional this morning, not so good when the in-laws are coming to stay over the weekend and I really need to clean the house But more importantly, poor baby, we cant seem to find a path that suits us both and I am kind of feeling guilty because I need him to fit in with me

[Jonahs Mom]

How is he when he wakes up? Does he seem upset at all?
I agree that his evening nap is too long. We had similair problems with our son recently and being sure that he has a 12 hour day and no more than 4.75hrs of sleep during the day made a difference. His naps are 2 hours each and a catnap at5pm for 45 minutes. We used Tracy's routine in her new book.
We were told our son had reflux, and took him to the chiropractor (I know, not for everyone), and it really made a difference and he sleeps better because of it.
Perhaps he isn't ready for a 4hour easy and should be on a 3.5hour. that way he won't have to struggle to stay up for so long. When we switched from 3 to 4 hours, I generally had to do low key activites the last half hour, sometimes even just carrying him around so he wasn't physically active, but still awake.
HTH

[lochiesmum]

When he wakes at night, he is generally ok, just starts making noise and if I dont come in it will escalate into wailing, he only really cries when I try and re swaddle to get him back to sleep. He was on 3.5 easy for a couple of weeks and it was increasingly difficult to get him down for his naps, hence to change to 4 hour easy. The poor little guy seems exhausted today, he was up at 11am for his feed and was happy for about 30 minutes and then would not stop crying, so I have put him back to bed (went out like a light), I am hoping that this nap will last 2 hours so he may not be so tired between 3 and 7

[Samuel's mum]

Perhaps he isn't ready for a 4hour easy and should be on a 3.5hour. that way he won't have to struggle to stay up for so long.

I think this is a good thought!

[lochiesmum]

My husband and I have made a huge effort (tired grumpy baby) and managed to get the boy to have a 45 minute nap between 5.30 and 6.15pm, we then gave him a bath, feed some quiet time and bed by 7.30. He was soooo tired and he went to aleep the minute his head touched the mattress. We then sat down and tried to come up with schedule that will suit DS better, I would really appreciate it if someone could take a look at it and give us some feedback, here goes:
7am  - feed
9am  - sleep (usually 1.5 hours)
11 am - feed
1pm - sleep (1.5 hours)
3pm - feed
4 to 4.45 - nap
4.45 to 5.30 - activity time
5.30 to 6.15 - nap
6.15 to 7pm - bathtime and feed
7.30 - night sleep
11pm - dreamfeed

[Jonahs Mom]

The EASY mods may have some more insight, but I think that you may want to adjust the evening naps just a little bit. They seem pretty close together.
Here is what our day looks like:
7am - wake
7.15 - eat
9am - sleep
11am - wake and eat
1pm - sleep
3pm - wake and eat
5pm - sleep
5.45pm - wake and eat
7pm - bath, story, and top-up
7.30pm - bedtime
11pm - dreamfeed
Sometimes wakes in middle of night. If unswaddled, reswaddle and try to get back to sleep, if unsuccessful and won't stop sucking on soother, I feed and he goes right back to sleep.

Keep in mind that you are actually keeping your ds up for 2.5 hours at a time in the day between feeds. If he is consistently waking himself after 1.5 hours, have you tried wake to sleep or to try to get him back to sleep? If he is continues to only sleep 1.5 hours each daytime nap, perhaps just extend the evening catnap an extra 15-30 minutes, so in essence he would sleep from 5-6/6.15 and be in bed at 7.30/7.45pm

HTH

[lochiesmum]

Thanks for that, I will give your schedule a try today. Last night was much better only woke twice ( 1.30 am and 5am) fed both times and went back to sleep, he woke at 6 but I gave him his dummy and he slept until 6.45, let me just say that this is a vast improvement and we are both quite happy this morning Will keep you posted on how he responds to today

[Jonahs Mom]

No problem!
I hope it helps out and I am glad that things have been going a little better. We had a rough go of it last month and it is so encouraging when it gets better.