Night wakings getting worse and worse!!!! Please help me I am going crazy!!!

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Hi there, me again!

I wrote here 1-2 weeks ago with problems with night wakings and early wakings, but the situation is just getting worse and worse, it's like she doesn't want to sleep at night anymore!! My DD is 5.5 months old and was STTN at 6 weeks old.  She's bf and just started cereals today.

She used to wake up maybe one night out of 2, sometime between 12:30 and 5:30.  Now, she has started waking up in the evening, around 10PM.  Friday night she woke at 9:30 and went back to sleep only at 12:45.  DH got her to fall back asleep 2-3 times between 9:30 and 11:00 but she would always wake up within 15-20 minutes so I fed her at 11:00 and she took a full feed, but still didn't go back o sleep until 12:45 after that.  Now tonight she woke up at 10:00, and DH got her back asleep at 11:00.  She woke up at 12:30, I fed her, and now it's 1:30Am and she's wide awake with seemingly no intention of getting back to sleep!!!

This has been going on most of this week.

I don't think she's teething, I've offered her teething ring during night wakings and she doesn't want it. 

Also, for her to fall asleep for nap or bedtime, we rock her and sign a song, then put on some white noise and hold her on her side and she relaxes within 1 minute, then we put her in her crib, she rolls to the side with her thumb in her mouth and falls asleep independently, however lately it's been more difficult, it takes more time and sometimes we have to pick her up multiple times before she falls asleep.  We're thinking of starting PUPD tomorrow because she needs to learn to relax independently and we can't take this anymore, it's too exhausting. Not sure if this will help.

We've been battling short naps for forever now but she's starting to be able to take longer naps although not every day.

Here's what her day today looked like:

Wake: 6:25
E: 7:00
S: 8:20-8:50 (I followed her cues but her was already OT, probably because of the 3 hours awake during the preceding night)
E: 9:30
S: 10:30-11:15, resettled her to sleep 11:20-12:15
E: 12:30
S: 2:20-3:00
E: 3:00
S: 4:50-5:30 catnap in baby carrier
E: 6:30
S: 7:30 (took 30 minutes to fall asleep)

She used to eat every 3h-3h30 but now eats more often since 2 weeks that's why I've started solids yesterday.

I know she's probably OT but I can't get her to sleep longer during the day, plus, this routine has been going on for a while and she was fine up until a couple of weeks ago.

I am losing my mind and getting sooo discouraged because when she wakes up, it takes forever for her to go back to sleep, she's just excited and alert and not wanting to go back to sleep at all.  She used to be such a great night sleeper...

Thanks!

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Also, today during the day she was SUPER CALM, very easygoing, she didn't cry all day, was smiling and playing, and we kept it low-key all day not to get her too tired.  She's an easy baby who never cried at night before (before she STTN she would not even cry hard to feed, just little whimpers) and now she just cries so much during the night...

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She woke again at 5AM for 1 hour, but luckily she decided to sleep in a bit this morning until 9AM!!!

So how do I do this? Just increase all of her A times during the day slowly?

Thanks!

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So I've increased her A time and on the first day it went very well: one NW for 30 minutes, which was a great improvement.  But yesterday, it all went wrong...  She woke up 4 times!!!  All 4 times it took about 30 minutes to get her back to sleep, which is an improvement from before where it would take at least 1 hour.  However, she was crying pretty much the whole time, which was unusual compared to before.

She went to bed at 7:15 (I'm trying to delay her bedtime by 15 minutes every couple of days to prepare for the time change coming up), woke up at 7:45, 9:45, 12:30 and 3:30.

It is worse than ever and I just keep thinking of this all the time, I cry when I'm with her in her room, I cry when I think of it during the day, I feel so terrible that I'm not able to understand what's going on and fix it, I feel as if I'm letting her down.

Also we had a week-end away planned for this week-end, I think we might have to cancel it, DH and I didn't take any vacation this summer so we were badly in need of a change in scenery, we booked a hotel but I can't see myself in a hotel with her crying like that during the night...

