Hi All.
I am having issues with my little guy and his night wakings. He used to sleep all night for about 11-12 hours but once he started to roll over he began to wake about 5-7 times per night. I thought he would grow out of this but now he decides to wake about 3 times per night which is much better but I am totally needing more sleep.
Here is a typical day for him.
5:30 wake to BF then back to sleep
7-8 wake BF then up (change him dress him )
9:00 snack (solids either yams, pears, bananas or avacados)
9:30-11:30 swim
11:30 NAP
12:00 BF and snack
12:15 Play (usually jolly jumper or exersaucer and then mommy baby tummy time)
1:40 Nap
2:30 up from nap and BF
2:45 Play (usually he watches fetch with dog which he does not stop giggling at and then mommy baby tummy time)
5:00 BF for about 5 mins (this is usual for him) and snack
5:15 Play
6:00 BF
6:15 play
7:00 Bath
7:45 Snack (rice cereal)
8:00 BF
8:10 story
8:30 SLEEP (he usually will fall asleep easily for his first round of sleep)
Here comes the issues:
AWAKE from midnight onward on most nights.
He is very hungry at this time. He will eat for about 15 mins
burp him then try to put him back to bed. However, he is usually wide awake and tries to play. If I put him down he screams like a mad man:) It takes about 1 hour to settle him.
between 2 and 3 he will wake again. I have tried PU/PD for over a month and I can do this for hours and he will not settle. I finally realized that he is hungry again. He will eat for about 20 mins this time. (He seems to eat much more in the night than durring the day). Then I try PU/PD again but it fails miserably. After about another hour I let him sit on my lap and look around the room. He then gets drowsy and will go back to bed. By this time it is either 4 or 5 in the AM. If it is 4 am or earlier he will usually sleep until 5:30- 6 and the cycle begins again. If it is 5:30 he will not go back to sleep. until 8 or 9.
Here is my sleep deprived assessment of my situation.
I am certain he is waking up because of one of two issues that he has. He is hungry or he has bowel problems as he gets extreemly constipated and has had to be disimpacted a few times. He will wake in pain some nights and these are the worst nights. On his hungry nights he wakes he feeds he sits and looks around then he goes back to bed until his next feed. The frustrating thing for me is that I know he knows how to sleep through the night since he did it from 8 weeks until about 21 weeks. I also know he can self soothe because I have seen him do it at nap time and at his original bedtime.
I have been trying the PU/PD method for 7.5 weeks and it seems to be a disaster. I have talked to many other moms and they have not had any success with the method either. I am being pressured by my inlaws to ferberize him because each of them did it and they swear by it. My mother inlaw even decided to buy me the book:( Now, I know that this site is against it and I am personally against it. Unfortunately, that is not a good enough response for my husband or my inlaws. My question is, what is the evidence against ferberizing? I know people feel it is cruel but there is no evidence to support that. My line of work is in evidence based medicine and I cannot for the life of me get ahold of any studies that has any strong arguements against ferberizing. Therefore, it is making it very difficult to formulate a EBM response. There are some thoughts that it could possibly effect psychological development but there is insufficient data to support that. Does anyone have any good quality references for reasons against ferberizing? I would REALLY appreciate it!! Also, could you help me with why PU/PD is not working?
Thanks for listening to my rant.
