He can put himself to sleep - why NW every night?

[Mayu]

Hello,

My son turned 5 months. I've been sleep training him since Day 1, but the most recent phase started 3 weeks ago, where I put him on 4-hour EASY and stopped feeding him at night altogether.

He has been putting himself to sleep for naps and nights about 99% of the time for 3 weeks now. Naps are sometimes short, sometimes more than 2 hours, it seems to be consistent throughout the week but different from week to week, for some unknown reasons. His day looks like this:

7:00 wake and bf
9:00-11:00 nap: if he wakes up early, I do PU/PD
11:00 bf
1:00-3:00 nap: if he wakes up early, do PU/PD; if he sleeps longer than 3:30, I wake him up
3:00 bf
4:00-5:30 he gets cranky and I try cat nap; sometimes it happens but usually doesn't - difficult to follow through as I'm also taking care of a 3-year old at the same time
5:00-6:00 bf and bed, the time depending on whether he took a cat nap.

then...

3:00am-5:00am: between this time, he wakes and cries. I wait to see if he goes back to sleep by himself, but after 15 minutes or so his cry escalates, and so I go in. As soon as he realizes that I'm in the room, he cries louder. I shush him; he cries louder. I pick him up; he squirms and curls up in front of my chest and pushes me away. So I put him down; he cries even louder. I keep him in the crib and shush him, putting myself cheek-to-cheek with him and patting his shoulder or belly, until he calms down. He looks as if he is ready to fall back to sleep at this point, and sometimes he does, but more often he snaps back and become wide awake. If I try to leave him, he cries and the cycle starts again. It continues up to 2 hours and when he finally falls asleep, he does so in his usual fashion - all by himself!! He rolls over and just like that, he's out. As if the past 2 hours didn't happen.

I am looking at my log and it seems that once a week, he wakes up at around 3:00am. Over the next 3 nights he wakes up later and later, and by the 4th day he sleeps until close to 7:00. Then a few nights later, he starts at 3:00 again. The length of his waking varies, from 15 minutes to 2 hours, but most of the time 1.5 hours.

I don't know why he's waking up, but more importantly, I don't know how I can help him get back to sleep. Obviously I am not there making it any easier for him except to let him know that I'm there. What I don't understand is that he can put himself to sleep - doing it at all the naps and at the beginning of the night, as well as other times that I hear him awake (he often makes sounds at 9:00pm). So why can't he do so at this NW???

Any suggestions, any insights, any shared experiences appreciated. Thanks so much!!!

[Katet]

Is he going from 6pm to 7am without a feed or is there a DF in there?
Either way at 5mo I'd be offering a feed because for a BF baby who puts himself to sleep but can't get back at that time then I'd have to question hunger/thirst as an issue before looking at other reasons. Many a BF baby (particularly a second child with a busy Mum whose milk may not be as plentiful) still has 2 night feeds at 6mo.

[yaya]

Have to agree with Kate there...are you sure it's not hunger?

[Mayu]

There is no DF. And while I cannot say with a 100% confidence that it's not hunger, I don't think it is...at least he does not look as if he is hungry.

Having said that, I was feeding him at night before this phase started. I should probably write a little about the history leading up to it.

2 months ago, when he turned 3 months old, I started to do DF and not feed him thereafter until next morning. He started off great, but within days he was waking up at DF and having tough time settling down afterwards. He also woke up after DF increasingly earlier, going from 5:00 to eventually 3:00.

At that point I didn't think he was waking up because of hunger (since he had DF at 10:30), so I stopped DF and decided to feed him when he wakes up for hunger. He slept until 3:00 or 4:00, sometimes even 5:00. I fed him when he woke up, and he usually went back to sleep promptly after feeding.

This continued for about a month, during which he started to wake more and more, and again increasingly earlier. In the end he was waking up three times starting at 11:00. I didn't feed him every time he woke up, but it was getting hard for me to decide when he needed to eat. He was always taking full feed when I fed him at night, but I felt he was eating less during the day...at least he was not hungry at 7:00, so it was hard to follow a good routine. Also he was taking longer period of time to settle back to sleep, and this was affecting his day greatly.

So 3 weeks ago, I decided not to nurse him at night...at all. And he started to sleep through again, for a few nights. Then he started to wake again, sometimes at 3, sometimes at 5. That's where we are now.

