5 mo. old, NWing since 4-month mark

[gleek]

i am slowly going insane from sleep deprivation! i wish i knew what happened to get us started on this track but everything has been steadily going downhill since the 3.5-month mark. so my LO is just 5 months old. she sleeps swaddled for all naps and nighttime and with a pacifier which i don't think that she's addicted to because she generally spits it out and doesn't cry for it.. or at least didn't used to. i can't tell anymore. we've tried to pin down the causes of her nightwakings but haven't had much success. i'll post my schedule but here's what happens when she goes to bed.

• in bed by 7PM/7:15PM
• sleeps like a rock till anytime between 10PM/11PM when she wakes up crying and needs to have a pacifier reinsert. she USUALLY goes back to sleep although most times lately DH has to pick her up and console her/calm her down before she can pass back out.
• wakes up between 12AM/1AM, breastfeed
• then usually wakes each hour from 3AM/4AM on... and on.. and on.. till 6:30AM (which is way too early if you ask me).

some nights she wakes because she's wet her diaper so much that she's soaked, or she's pooped a lot. or sometimes she just wants the pacifier. or sometimes it's none of those things! i can't really say because i'm so sleep deprived that i have a hard time remembering what the heck happened in the morning!

here's our routine:
4-hour EASY, breastfed
she does this routine totally fine during the day. she's never starving for her feed and her naps are good. we just started her on rice cereal this past friday. i don't think that it's really affected her yet. she barely gets any in her mouth!

6:30AM - wake and feed
7:00AM - low-key activity
8:30AM - sleep
10:30AM/11:00AM - wakes (we usually extend all naps. sometimes she goes a little longer than 2 hours for this first nap and i suspect it's because she slept so crappy at night)
11:00AM - feed and then activity
12:45PM - sleep
2:30PM/3:00PM - wake and feed and activity
4:30PM/4:45PM - cat nap
5:30PM - wake and cluster feed (usually half a feed, if DH feeds her EBM in bottle then it's around 4oz)
6:15PM - bath
6:30/6:45PM - last feed
7:00PM - bed

bedtime routine consists of: saying good night to the apartment and daddy; into her room, lights low; lullabies on the ipod ; swaddle with lots of soothing kisses; shhhhing (hardly need to pat her anymore) with paci in; leave the room once i'm sure she's very relaxed and almost ready to fall asleep.

any thoughts? is there something in the routine that's causing these NWings? maybe it's developmental? i have no clue

[momofclaire]

I think maybe she is getting too much sleep during the day. 
I would try a routine like this.
6:30 wake and eat
8:30 nap (not longer than two hours)
10:30 feed
12:30 nap (not longer than 2 hours, 1.5 would be fine)
2:30 feed
4:30 cat nap (30-45min)
5:15 feed
6:15 feed and bed by 6:30-6:45

Have you tried an overnight diaper or doubling the diapers?
I wouldn't be letting her sleep longer than 2 hours at any nap.  What is her normal nap length?
I would seriously keep an eye on the paci. I can't really tell if it is a prop yet but you don't want it to become one.
Could she be teething?
Myia

[gleek]

thanks for your reply! yes, i now am pretty sure that she doesn't have a paci addict problem. last night she slept from her feeding at 12:30AM to 5:30AM straight. we recently bought huggies overnite diapers for bedtime and they seemed to work great last night! her diaper was a hundred pounds this morning but she WAS dry

i do want her to sleep better and longer though so i'm going to take your advice and keep her naps less than two hours. we usually extend all of her naps (except the catnap) though sometimes (very rarely) she extends them herself. she generally sleeps about 45 minutes, then stirs, and sometimes tries and tries to go back to sleep for about 15 or 20 minutes and then gets frustrated and cries out for us. once we have calmed her back down (we use pu/pd and shhing) she usually goes back to sleep for another hour. for her catnap, we just go in and get her from her crib when she stirs at the 45 minute mark. she is so predictable! you can set a watch by her.

and i definitely think that she's teething. she bites down hard on everything and has had fever spikes every day for the past week! the doctor thinks she's fine as it's never been a high fever but i expect to see a tooth any day now.

