4 month old repeated and now new wakings

[reuvena]

Bs'D
Hi:
My 18 week old DS is having night wakings. He usually gets up sometime in the hour of 3 am. It can be 3, 3:20, 3:40, or something else. Usually he can get himself back to sleep by some sort of cry, but then he gets up again in the hour of 4. Sometimes he can get himself back and sometimes not. Lately, I've been having to feed him at around 5 because he won't go back and seems hungry. I don't know how to prevent these night wakings, even though he can sometimes get himself back, it gets him off track it seems for the rest of the night.

On top of this, for the past two nights, he has awakened at around 9:20 AND 10:20, after getting to bed aorund 7. For the first waking he gets himself back to sleep, but for the second he hasn't.

Also for those two nights he was able to put himself to sleep at the initial bedtime, which was a huge accomplishment.

What should I do?!

How would wake to sleep even work in this situation?

I breast feed, so I'm not sure how I'd up his food per se, if you think that's the issue. In general, I try to get him to nurse for longer, but always at a certain point in his feed he refuses to nurse any more. Sometimes that can be after just 10 or 15 minutues. Right now, I'm experimenting with EASY, but the 3.5 hour EASY seems to be where we're holding now. He can't handle very much A time at all.

[lilac83]

Could you post what a normal day looks like? Usually wakings shortly after the LO has gone to bed means OT, but will be able to tell more after seeing your routine. Also, around 4 months there's a growth spurt. This usually lasts a few days and then things return to normal. If things have been going on for longer than a few days, he may have gotten into the habit of waking vs actually needing to wake, iykwim.

[reuvena]

OK.
I've been adjusting the EASY because he can't handle very much A time. The 4/4 attempt was a disaster, so I've been going back to 3.5 and 3. The thing is he's big and can definitely handle 4 hours between feeds, just not very much A time (barely more than an hour).

THis is what happened yesterday, approximately:

E 6:45
A playing on floor, got tired by 8
S fell asleep on his own by 8:15 or so, fell asleep by himself and slept uninterrupted (that was a first)
E 10:45
A again on floor, got tired before 12
S needed help getting to sleep, fell asleep by about 12:15, slept until about 1, then I spent the next hour doing pu/pd with him, and he would not go back to sleep
E 2 pm
A same as above, tired by 3
S asleep by 3:20, woke up before 4, again, I spent an hour doing pu/pd and he wouldn't go back down
A 5pm quiet sitting in a carseat, getting really cranky because he got so little naptime
E fed him just before 6
A bath
S asleep by 6:45-7

the feeds may not be exactly right, but yesterday was approx. 3.5-4 hours between feeds. He's big enough to go 4 hours for feeds, which is what is confusing. He def. doesn't need to eat every 3 hours, but he can't handle that much A time. He is 18 weeks and is well over 15 lbs. His birthweight was 8 lbs 10 oz.

[lilac83]

So it looks like his first A time is 1.5 hours. This is normal since that first A time is usually the shortest. Did he sleep all the way to his E at 10:45? If so then his second A would have been another 1.5 hours but the nap was UT. I would try a bit of low key A time for 10-15 more minutes then start wind down and put him down. He may sleep longer.

Is he crying the entire hour you're doing PU/PD? I would limit your attempt to about 20 minutes. After 20 minutes leave the room for 1 minute then come back in like he just woke up from a long nap. That A time from 1:00pm to 3:20pm is I think where things went wrong. He needs a shorter A time after a short nap (probably 1.25/1.5 hours) but he ended up with over 2 hours. Remember, doing PU/PD still counts as A time. Getting the routine straightened out should help those early evening NW. The NW at 4am may very well be from hunger. It's not unusual for an 18 week old who's bf to still need 1-2 feeds each night.

HTH!