3 month old waking at 5am, bathtime & bowel problems!

[Rachael Carter]

My 3 month old has been sleeping through from 8 to 7 with a dream feed at 10:30 but has for the last week woke at 5 am every morning.  The first time it happend I fed her as nothing seemed to settle her, 2nd night I gave her gripe water as she seemed to have tummy pains, since then I have left her to grizzle for 15 - 30mins and this seems to work until she wakes for her morning feed at 7am.

Am I doing the right thing by leaving her to settle again? Also why has she started to do this?  We have moved recently but she seems quite settled with that now and we have kept everything the same.  The only other things that have changed is her bowel movements have gone from every nappy to every 2-3-4 days, have spoke to a health visitor about this.  She also does not seem to enjoy bathtime and has become quite upset during this time.  Bathtime was originally at 18:30 so I moved it to 17:30 as I thought that she must be tired but we are still having the same problems.
Any advice on the 5am wake up, bowel movements and bathtime would be greatly appreciated.

Her schedule is
7 am feed (breast fed baby)
08:30 sleep (1 hour)
10:00 feed
12:00 she sometimes sleeps here for 30 mins but not always
13:00 feed
I try and get her to sleep for another 30 - 1 hour anytime between now and 16:00
16:00 feed
17:30 - 18:00 Bath
18:30 feed
19:00 Bed (takes 30mins to 1 hour to finally go down)
10:30 feed

[Shdef]

DS started to be an early riser at that age...

6.30 is now lie-in-time for us and what you can do:

- if she doesn't scream but settles down again at 5am I would leave her... To be honest, at 5am you don't find it all that cruel to leave her to grizzle a bit, just don't do CIO

- if she does NOT settle back, don't put her down later (all you will get is an overtired early riser) but feed in the dark and then some quiet nappy change and play in the bedroom in the dark. Of she then sleeps a bit longer the next day, extend the bedroom time gradually until you reached your goal. If you get her into bright light before 6 am, her internal clock will set that way and she will think that that is a fine time to get up...

- go to your bed MUCH earlier than usual and maybe try to tuck her in a bit earlier as well. If she goes down at 7.30 you still have some Y-time...

- be happy with with anything past 6am, that is a good time to wake up

[Colin Macs Mom]

Rachael, are you feeding at night after the dreamfeed? At 3 months she most likely needs another feed after that. Even if she didn't before now, it's quite likely that she does at this time. Most LOs have a huge growth spurt at 3 months so that could very well be what you are seeing.

As for the bowel movements, it's early for her to be teething... have you been eating anything gassy or that could cause those movements that she would be getting through breastfeeding?

[SallyDom]

Hi Rachel, not too sure about the other stuff but just wanted to say about the sudden crying in the bath. My little boy started to suddenly cry in the bath when he was about 13 weeks old; not sure why, it is part of his bed time routine though so we carried on trying to bath him whilst singing silly songs and dancing infront of him to distract him but it lasted a good couple of weeks and then he started to last longer before crying. Eventually he went back to normal and didn't cry at all.
So basically I would say perservere with the bath (obviously get her out if she is distressed, but still keep trying to bath her), and let us know how she is getting on
Sal
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