getting into bad habits with 5 month old

[londongirl]

hi
my DD2 has always woken for a night feed, usually around midnight, and gone back to sleep immediately.  She moved in with her older sister about a month ago and everything was going great. Now she has been waking up, only wanting a few ounces, and then not settling back to sleep with dummy. Then she starts babbling, shrieking at a deafening volume so the first time i took her into the living room to avoid her waking DD1. i changed the nappy, pretty much ignored her to make it as boring as possible and put her back to bed after about half and hour. Now for a few nights in a row she has woken up, and started this attention seeking behaviour, making loads of noise.  i have tried persevering with her in the bedroom, but it woke up the older one, and then i had two to get back to sleep.  sometime she has a dirty nappy so i guess there is nothing you can do about that one.

So i feel she is now expecting to be taken out of the bedroom for some fun in the middle of the night. I really dont know what to do.

Her naps have been much shorter the last few days also, perhaps this has caused the erratic sleeping. In fact, she was so tired tonight she didnt even drink her bottle before bed. She just slept at 6.30pm, and i guess she will wake up soon for her milk. Today, she napped for 1 hr am, and only about half an hour in the afternoon. i couldnt believe how long she was awake - it was from about 11am till 3pm ish.  i ended up putting both girls into the car just to get her to sleep, and sure enough she closed her eyes as soon as the engine started.

i think she is teething, which adds to it.  Can the six month growth spurt affect things also?

any advice would be appreciated.

[rob1lu2]

What kind of schedule do you have her on?  While you work on this with DD2, can you have her in her own room for a while? Have you tried pu/pd?

[londongirl]

Her routine is like this
7am - milk
8.30am food
9 - 11am sleep (or somewhere during this time
11am milk
12 ish food
1-3 sleep
3 milk
4.30 ish food
5-6 sleep
bath, and sleep sometime around 7pm, although lately she seems to be dropping the last nap and going to bed earlier.

unfortunately the only other room to put her in is the living room as we only have a two bedroom flat. i was considering putting her in a travel cot in the living room for a while but it would mean me and DH would have to be out of there by 7pm - not ideal!!!

Its 4am as i write and here we are again. she is wide awake and we are sitting in the living room and she is trying to get my attention.  i feel like throttling her when she starts waking up at this time, its terrible to feel this way about your child. i feel its completely accidential parenting, but what can i do???

[rob1lu2]

I have twin girls and live in a two bedroom house, so I know the difficulty when one is having an issue and the other one isn't. What do you do with them?

You say you just moved her, was she in the bedroom with you?  Are her naps still short? I would think that being overtired might have something to do with it. Especially if she was so tired the other night that she didn't finish her bottle and fell asleep.

Does she usually wake at the same time or is it different every night? If it's the same time it could be habitual waking so you could try Wake to Sleep. It isn't an instant fix, but it's something you could try.

One of my girls had a little spell where she woke up every hour on the hour for three nights. I used PU/PD to put her back to sleep. Obviously I had to move her sister into the bedroom with us. I think one of the issues  may be that by moving her out of the bedroom into the living room, she may be thinking "this is where we play, it's play time". Could you move big sister somewhere while you resolve this one?

I know it's frustrating and I'm sorry I don't have more or better advice. But I'm sending you good wishes!

[londongirl]

thanks.  Funnily enough last night she actually woke up for a feed around 2.30am, had her bottle and went back to sleep. I think this was because i made sure she had an undisturbed nap in the morning which was for 1.5 hours and again in the afternoon, and she did have the little nap before bath and bed.  This must have helped her night sleep - i cant think what else changed. So i had a better night and i was all prepared to do P.U/P.D. 
How have you found it with twins. I mean, i get my DD2 to bed first and then i get the older one in bed. at least the older one understands that she has to be quiet so she doesnt disturb the baby. How do you get twins to bed at the same time -dont they keep each other up???

[rob1lu2]

They are used to each other and the sounds the other makes.

I still keep them apart for naps b/c one is not a good sleeper and sometimes I have to do pu/pd to put her back to sleep. No sense torturing the other one who is sleeping soundly. We put them to bed at the same time. One is very easy to put to bed - she conks out in about five minutes. The other one loves to talk to herself and has this husky little voice - it takes her about 20 minutes to put herself to sleep.

In the middle of the night, when Inez wakes up to eat, Sylvie just sleeps through it. And when Sylvie used to wake up in the middle of the night, Inez would sleep through it.

Of course, it's not always fool proof - once Inez woke in the middle of the night and my husband was tending to her. She got agitated and started screaming and *did* wake Sylvie. At that point we had two crying babies we had to settle. So I grabbed Sylvie, brought her to our bedroom to settle her down, and didn't take her back to their bedroom until Inez was calmed down.

All in a night's work!

Glad to hear that she had her meal and then went back to sleep. I really believe that their daytime sleep affects their night time sleep. So if she's getting good sleep during the day now, it  might self - correct.

Keep us posted!

Lu