What is wrong now?? Need Support

[cwolff]

Over the XMas holidays, DD slept thru the night, no waking at all for 2 nights.  Then she woke once or twice for paci, no problem, could do it with my eyes closed.  Then, last Wednesday, she woke up many times in the late evening, and by 1:30am was wide awake.  I finally fed her, which I normally don't do.  She ate the whole bottle and slept from 2am - 5am.  Then it was up and down until she got up at 7:30am.  Naps all day were progressively worse and she was unusually cranky, and Thursday night I figured she'd be exhausted enough to really crash out at night.  No luck.  At 3:30am she was wide awake.  I let her talk for a long while until she began to cry.  Then I went in, gave her the paci and tried to leave.  Immediate crying.  I tried repositioning her in the crib, patting her, anything.  Nothing worked.  Finally she fell back to sleep around 5:30am and slept till nearly 8am.  We were going out of town about 3 hours on Friday, and I figured she'd take a nice nap since we left around her afternoon nap time.  1/2 hour!!  Then she refused to sleep again until bedtime which was an hour an a half earlier than usual, and no bath.  Just bed.  She fell asleep well, then woke a couple hours later at which time I decided maybe it was her ears or teething (she has no signs of teeth yet though) and gave her some tylenol.  This helped I think, and she slept until 2am when she again woke wide up.  It was the same as before, and I finally got her back to sleep around 3:00am, no feeding, just doing anything else.  She slept till 6am or so before waking for the paci, and up for the day at 8:15am.  We decided to be on the safe side and took her to an urgent care to make sure her ears were ok, and they were fine.  So what the heck is wrong?  Why all of a sudden did I get two perfect nights, and then this hell again?  I'm sure she's overtired, but I can't get her caught up because she isn't napping well.  This feels like such a vicious cycle that I can't get out of.  And if it's teething, my god how bad is it gonna get when I can actually feel buds?  Please tell me I am not alone in being enormously sleep deprived even though my DD should be well over this stage by now.

[Adee]

Hi There - How old is your daughter? It sounds like my daughter just went through a phase very similar to yours. My daughter is going to be 5 months next week and has been going through this waking up syndrome for about 10 days!

She was a great sleeper and all of a sudden she started waking up in the middle of the night for the paci (sometimes a few times) and eating.

I was told that this could be a growth spurt which causes this irratic sleeping pattern. I started her on the Dream Feed about a week ago (betwen 10-11pm feed while she is still sleeping) which helped some. She is now sleeping longer (until about 5 or 6am) and I am told it will get longer with time. This is what I can give you as advice from the hell I have been going through.

Good luck to you!

[kirsty_167]

Hi...i too have had a terrible time of late with my soon to be 5 month old son.We have had a month of bad naps,bedtimes,wakings etc. Bad naps defintely equal bad nights.....i have read anyway.

All you can do is exactly what you are doing.At least you can get your baby back to sleep again,Jakob is incredibly hard to do this with.You sound like you are doing  a great job...like me you probably will just have to ride this out.I made decisions on how to deal with nightwakings etc and have stuck with my decisions.I felt if i did the same things each time then i wouldnt confuse him (or me) Everyone has there own way and you have to do what works for you but keeps your sanity too!!

I got rid of the paci at 14 weeks as it was doing my head in going in and out to put it back in.It has been hard and during this bad sleep time i sooo wanted to give it back but he doesnt want it....(phew it would have undone all the hard work of removing it) Have you considered removing the paci (dummy)? I found this upset his deep sleep  even though it got him to sleep (bit of a no win situation for a while)

anyway keep your chin up,you arent alone...take care and well done on the good job you are doing!!
kirsty

[cwolff]

Oh how I have wanted to destroy the paci.  But I can't stand the crying.  I know that right off, so I'm not even going to pretend I could do it.  Plus, DH is adamantly against this.  So I am biding my time waiting for the day she can put it back in herself.  I broke my rule of no paci except bedtimes because I want her to practice getting it back into her mouth the right way.  Pathetic, I know, but luckily she doesn't seem to want or demand it until it's sleep or really cranky time.  My DD is almost 8 months though, and maybe it's developmental, maybe it's teething, maybe it's all of the above.  Last night wasn't so horrible, she just woke a couple of times, but luckily slept thru the loud fireworks going on outside.  Then for some very odd reason she slept till 8:45am!  This is unheard of for us.  Then she napped from 11am till 1pm.  She catnapped again from 4:10pm till 5pm, and we're going to put her to bed around 8pm.  Hopefully it will be OK.  We're on vacation, so all her sleep times have been messed up.  Though the night waking started before we went out of town.  Thanks for the support.