4 mo NW for the last month

[HaniaJa]

Hi there,
I know that at this age there is a huge growth spurt and it's quite normal to have some sleep issues now (she's 18 wo to be exact), but this has been already taking almost a month and I'm starting to think if I made something wrong...

For the first 3 months she was a terrible napper, but nights were awesome - DF at 11pm and NF somewhere between 4 and 6. It took us almost 2 months to stretch naps into 1.5-2 hrs. Now the naps are good (we are on a  7am-7pm 3.5-4 EASY routine with 2 1.5-2hrs naps and 1 catnap in the afternoon), but the nights are killing me...She wakes up every 2-3 hours, I'm pretty sure that she is not hungry most of the times (she can stay without BF for 4 hrs during the day, so it shouldn't be an issue during the night, right?), so I try not to feed her before 3 am. Usually she is not screaming, she is "training her voice", sounding quite happy, but I can't let her be so loud, because I don't want her to wake up my son...usually after 5-10 min of talking to herself she starts to be fussy, so I give her a paci and sometimes she goes back to sleep, but sometimes I need to go back to her few times until she's settled...

I'm so tired, I don't remember having a good night with just one WU, I've been very patient with it, but don't you think that a month of such behaviour is a bit too long?;/ What can I do? Or should I still wait for a good change to happen naturally...?

Thanks!
H

[HaniaJa]

Hello, any ideas for help?(

[Martini~]

Around 3-4mo we were facing similar problems and it seems that we needed to cut sleep during day to 3h. We got immediately better nights and we went for short-long-short nap routine as two naps were far away to reach for DS1z

[lolsyb1982]

Totally agree with pp. We had to do similar.

Hope you see some improvement soon.

[trishr]

Hello

My daughter is going through the same thing.  She is about 15 weeks and also has a cold which is how I think the shortened nights also started.  She has always been a great sleeper in the day needing two 2 hour naps, one 1 hour nap, and about a 40 min nap.  I figured out that as long as I kept her naps at 5 to 5.5 hours total in the day, I would get her to have a 5 hour stretch at night.  Once she got her cold, I fed her when she would wake after soothing her nose and trying to decongest her.  It was close enough to the usual daytime feed and once she had been brought fully awake and fussed for a while from having a hard time breathing, she was hungry.  I knew I was potentially starting a habit I was going to have to break but I wanted to sooth her more.  Now I also notice in the daytime that she eats less at the 3 hour routines so when I started stretching the feedings out, she is taking more food.  This made me know that I should start transitioning her to the 4 hour routine even though she is about 3 weeks away from 4 months.  I am not going straight from 3 to 4 hour feedings.  I am going to 3.5 hour feedings and managing her naps in between.  I am still not going to let her have more the 5.5 hours of daytime sleep but am watching it because she may need 4.5 -5.0 only now that she is older.  I have found that if I focus on her feedings and let her get the naps in between, instead of focusing on her sleep, the routine happens more naturally and the sleep part comes easier.  with my first daughter I used to focus on sleep more than eating and let eating come naturally between the sleep and it was always a struggle with her daytime sleep. I am not sure if my shift in focus is truly helping the sleep be better with this baby or if it is just a difference in personality.  I know my comments are more what I am going to do than a testimony to what have worked but I just wanted to offer a suggestion and support from someone else going through it as well.  I was going to reach out for advice myself and saw your response and the couple responses

Take care and I hope you are both able to get some sleep soon!!

[HaniaJa]

Girls, thank You so much for Your support!

This is a thing that her nights started being worse since her naps started being good. But on the other hand I see no chance that she manage to make longer than 2 hrs A time after 2 hrs S (after 1-1.5 hr S is even less), so it's really difficult to set a day schedule with 3-3.5hrs daily S time for us. She is having now  max 4.5 S time during the day, I wake her up after 2 hrs if she is still sleeping. Besides - when we were on holidays, where all this stuff started, she had no more that 3.5 hrs of sleep daily...

My second thought is that maybe the fact that I just started to unswaddle her causes the trouble. Maybe she is not ready yet? maybe I should go back do swaddling?

You know, it's so frustrating - she's not even crying, she just wakes up and talking to herself and screaming happily, I don't know, maybe I'm doing the wrong thing just giving her a paci? But this is how she falls asleep normally - just by herself after giving a paci...

Very tired mum:(

[Lenni]

Hi there,
Same thing happened with my daughter (17 weeks)... she has always been a great sleeper at night and started sleeping through the night shortly before Christmas. Suddenly at the beginning of Jan she started waking up every couple of hours at night. We did the same thing, cut daytime sleep to 3 hrs in total (45 mins in morning, 2 hrs at lunchtime and catnap in afternoon). I also tuck the end of her sleeping bag into the mattress at the end of the cot to stop her moving her legs so much at night. She slept through last night and has settled really well tonight... fingers crossed. If you stopped swaddling her a sleeping bag might be good, you can also use a thin sheet across the sleeping bag and tuck it in either side of the cot to transition from being unswaddled (just make sure she doesn't get too warm)...?

[HaniaJa]

For tonight I put her back in the woombie and a miracle happened, she woke up only once for feeding! I used a sleeping bag for the last 2 weeks with her hands inside, but she was able get them out and I don't know, it looks like her hands were waking her up...?
I don't know, should I come back do sleeping bag even though her sleep is the worst in the world then?

[Martini~]

Quite normal, she has to be ready for transition to sleeping bag. We started at 4mo+ from naps as we wanted to cap them LOL. It ended well and naps were crap but nights were good and finally we went for swaddle out at night and there was single additional waking from no swaddle - but, your LO has to be ready!!!

[HaniaJa]

Hi!
I just wanted to tell You that our nights are much better now-she wakes up only twice, but would like to ask you for some advice. Her first wake up is always about 1-2:30am and I'm just giving her a paci to put her back to sleep, because I think it's impossible for her to be hungry after feeding at 11pm. (EBF). She goes back to sleep and then wake up for feeding at about 3-5am. My question is - can I do anything to get rid of this first WU? It's strange, because she soothes herself after feeding, she usually talks to herself for a few minutes and then falls asleep, so I don't suppose that this is a paci issue.
What do You think?
xx
H

[ginger428]

Hi Hania,
Sorry you never got a reply regarding that first NW. I see that your DD is around 6 months now.  How are you guys doing? Is she still waking to eat 2x a night?

[mariarico]

Hi hania
I am currently having the same issue with my lo at 19 weeks. I was wondering if your lo has resolved his issue. Mine wakes at 2:30, then 5:30