3 month old waking every 2 hours, sometimes 1 hour :o(

[frangipan80]

Hello, I'm looking for a bit more advice on my 3 month old baby girl. She is exclusively breastfed, but for the past 3 - 4 weeks she has been waking frequently in the night, every 2 hours at least, sometimes even after one. In the day her nap times went to pot too, she was only managing 30- 34 mins each time, but that seems to be improving at the moment. I have to hold my hands up and say that I have been guilty of breast feeding her to sleep, but for the last couple of nights that has stopped and we've adopted our own version of the shhh pat approach, with me rubbing her tummy and using a lullaby toy with a soothing. After a bumpy start, its been going pretty well considering.

However, I have a few questions you might be able to help me with:

1. At what point to I withdraw myself from ssh pat? How will my daughter learn to settle without me eventually. I am worried that I will eventually become a 'prop' myself. I read somewhere you have to stay with them until they are in deep sleep or they wake up and cry, this is true of my baby, she often jolts herself awake so I find myself by her crib for sometime. But when will that stop and at what point should she learn to put herself back to sleep from that?

2. When she wakes in the night after an hour or two and I know she is not hungry, should I leave her to cry or get in there quick to try and lull her back to sleep before she becomes too wake?

3. Is there anything, ANYTHING!, I can do to help decrease the number of night wakings, its killing me. I feel like a walking zombie. Also I worry that it isn't good for my baby as she is never really achieving long or deep periods of sleep.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me. This site is brilliant.

[frangipan80]

Thanks for your reply. I'm not sure how much my routine fits in with e.a.s.y, I've just been going on what she does really. Here's what we did yesterday...

E 7
A 7.30
S 9.00 (1 hour 40 mins)

E 10.50
A 11.15
S 12.45 (2 hours)

E 3.00
A 3.30
S 4.45 (40 min nap)

E 5.30
A 6.00 (Bedtime routine e.g. bath, pjs, quiet time)
E 7.00
S 8.00 (felt this should have been earlier but delayed settling)

Last feed at 10.30

She is 14 weeks.
I had noticed she is always sucking her hands, and as  she wakes from a sleep cycle she starts to do this, and fuss and flap her hands a bit, which of course wakes her up. I understand the hand sucking is normal and possible her trying to self settle, but last night I was so desperate for sleep I tried swaddling her. It did seem to work as when I heard her stirring at her usual habitual times it lulled her back to sleep untill 5.10 a.m, when I was able to ssh pat her back to sleep until 6.40 ish then we got up.

I used to bf her to sleep as she is my first baby and I didnt realise this was wrong, it just felt natural. I was also guilty of rocking her, but all this has stopped now and I've been ssh patting for a week and its going really well after a bumpy start.
I do not give her a dummy as I didn't really want to go down that route

Many thanks for any input you can give.

[frangipan80]

We were on a 3 hour easy but she was waking after 30 - 45 mins everytime, and was difficult to get down to sleep. This week I've just followed her lead and acted on her sleepy cues. She sometimes has 2 hours awake time, sometimes 1 1/2 hours, it depends.