4.5 mth old - waking 4/5 times per night still & still feeding at 4.30 - help!!

[junemum]

Hi all,

I will try and make this short and to the point!

4.5 mth old DS has never slept through the night. He goes down well in the evening around 7, usually sleeps well till around 10.30/11.00 at which point he wakes and gets dream feed. This is the part of the night where he sleeps the best.

Then......

Sleeps through undisturbed till around 2.30 am. Wakes up, we go in to him and try and pat shush him back to sleep. Might sleep again for 15 /30 mins/1 hr but will always wake again soon and we do the same. So basically between 2 and 5 am we are in to him resettling him 2,3,4, sometimes 5 times.

 He is not hungry when this happens, but usually when he wakes at 4.00/4.30 he will only sleep for another 30 mins, wont settle back to sleep at all so I take him up and feed him.

Back to bed then around 5/5.30, sleeps for another hour, then up at about 6.45 am with a big smile on his face!! Never that hungry then either, he rarely looks for food for a while. He has always been like this - the only difference when he was younger was that I fed him earlier, around 3 am.
We are gently weaning off dummy at the moment as we were afraid he was unable to get himself back to sleep. Having some success ( as in he is sleeping without it) but the frequent wakings still persist. He was breastfed, but now on mostly bottles & will be off breast completely this wk.

Any ideas??? Much appreciated

[Nauvoo]

Well, If I was really good at this BW thing I'd ask you to post your routine.  I know that at this age if my LO wasn't getting good sleep through out the day and was OT then we were up very often at night.  We struggled a lot with naps at this age and it seemed like we were up almost every night helping her go back to sleep until one day she started taking great naps and I found STTN was awesome.  So could you post your routine so that the next person who comes along can give you some good advice.

[brenda2]

Is he on a 4 hour EASY yet?  Nws in the early morning can be an indication that he is getting too much day sleep and making up for it by getting some A time in the night. Post your routine.

We have a 4.5 mo too. Nights were pretty bad until we did 2 things: switched to a 4 hour EASY and let her fuss a little bit and not rush in when she wakes at night. We gave her an opportunity to try to settle herself at night and with more appropriate A times too the last 2 weeks have been way better at night. Despite still poor naps she has actually sttn about 4 times in 2 weeks which is an improvement compared to the 4-5 nws we were having which were like you mostly in the early morning. 

I think weaning the dummy is a really good idea too. He has to be able to pit himself back to sleep. Now when my lo wake up I wait a bit and sometimes she can put herself back to sleep which is such a huge improvement for us.

Anyway. Hfh

[charlie'smummy]

Hi
Junemum - it sounds like you are describing my DS!  He does exactly the same.  Only difference is that I feed him when he wakes first time during the night (2/3am).  He seems to do something different every night though.
Last night after his DF he woke at 1am, 2am, 4am, 5am, 6am!

I have been told that he needs long naps during the day but I cant get him past 45 minute naps (he has 4).

[junemum]

Thanks guys, no he is not on 4 hour EASY yet - he is still on 3 hr!!! How do I switch him to 4 hour?? Now that he is on formula he will sometimes stretch his feeds quite easily to 4 hours anyway, but then at other times of the day still looks for food at the 3 hour mark (and even sometimes earlier). Activity time is generally 90 mins to 2 hours max, but he only sleeps for around 45 mins at each nap. Sometimes he will do a nap of 1 hour/1.5 hours at some stage, but it is more usual that his naps are shorter.

So...do I have to switch him to 3.5 hour EASY before going to 4 hour EASY? Or should I just follow his rhythm and stretch him where he is willing to stretch?? Any advice/experience on getting him to nap for longer? ( I guess I should just do like I do at night time and pat shush him back to sleep when he wakes at 45 mins if I can...which brings me to my next question.......is pat shush not a prop as much as a dummy ie. he doesnt need the dummy to get back to sleep now, but he needs me to stand there and pat shush him instead!!

[chelled17]

Hey Junemum, I was in your exact same position about 2 days ago.  Here's some links that might answer your questions.

http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=63161.0
http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=157684.0;all
http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=64275.0

The second one really helped me out a lot.  I noticed that once I extended my LO's A time, all the kinks have worked themselves out (for the most part)