Hi there
I posted here about 6 weeks ago with some issues with my lo after a holiday/sickness/SA and I thought we had that sorted but I have been kidding myself. When I sat down today to think about how often she is sleeping through the night nowadays I would say it is 2 or 3 nights a week at most. I am quite simply confused though and cannot work out why she is no longer sleeping through after having slept through from about 5.5 months. I am hoping something obvious which I am missing will jump out to someone else reading this.
so our day normally looks like this:
wake at 6.15 to 6.30 ish (used to be 7.00) - leave in cot to babble and play until 7.00 unless she protests loudly
nap for 30 mins around 9.15 or 9.30
nap at 1.15 to 1.30 for around 1.5 hours, sometimes 2
bedtime at 7.00
I wake her from the morning nap after 30 minutes as she would happily sleep longer but then does not take a second nap at all and the afternoon becomes horrendous and she is way too overtired by bedtime. She goes down for both naps okay but not brilliantly - I used to be able to just put her in and walk out and she would be asleep within 2 minutes. Now, I often have to go back in and lie here down at least once as she will have stood up and be shouting for me.
Bedtimes have also become harder - tonight I did wi/pd/wo (I have been using this over the last week or so but perhaps not as consistently as I should) and she eventually went to sleep at 8.15. She is not crying the whole time. She might settle for up to 5 minutes at a time but will suddenly start crying and stand back up again.
As for the night wakings, I am probably up to her 5 nights of the week, anywhere from 1 to 4 times. She is pretty easy to settle most times and only needs me or DH to walk in, lie her down if standing, sssh a few times and tell her its still sleepy time. At times this works straight off and she goes back to a deep sleep but other times she cannot get into a proper sleep and cries out every five minutes or so. If we lay a hand on her she will get into a deep sleep but we know this could be the start of some horrendous accidental parenting and forever having to lay next to her cot to get her back to sleep so keen to avoid that.
I have considered teething and she has got three pre-molars which have just cut but she is absolutely fine when awake so I am not sure this is the problem at night.
she has been more clingy during the day so maybe it is SA again. We went through a rough patch of SA when she was 10/11 months but it has been okay since then.
or is she getting too much day sleep and so not settling well at bedtime or during the night?
as you can see I have no idea any more?!?
i really hope someone can help - I start a new challenging job this week and can no longer keep going on interrupted sleep almost every night!!! I am beginning to feel like a zombie again. Sorry for the rambling email - lack of sleep is my excuse!
Fiona
