No longer sleeping through the night

[Luv2garden]

Ok, I am a basket case.  I started EASY a week ago to get Maddie to stop relying on us all day long to entertain her and to get her to sleep.  She was already sleeping through the night 6 hours, sometimes 7.  However, ever since starting the EASY plan she has slowly decreased her night sleep time.  Started at 7hrs, then went to 6, then 5, then 4, then last night to 3.5.  It's almost as if the EASY is messing up her night sleep. What is going on?  She is 8 weeks old. and we struggle to get her to nap and bed most of the time (45+ minutes), she spends most of the time being put down screaming, waving her arms and legs, arching her back, and moving her head side to side (we've tried many of the books suggestions and posts in regard to calming techniques with mixed success - including pat and shush).  Even being swaddled she kicks and moves as best as she can to work herself up.  She is even already consistently rolling over at 8 weeks.

Here is her approximate schedule:
7am Eat 15-20 minutes, diaper change, activity 30 minutes, wind down 45+, sleeps 30min-2 hours (alternates days, one day she sleeps all day for naps, the next day she doesn't)
10am same as above
1pm (same as above)
4pm-she rarely gets any sleep this time.  She fights it the whole time up to the next feeding.  The only time she did go to sleep was when we took a stroll in the Bjorn and she had fallen asleep.
7pm- Same as 7AM
11pm- Eat 15-20 minutes, diaper change and rocking/sothing and placed in bed while awake.  Fights sleep for 1-2 hours.  Each day getting less sleep.  Wakes up and I have to calm her down for another hour to get her to sleep another hour or two.

She averages closer to 45 minutes to 1 hour naps during the day and rarely sleeps a full 2 hours.  Some nights she has struggled most the night with only an 1 hour of steady sleep at one given time.

I am at my wits end.  I got better sleep before I started EASY, even though I didn't have any time to myself during the day.  I am about to throw in the towel.  I don't know why it works well every other day during the daytime and the night sleep times are a battle and are slowly decreasing.  Anyone have this problem? What did you do?  What should I do?  Help!   According to the book she is Touchy.  And, I realize that it takes patience and stick with it is a common theme among posts.

The best thing I have noticed about EASY is that her disposition during the awake times seems happier and content.  But getting to sleep and staying a sleep is a true battle.  Even being swaddled we have to physically hold her still in order to get her to calm down enough to fall asleep.

[Richelle]

HI,

First of all, HI and welcome to the message boards!

Secondly congrats on your little one (LO)!  I think that you are doing great especially to have only been at it a week, it does take time, consistency and patience.

Below is a copied post from Branwen with some AMAZING advice regarding teaching touchy babies independent sleep:

Post #1 - this baby was 7 weeks at the time, but close enough!
 
As the mother of a very touchy girl myself I have a lot of suggestions for you.

1) from my experience she is not eating enough for 7 weeks old and 4 hrs between feeds is also a bit much IMO at this age.  She needs to get to 32 to 40 oz or so and stay there until you introduce solids.  Are you formula feeding?  Any signs of reflux or stomach discomfort?  knees to chest?  gas?  what color are her BMs?  Have you played with different bottles/nipples to see if she will take more with one and not the other.

2) touchy babies simply cannot handle stimulation well and get very overtired very fast.  I found that my girl could only handle 45 min awake cycles until about 6 months and then we went to 1.15-1.5 hrs.  I blackened her room, took all the toys from her crib, muted her decor, and got a very loud noise machine as she awoke at the slightest sound my husband and I would make in our house.  I would really try these things and see if it helps.  I also created a very specific wind down that we still use today.  I am finally able to sing different songs now but creating solid sleep cues eventually lead to her getting tired the moment she heard specific songs.

