5 month old eating most of calories from 7pm- 7am. Aack!

[MomOfKaylee]

Hey friends! My 5 month, 1 week old, has gotten into a bad habit of snacking (taking 3-4oz) during the day and then eating a ton at night (6+ oz at 7pm and 11pm DF plus a middle if the night feed

She was on an awesome 4 hour EASY with no NW before she got her 1st cold last week. 

So my question is two-fold:

1. She will only take a 45 min nap in the morning which messes up her feeding times all day.  If she wakes at 7, eats at 7:30, sleeps from 9-9:45, then I try to put her back down around 11-15-30 since she's too tired to stay awake for the full 2 hours.  She's supposed to eat around 11-11:30 but that's when she goes back to sleep. 

So if I feed her at 11, she's down by 11:30 and sleeps until 1:30 then it's not time to eat again until early... And once again, it bumps into her nap. 

She has been refusing her cat nap in the evening and ends up being awake from 4:30 until 7:30. Ugh. She's not unhappy, per se, but it stresses me out because she's "supposed"  to be sleeping.  She will just hang out in her bed and talk and fussing for over an hour then it's time to get her again.

I feel like our first daughter did a little better "sticking"  to EASY a little better.

2nd part...  How do I get her to eat more during the day so she's not taking all her calories from 7pm to 7am? Here 1st bottle at 7am is usually only 3oz even if she doesn't wake in the middle of the night to feed.

Please keep in mind, she WAS on an awesome schedule! I'm sure a lot of this is our accidentally parenting while she was sick. Sighhhh.....

Thank you!

[MomOfKaylee]

Sorry - I'm so tired, I realized that I really didn't complete my thought.

If I try to correct the eating-right-before-nap problem, then she ends up not hungry and snacks.. she'll only take 2 oz and won't be hungry for the rest of her bottle until just before her nap.

Here's a sample schedule:

7am - awake & reflux meds
7:30am - 3-4oz (if I'm lucky!)
9am - nap
9:45am Awake - I'll let her stay in her crib until the full nap time is over and she'll play happily and start to fuss just before 10:30. I've tried really hard to fix this 45 min nap. (I've kept her up longer = overtired, crying to sleep. (normally she's super happy and talks herself to sleep)
10:30 - activity

11- Eat (3-4 oz) ... if I try to push this to 11:30, then she falls asleep on the bottle
11:15/30 - nap - if I wait longer, she'll get overtired after only having a 45 min nap
1:15 - awake! (always an awesome 2 hour nap) .... If I try to feed her around 2, she's not hungry since it's only been 2 hours! If I wait until 3, then it's...guess what?... naptime!
2:00 - eat (3-4 oz)
3:30 - nap attempt. Usually will not fall asleep. She'll play/fuss for 2 hours if I leave her long enough. If I try to "help" her, it only stimulates her.

Finally give up around 5pm and feed her 3-4 oz.

6:00 - bath, wind down,
7pm - bottle (6+ oz) ... she usually falls asleep on this one

11pm - Dreamfeed - 6.5oz

**sometimes** 3 or 4am - wants 6+ oz but I limit it to 3-4 oz. Then she's usually mad/cries/fusses/takes forever to settle because she wants more food.

Wakes again at 7am not hungry.

Any thoughts for  me?? Thanks so much!

[*Kara*]

I think we might be able to get things back on track with a quick A time increase.  It's very common for A times to really start increasing rapidly around 5 months of age (you will get to 3 hrs around 7/8 months).  The 45 min AM nap is quite likely because she is UT.  Push her first time out to 2 hrs 15 mins and see what happens.

As for the snacking bit, the quickest way to deal with that is allow her first feed to stop when she is ready, re-offer in an hour to see if you can get a bit more into her, then push to her next normal feed time.. do your best to push her as far as you can to her next appropriate feed time for the rest of the day.  The reason for the AM top up is to ensure you can get a decent AM nap and not totally louse up the rest of the day!

She is likely in that awful phase of still needing her CN, but not wanting it.  Since she is consistently refusing it, I would go ahead and push for a full A time plus a bit extra and do an early bedtime

[MomOfKaylee]

Thanks for your response, Kara! I'll update you on this morning after I ask you about last night... I'm exasperated!

Gabby took her normal dreamfeed at 10:45pm and then woke up at 2:30am crying. She was unconsolable, so much to my dismay, we gave her 2oz. She fell fast asleep. (I would think it wasn't a hunger issue if 2oz satisfied her.) She woke back up shortly after we laid her back down asleep and she talked and played happily until 4:45am. UGH! She was awake for 2 hours in the middle of the night! Then she started getting fussy so I tried to ssh/pat her. That's a great game for her. She tries to play with my hand now. So I picked her up and tried to cradle her back to sleep which made her really mad. (That's typical. She doesn't like to be cradled - when she wants to sleep, we just lay her down in her crib and she falls asleep on her own.) I ended up giving her 3oz which she sucked down quickly and fell asleep. Laid her back down and she was awake again by 5:30am. She talked on and off until 7:00am and we finally got her up at 7:45. WHAT IS THIS???

I know this should probably be in the NW forum, right?

We fed her at 8am this morning - she took 4oz off an on for an hour (took your advice to tank her up) -  and laid her back down for her nap at 9am. (Since she had definitely been awake since at least 7am) She talked herself to sleep at 9:20am. She woke up 35 minutes later... and that was all her nap. She talked and played for another 45 and we gave up. (If we go in and try to get her to sleep, she either thinks it's a game or gets really upset (like above)).

We just fed her and she only would take 3.5oz and spit a bunch back up.

So if she only slept for 35 minutes, how long should she be awake this time?

And then once again, if we stretch her feeds to her "normal" times, then it runs into her nap and she feeds to sleep. Sighhhh

I swear my older daughter was not this challenging!!!! She cried a lot more than Gabby, but she at least slept through the night consistently!

**thank you*******

[*Kara*]

Oh dear - she is gonna be a tricky one I suspect

That first wake up could have been a few things - teething? 

Any signs of a cold or other illness? 

The long NWing with a happy baby is almost always undertired behaviour or developmental in nature.  Has she learned anything new lately - sitting/rolling etc?

A 35 min nap would pull her A time way back.. I would maybe keep a close eye on her and try to nap her after 1.5 hrs...

[MomOfKaylee]

Thank you! She didn't nap more that 30 min at a time all day! (that's unusual... Usually she takes one 2 hours nap at least! And it took her an hour to finally fall asleep tonight. No illness that I can see.. Could be teeth but no evidence of them yet and she's not fussy! Developmentally, she is talking up a storm. During all these naps and all last night she kept saying BaaBaaa BaaBaaa.... Lol.  Praying tonight us an easier and more peaceful one all around!

Any suggestions on how to help her fall asleep since PU/PD and ssh/pat ate now games that stimulate her? Ssh/pat works if she's all out crying (injured, overtired, etc) but not to help her happy self fall asleep.  If we leave her long enough (an hour!) she"'ll transition from fussy to all out crying. That's fun for all parties involved!

Sorry for all the typos... I can go back and edit on my phone or it will eat it for some reason! 

[*Kara*]

Sounds like she is just really OT hun... once we can get her caught up, she might be better off to self settle without much help.  Also, shush pat will change forms as she ages.. some LOs find the patting to be stimulating as opposed to relaxing... so prefer just the sound of your shushing... or the other way around.. it's all about trying a few things to see what she prefers.

Around this age, we found that a hand on DD's back (tummy sleeper) without a sound was best.  The only time I made any sound was if she was struggling and started to get a bit fidgety.. then I would just rub her back and say shhhh...