Here was our EASY yesterday, in the morning I had an appointment so didn't have a choice to be out and about, so she slept in the car twice for 30 minutes.  She was amazingly pleasant all day long, laughing and smiling, she didn't seem OT at all.

Wake: 6:45
E: 7:00 bf
E: 8:15 cereals
S: 8:45-9:15 (in the car)
E: 10:00 bf
S: 11:30-12:15 (in the car and then stayed asleep for 15 minutes at home)
E: 13:00
S: 2:30-3:15
S: 4:00-4:30 (seemed tired so didn't want her to be OT)
E: 5:00 bf
E: 6:15 cereals and sweet potatoes
E: 7:00 bf
S: 7:15

Now that I look at this routine, I see that the A times were a bit shorter than they should have because of the appt in the morning.  Do you think that's what's caused the NW's?  Because she only slept 2.5 hours durnig the day, which shouldn't be too much for her age (she'll be 6 months in a few days)?

Thanks for any advice you can give me!!

Élise

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Well tonight was crazy, she had a major meltdown, I ended up putting her to bed at 6PM.  Hopefully she'll have a good night, but I think that I'll work on getting her to recuperate over the next couple of days so that we can "reset" her sleep and get her back on good bases again.

Thanks for the advice. I'll keep you posted.

[ENMS]

Well, some good news, after having a meltdown last night I expected her to have a bad night but only 1 NW and she slept through 7AM this morning.  I have a few questions now:

Would I be better to put her to bed earlier, since despite having an OT day, she had a good night?

We have 2 types of NW: sometimes, she's very unhappy and we see she's frustrated to be awake and just wants to go back to sleep.  When she's like this, in 20-30 minutes she's back asleep.  Some other times, she's happy and wants to play.  When she's like that, if I try to relax her to make her go to sleep, she gets very mad and arches her back and I've come to realize it's useless. I think only time will make her go back to sleep, but she needs us as she won't stay in her crib alone.  What I've started doing last night is hold her on the rocking chair, sometimes just singing lightly, while she looks around and plays with her hands (and mine).  Eventually, after about 45-50 mins she's ready to go back to sleep and that goes fairly well.  However, I'm scared that by doing that, I'm encouraging her to be awake and sending the message that it's ok to be up for 1 hour (vs trying for 1 hr to relax her and getting her back to sleep and her crying the whole time).  What do you think is best?

I'm hopeful again this morning, after having a good night sleep!! I'll keep working on the A times for her naps today and hopefully it'll work out.

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I am sooo confused.  I know she wasn't OT when she went to bed tonight.  She had 3 naps today, 1 45 min, 1 30 min, and 1 1h30 min and when she went to bed she was tired but not too much (at 6:30).  Now it's 8:00 and she's already awake...  What did we do wrong? I felt the day went super well and that NW would not happen (or have only one, that's what I consider a good night these days...).

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Some good news... no NW after than 8PM one!!! Yay!!!

I think it's a combination of the good naps, not being up for too long between the last nap and bedtime, and the early bedtime.

Hopefully our week-end away will not ruin all this good work!!!

Thanks for all the advice, I'll keep you posted!

Élise

[knock0ut]

Hey Elise - just wanted to send lots of (((((hugs))))).  Not sure I can offer any advice, as we are having very similar problems with our 9 month old.  The inconsistency is also driving me crazy.  A couple of weeks ago, our DD slept through 5 nights out of 7 (totally unheard of over the last 9 months) and we started to think we had cracked it, but since then the NWs have got worse and worse.  We are equally confused and also understand the effect this has on family life - and on things like holidays.  We are due to go away next weekend with friends who have an angel baby and I'm dreading it! 

The only bit of advice I can offer is what someone suggested in one of my posts, that your LO may be yo-yo ing between being OT and UT - hence sometimes sleeping well but sometimes not.  At the moment, I am taking things day by day but noting details of A times, number of hours sleep etc to see if I can work out what suits our DD best.

Have a fantastic weekend - I know its difficult, but try to forget about the sleep issues until you're home - even if it means letting her sleep with you whilst you're away.  At least when you return you may feel rested enough to attack it again.