Advice pls for 3-month old short day-time sleeper & sshhus pat not calming him

[nikkiclarke]

Hello all,

This is my first posting and I would GREATLY appreciate your input. I have a gorgeous son, William, who is 13 weeks old. He was born 4 1/2 weeks early. He is currently being fed every 3 hours and last night, slept from 8 to 11pm (dream feed) and then until 7am. However, his day time sleeping patterns have changed in the last couple of weeks. Specifically, he is waking up after 45 minutes naps. I've referred to the book and introduced a sleep routine in the day, kept stimulation to an absolute minimum, checked that he is not hungry ,but he is still waking. It started with the morning naps, but now the afternoon one (where he use to sleep for 2 hours) is 45 minutes too.

Questions for you:

1. Given that he is premature, I have been using the sshhus pat (actually, he did not like the pat, so I rub his back instead. Is this right, or should I move to Pu/PD?
2. When I pick him up, he cries even more. In fact today, he made himself sick (horrid). Has this happened to anyone else? What am I doing wrong?
3.SShh pat, trying for over an hour and he just won't stop crying. In fact, I've never seen him soo hysterical, it was horrid. I want to go the distance, but is it worth it if this method makes him soo unhappy?
4. He is exhausted by the end of the day, so clearly the naps are not enough. But he is good at night. Is anyone else dealing with this for a 3 month year old?

[elmarie]

Hi moving this to naps for you 

[mommy2mason]

Just wanted to add that 45 minute naps are extremely common with LO's. Maybe he's ready for a routine tweak? Many times 45 min. naps can mean they're ready for a little more wake time before nap. I battled 45 min. naps with my LO until they magically stopped right when he turned 6 months....that was before I knew about trying to give him more awake time so maybe that would've solved things earlier! I know it can be very frustrating! My 8 week old will only nap 30 minutes and at this point I'm wishing they were at least 45 minutes! Things will fall back into place for you. Maybe for his first nap, give a little extra A time (maybe 10 min.) and see if it helps. Give it a few days of trying though. If he wakes early and you can't get him back to sleep, don't worry too much about it and just try again the next nap. Remember to put him down earlier for his next nap if he does wake early so he doesn't get too OT. Good Luck!

[Sui]

Hello,

When I started shh-pat at week 14 it was going great for a week, and then suddenly he started to go hysterical at week 15. I thought that to be a regression, but I now also think that it was because he needed more A time, and knowing that going to sleep was making him angry.

If he goes hysterical (that possibly includes screaming and arching), I would recommend not to continue shh-pat, especially for 1 hour. I did this once and now I regret it. It probably would be better to pick him up, change the scene and calm him, and try for about 15-30 min. later. Crying and screaming only makes them more tired, which will eventually result in an OT baby.

For 45 min. issue, as the pp said, that is a very common problem. I have been having it for around 2 months or more. At first, he used to wake up crying, but for the last week he was happy and bubbling when he woke, so I decided to increase A time, although it is told that short naps are usually due to OT. I can say that it seems to work for us at the moment (it has been 2 days yet). Maybe you can try to increase A times to see if this has an effect?

Good Luck!

[nikkiclarke]

Thank you soo much for your messages, I will definitely try your ideas.  Does anyone have a view on when my premature son should be on 4 hour Easy? He was 4.5 weeks early. I am wondering if maybe my feeding pattern is having an impact on his naps, but don't want to start the transistion from 3 to 4 if this is too soon. Thanks in advance

[nikkiclarke]

Hello,

Do any of the site moderators have a view on when a premature baby should be transisted to a 4 hour feeding cycle? I can't find an answer to this question independently. Is it at 4 or 5 months?

Thank you in advance
Nikki

[*Jo*]

Hi Nikki,

I would account for the fact that your little one was prem so wait until he would have been 4 months old had he been born on his due date. as for shh/pat i agree with Sui, dont let it go to an hour long if hes hysterical, get him up after 20mins, take him into another room but be very very low key, it is suppose to be sleep time, then perhaps try again in half an hour.

are you able to put up your routine for us to have a look at?

[nikkiclarke]

Thank you very much for your input, I REALLY appreciate it.  Currently, William is 15 weeks old and the days broadly look like this:

6.30 -7.15 wake and BIG feed (50 mins)
8.30 - 9 ish Bed (45 mins sleep)
10 Feed
11.15 Sleep
1 Feed
3ish 45 min nap
4 feed
Bath 6.15
Feed 6.30 -7.30 BIG feed)
Bed 7.45

Dream feed at 11
How does that look?

[deb]

Have you seen this? We went thru all kinds of heck with my first DD's short naps.

http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=649.0

[*Jo*]

is that first A time 2 hours long? (A time is eyes open to eyes shut) if it is then it is too long, 10.5 weeks adjusted should be having an A time of 1 hour 20mins at the most. also your day is too long for him to handle. he needs to be having 12 hour days and 12 hour nights, so if he gets up at 6.30am then his bedtime needs to be 6.30pm, have you seen the routine example in the BW book? this should be able to help you out