3) get a grobag, if you're in the US you can order them through their canadian website or other retailer, or abandon the swaddle. We did!  I wish I had found the grobag at your lo's age.  I think it really helped my girl feel secure and warm but also gave her the freedom to wiggle because like your lo she would flail and turn herself completely around in her crib (not roll though).  Speaking of, I found that my girl really liked it warm, and I didn't really get this until later on.  AFter about a month of using the grobag it also became a sleep cue in itself and when I would put her in it she would rub her eyes and get sleepy.

4) bedtime- not sure what time your girl wakes up but seriously move that bedtime.   If you can believe it when I started actually really watching my girl's cues her bedtime became 5:30 to 6:00, and she was SO HAPPY!  I couldn't believe what a difference it made.  I had no idea that my girl was so overstimulated and tired.  The other thing that changed my life with my girl was having ALL SLEEP in her crib.  I can't tell you what a difference this made.  1.5 hrs from the last nap for bed is ideal.  So that would put her bed at 6:30.  You may think it will never work but just give it a try one night!  When we were pushing the 8 bedtime she would get hysterical in the bath, not each much and then be so overtired sleep was impossible.  Sounds like what you're going through!

5) finally sticking to a very specific routine really helped my girl.  consistency and repetition to the point of me wanting to pull my hair out was the key for her.  While sometimes our days got a little boring she turned into an angel after about a month of doing all these things.  Her feeds were better because she was rested and her sleeps were better because her tummy was full.  EVERYTHING WAS RELATED!

It was so hard to learn her temperament and she still needs lots of sleep, reassurance and stability.  Let me know if you have more questions.  I'm happy to help!

Post #2
Honestly I think your little guy needs to sleep the same way (same place) at the same times every day (2-3 naps), and also eat the same way every time every day.  Eventually he will catch on if you can see it through.  He will cry a lot in the beginning because he won't know what you are doing, but he won't be crying out of pain, just frustration, realizing this helped me to keep going.  Even after picking up/putting down over 100 times and going for more than 1.5 hrs straight I just had to keep going because I knew I couldn't continue to live the way I had been living.  Eventually my girl even learned to eat more at once so she didn't wake as often.

I Hope this Helps,

Richelle

[Luv2garden]

Richelle, Thanks for your response.  My LO's middle name is Elise too!     MAybe I am not understanding the time thing but from what I am doing is three hours to each feeding.  To answer your questions, we breastfeed and formula because I am not producing enough and she wants to snack and pacify so we had to reduce time on breast.  She is doing fine in the eating department in the sense of appetite, no problems taking the bottle.  In regards to the amount, we were going off our doctor's suggestion of 2 ounces, then on our own we made it three then just last week(when we started EASY, since we read in book she would be in the 4 ounce range) we made it 4 ounces.  MAybe that's why she was in better spirits.  What I don't understand is why she did fine sleeping through the night before and now isn't and i know we over stimulated her before EASY.  We have found that she sleeps better on her tummy(can't flair arms and she can find her thumb easier to suck). Also doc gave us permission too, since before she was NOT sleeping it all unless she was in our laps.  In fact I just put her down to a nap on her tummy and she found her thumb, sucked away and went right to sleep.  Of course she didn't sleep the session before because we tried swaddling her. We PU/PD the whole time and finally after 45 minutes walkes her away from it to calm her down and warm up my breastmilk.  I did very short, low key stimulation before putting her to bed, just as I had read her to do after a no sleep cycle.  I only see signs of stomach distress when she is on her back.  When she is on her tummy she sleeps great.  We did try to wedge it in the early weeks when we couldn't get her to sleep at all and that didn't seem to work then.  We were just worried now with her rolling over that she might roll over and wake herself up, so that is why we swaddled her on her back some.
Sometimes when I read her cues(3 yawns) she was ready to go down within 10 minutes of feeding.  I thought that wasn't giving her enough time which might be causing her to oversleep during the day and not at night.  SO I have been trying to keep her up for 30 minutes still sort of watching some cues.  It is weird how one day it goes well during the day and the next day it doesn't.  I guess I will try to be consistent with putting her on her stomach and nap time routine and see if that helps.  Will look into your grobag.
In regards to sleep  before EASY we would start bedtime around 9-10pm and she would sleep until 4am. Like a biological clock going off.  Then I would feed her and she would sleep till 7 or 8.  Since I started doing Easy with bedtime at the same time she has slowly lost an hour almost each night.  On EASY I have noticed she(been logging it) she is always wired and never sleeps after the four o-clock feeding(except once when Daddy walked her in the baby Bjorn).(Yes, bad daddy). But 7 she is out like a light and we always hated waking her up for the 10pm one.  So do you think 7pm would be good then?  Should we dreamfeed at 10pm?  Did you dreamfeed?
I appreciatte your advice and I do need to get better at solid sleep cues.  Doyou do o different sleep cue for the late one or just the same?
Thanks for answerng my millions of questions.
-Ashley