[momofclaire]

You could try w2s for the 45 minute wakes.  I know they are killer!  Are you familiar with W2S?

[gleek]

yeah, i tried wake to sleep about a month ago. as soon as my LO feels any pressure on her legs she goes a little nuts, so the whole pressure-on-the-joints thing has never worked. i also tried the method of getting her to stir around 30 minutes into the nap. that didn't work either. i figured that she would just grow out of the 45 minute naps eventually. i might be willing to try w2s again soon. i need to get more sleep at night first our daily routine is going ok for now. for me to futz with it, i have to be willing to pay the consequences!

[momofclaire]

Keep me posted on the next couple of days.
Things seem a bit better, yes?

[gleek]

ok, thought that i would come and check back in now that a few days have passed. we're still having lots of problems here with sleep at night. it's amazing that my LO is so predictable with when she wakes! i've been making sure that her naps are not longer than 2 hours during the day (the cat nap only goes to 45 minutes max.. whenever she makes it through one sleep cycle) and if she wakes at 7AM, she's in bed by 7/7:30PM.

without fail, she ALWAYS wakes between 10PM and 11PM. my husband and i watch her move through her regular sleep cycles on the monitor so we know that she's not addicted to the pacifier. when she wakes between 10 and 11, we always go in and re-plug her and she falls back to sleep. she then wakes up between 12AM and 1AM for a feed. then she'll sleep for a few hours and then wake every hour until 6AM. sometimes we can get her to go back to sleep at 6AM till 7AM but i'm starting to think that putting her back to sleep at that time may be working against us. today, i decided that we should just get up at 6AM and start the day.

we'll see what happens today. i'd still like to get her back in bed around 7PM. 6PM is just too early. i don't think that she is capable of sleeping 12 hours in a night if she's only awake for 12. more like 10.

thoughts? i'm beginning to wonder if all of her wakings are out of habit since they are so predictable? how would i break her of them? w2s?

[Lucysmom]

Just a thought... I don't remember when you are supposed to stop doing the dreamfeed, but since you are feeding in the night anyway I thought I'd suggest this.  How about when she first wakes between 10 and 11 you feed her instead of replugging.  Then see if that eliminates the second waking that is usually for a feed.  Perhaps then she will be nice and full and sleep longer.  She may not be interested in eating at all but I thought I'd suggest it.

Wishing you and your little peanut all the best!

[gleek]

thanks lucysmom! you know, it occurred to me that i might do that since i don't dreamfeed. it would certainly be a lot easier on me since i go to bed around 10:30 and then getting up 2 hours later to feed her is like torture  i'd much rather just go to sleep and stay asleep! (god, why don't babies like sleep as much as we adults do?!?!) i'll give it a shot tonight and see if it doesn't shake up the routine a bit and get her out of the NWing habits.

[momofclaire]

Let us know how it goes.

Myia

[gleek]

  well, unfortunately everything's gone pear shaped around here over the past few days. since she's now on solids, camille has been hiding the poopies from us for the past 48 hours and i have a feeling she's in a little pain from constipation. we were giving her some rice cereal in the morning for a whole week before she stopped pooping so this morning i didn't do rice cereal and did peaches instead. i'm hoping this will loosen things up. when we tried to extend her morning nap today, she was screaming and bucking, arching her back and kicking her legs. i tried doing pu/pd but she wouldn't calm down. i gave up after 15 minutes and just let her up from her nap. she's out with my husband in the jogging stroller now.

for the past two nights i was feeding her between 10PM and 11PM whenever she awoke instead of replugging her and letting her sleep till after midnight for her feeding. this went ok the first night (two nights ago). she was confused but ate. last night she was arching her back and screaming and it was hard to get her on the boob. when she was done eating i had to give her the pacifier which i hardly ever do.

i don't know what's going on. this has been a strange week for her; starting solids and she's most likely teething. maybe i just need to ride this out? god, i feel like i've said that every week since she was born. people say that it gets easier. i'm beginning to not believe them. 