I have to say that his sleep in general, day and night, is getting better since I stopped feeding him at night. I feel like if I start feeding him again at NW, it will get worse, just like it did for the past 2 months.

The issue of hunger was actually in my head, though, so I started him on solids last Saturday. So far his NW pattern hasn't changed, but it might. I hope that it was indeed a hunger issue and that it would go away now that he is eating some solids.

[yaya]

Starting solids won't necessarily sort out the NWs but increasing milk intake in the day should sort it out if it's hunger. Can you cluster feed in the evening? That will also help if it's hunger. If it isn't hunger; IS there anything developmental going on? teething? rolling? crawling? etc

Hmm I just looked at your routine again, are going for a bedtime around 6pm? He could well be a bit OT at bedtime which can cause NWs...I would either have a 6.30 bedtime if no catnap or catnap and later bedtime to ensure it isn't this.

OR crib partied as we affectionately call them here can indicate UT but usually the LO is happily playing in crib which doesn't seem to be your case


Sorry not sure that helps too muc, can you clarify the evening part for me and I'll see if I can help any more?

[Katet]

Starting on solids may actually cause more problems (at least it did with my ds1 about 1 week after we started he woke lots more)

The other thing is feeding at night isn't only about hunger, 12 hours in a 5month old is a LONG time to go without fluid, so while you don't want to feed the fact he is so unsetttled for that period to me says it is possibly about starting to get hungry & because he is more able to move etc if he isn't quite tired enough then he just doesn't go back to sleep.... the fact it changes from 3 to 5 am & isn't a consistent time every day really does say hunger & the fact a DF didn't work says to me the same thing as both my boys woke more with a DF, but when I just let them sleep & wake for a feed they both did long stretches to say 3/4/5am eventually stretching out to 6am... DF don't work for all babies, but 12hour stretches in a 5mo are pretty unusual, so my thought is try to settle on the first wake, if he goes back off & wakes 10mins later feed, that way he doesn't learn he wakes he gets fed. (that is also how I got rid of night feeds we got at an older age due to hospital stays with both my boys) But by the second wake up close to the first it kind of to me indicated an issue with hunger/thirst

[Mayu]

He is still waking up... he is eating solids well, but I'm cutting it back a little now since it seems to be constipating him

Also last weekend my 4-year old came down with cold, and she has been really suffering from her brother's crying in the early morning, so for the past 3 nights (mornings) I fed him when he woke at 5:00 or 5:30 - to see if it works, but mainly to try to keep him as quiet as possible. He took full feed, but didn't settle afterwards and again it took 2 hours altogether before he went back down. At least he didn't cry too much but still woke his sister

This long NW is his only NW, and after he goes back to sleep he sleeps until 7:00, so I couldn't first settle him down then wait for him to wake up 10 min later to feed, like katet suggested.

To answer yaya, here is his evening routine:

If the afternoon nap lasts for 2 hours and until close to 3:00, he usually can't take a cat nap but gets cranky after 4:00. I put him in the crib and go in whenever he cries hard, but try to keep him in the crib until 5:00.
If the afternoon nap ends shortly after 2:00, I do pu/pd until close to 3:00 and then try a cat nap at around 4:00. Again I try to keep him in the crib until 5:00 unless he is crying too hard. Sometimes he sleeps for 30 min, typically from 4:40 to 5:10.

If there is no cat nap, bedtime feed starts at 5:30. He is in the crib by 6:00 and usually asleep in 10 or 15 minutes.
If there is a cat nap, bedtime feed starts close to 6:00. He is in bed by 6:30.

As for developmental issue, nothing I can think of... he started to roll over over a month ago, is not crawling yet, and no sign of teething as far as I can tell. No major change in the household, either, although we are traveling for Thanksgiving this weekend, so that probably will affect his night.

[deb]

I'd probably just do what you can to get thru the Thanksgiving holiday and then see about getting back to some sort of routine afterward. Travel always messed us up some, so we learned it was easier to fix things after rather than bother trying beforehand.

[Katet]

With both my boys I NEVER got the 12hours of sleep at night even with a feed, so I have to wonder if he is a child like mine that needed to have the routine worked around a 10/10.5hour night, if he is really hard to get back to sleep even after a feed then I'm thinking he is getting his night quota by the time he wakes & the only thing you can do is try to delay his bedtime & work at his night being the length of that long stretch but at a better wake up time.