[Richelle]

HI Ashley,

I am about to go against some BW philosophy here but bear with me everyone!  When my DD was the same age as yours I put her to bed at 8ishPM, didn't do the dreamfeed, she would then wake at 4AM (like clockwork) I would feed her, then put her back to bed.  This is what I found worked for US.  Once this was established as our nightly routine the one thing I always stuck by was her ONE night feed at 4amish.  All other wakings I would pat/shh back to sleep (there weren't many so I was lucky).  As she got older I moved her bedtime forward so that by the time she was 4 months she was going to bed at 7PM and sleeping until 4AM, feed, then back down until 7AM. 

I really would suggest a grobag/sleeping bag for her, they are/can be a great sleep indicator as well as a key component to a winddown.

I would also CUT down her A time to a MAX of 45 minutes including winddown.  Don't worry about her mixing up day and night right now, I think it would be a far stretch at this point, seeing as she has had good nights before.  I really think she is overtired.  If she is yawning 10 minutes after eating and she hasn't had a solid night sleep or nap preceeding said yawns, by all means put her down to sleep.

Ideally a baby this age should be up for an hour and sleeping for two out of every three.  It is of course not going to always work out so perfectly but that is the aim.  If you spend the majority if her nap time trying to get her to sleep and get into the next feed cycle then feed, change her and straight back to trying to sleep so you don;t get into a viscious cycle of overtiredness.

Also do you have a fan or whitenoise machine?  They work wonders!  AND my DD is an angel baby and at this age (still does actually) needed/s for it to be VERY (I:M talking pitch) dark for her to have a good nap.  Tin foil on the windows works great if you don't have black out blinds.

I think that she is waking at night etc.. just because her body is adjusting to the changes but if you stay consitent with your routine then she (and her body) will catch on!

I hope I answered you ?'s, let me know how things go.....

Richelle 

[linfran]

The grobags are great, I am mother to a little wriggler and it makes life so much easier.

One thing I found really helped was establishing a bedtime routine which I have been able to start earlier in the evenings as he gets older - he also tends to get overtired and hit meltdown really quickly.  At the minute this tends to happen about 8pm so at 7.45 he has a bath, is put in his sleepsuit and grobag and has a bottle in his nursery wit the lights dimmed, a cuddle and down to bed in his crib.  He's now asleep at 8.15pm.

I found by just starting with the bedtime (which we did at the start as he was bf for the first three weeks) it has been easier to introduce EASY.  He's on 4 hour EASY now (and solids since he's now 18lbs) and was getting up once a night for a feed, but for the last couple of nights has slept 11 hours (I honestly thought there was something wrong!!!).

Please stick with it if you can, fingers and toes crossed for you.

[Luv2garden]

Thanks Linfran and Sophie's mom.  I guess I will ahve to look into this Grobag thing.  I tried dream feeding and it helped, except for last night.  She had gas pains and then took a noie big poop. Hoping she will sleep again through the night.  I appreciatte your help.  If you or anyone thinks of anything else, just let me know.
-AG