[momofclaire]

Arching her back might be a sign that she is in pain.  Have you considered that the solids might be a bit too much for her right now?  Many babies can't handle solids until 6 months, in fact a lot of doctors and the American Academy of Ped are advising that mothers wait until 6 months.  If she doesn't poop for more than 5 days I would contact your doctore. Many babies can go several days without pooping, especially bf babies as their bodies learn to use all the nutrients in moms milk.

[gleek]

she finally showed us the poopies just before her afternoon nap today they were very peachy.

her doctor actually suggested that i start on solids at 4 months. yes, it was early according to the AAP but she had already more than doubled her birth weight at that point (now she is even bigger! almost 20 pounds!) and was showing other signs of being ready. i waited until the 5 month mark. she seems ready to me. we've had nothing but good luck so far except for yesterday and today.

i'm also pretty sure that the back arching now is a behavioral thing and not pain. as soon as i gave in and took her from her room during that first nap, she calmed down and then played until her usual feeding time. i think that she's just going through a small sleep strike. she has had a very fun and active holiday weekend and probably feels like taking a nap is just taking away from her fun. it's too bad that it all had to coincide with her night waking issues. i feel like i can't really pin down the problem until we're back on routine for a few days again. i'll have to check back in a week.

[gleek]

wow, so yesterday camille cut he morning nap short at 45 minutes, her afternoon nap was just 2 hours, and the catnap was 45 minutes. she then went to bed at 7:15PM. i watched her on the video monitor (love that thing) and she had one arm out of her swaddle. she played with her pacifier and dropped it a few times and cried out for me so i replugged her two or three times. then close to 7:45PM she dropped the pacifier and didn't cry out for me and instead went to sleep! without it in her mouth! she then slept until 1AM. my god, i thought something was wrong with her! i fed her then and she went back to sleep till 5AM at which point we replugged her twice till 7AM. it was the best night of sleep we've had out of her in a while.

i'm wondering if cutting back on her daytime sleep had something to do with it (that and not falling asleep with the paci plugged). i'm going to try keeping her morning nap to 1.5 hours or less today and slowly increasing her second A time to 2:15 and see if that helps keep the nightwakings at bay. she just fell asleep for her morning nap without so much as a cry

[gleek]

hi! just wanted to check in and let you know how our week went. this is my first week home after quitting my job. i'm so happy to be the primary caregiver for my daughter now! i did have 5 months off for maternity but then i had to return to work for the month of august. it was very tough to be away from her and thankfully my husband got to stay home on paternity leave. he continued on the BW track and did a great job while i was at work.

so now that i'm home for good i decided to futz with her schedule to see if i could stop the nightwakings. i thought that it could be a variety of things but now i'm pretty sure that her day sleep was interfering with her night sleep. i adjusted her schedule over the course of the week to give her longer A times and a bit shorter naps. her schedule now looks something like this (times approx)

6:30 - wake
7:00 - eat (BM only)
8:30 - sleep
10:00 - wake, feed one side, a little solids, feed other side
12:15 - sleep
2:00 - wake and eat (BM only)
4:00 - sleep
5:00 - wake and clusterfeed (BM only)
6:15 - bath
6:30 - last feed (BM only)
7:00 - bed

this has been the routine for the past three days. the VERY GOOD news is that she can do all of these extended A times with little difficulty. she sometimes gets a little ornery but if i give her plenty of wind-down time, she goes out like a light for her naps and even extends them on her own!! (that's a real miracle around here.) last night was a little rocky with multiple wakings because she cut her afternoon nap short but on the other two previous days when she was on schedule, she not only cut out her night feed but slept straight from a waking at 10PM to 5AM!! i really thought that i was dreaming when i realized that she never woke up to feed.

she still wakes once or twice in the early evening and i suspect this is because she is sleeping lighter than in the wee hours. she is also still waking at 5AM on the dot. we usually go in and reswaddle her and give her the pacifier and we can get another 1.5 hours out of her. i'm hoping that each of these wakings will go away on their own? i don't know but i can tell you that i'm pretty happy with what we have now. i'm starting to feel like a human being again. i'm going to do my darndest to never bring back that night feed again.