Any help please!

[lamour]

I am a new member to the forum but could do with some help if thats ok; I see all the great advice on here and really need to ask for some! This is quite long but reading it back has also helped me to understand it a bit!!!!

Basically my baby was born in June; she has always been a good sleeper and was doing 7-6 from about 9 weeks.

She is now 17 weeks and for the last three / four weeks her sleeping at night has been all over the place.

She will sleep well in her cot in the day (she has 3 naps of no longer than about half an hour each; a normal day is:
Wakes about 6 and would normally feed then
A: 6-8 ish
S: 30 mins ish
E: one side taken (breastfeeding)
A: 9-12 ish
S: 30 mins ish
E: one side taken (BF)
A: 1-3 ish
S: 30 mins ish
E: one side taken
A: 3-6 ish
E: Is starting to take much more before she is going down.   
S: 7pm

However recently she has been not going down to sleep as normal (staying up later) waking in the night and can wake about an hour after she has gone down, then about 3am. She is never crying when she wakes but lets us know she is awake by going "ah ah ah" then cranking this up. If we leave her it escalates to full blown crying and I end up having to feed her back to sleep anyway, where as if we catch her quickly I can feed her back much more quickly. She is WIDE AWAKE when we go into her (she is in her own room) and smiling, happy to see us.

Things we have tried:
Not speaking or acknowledging her when we go in
My OH going in and rocking her
Me feeding her
Bringing her into our room and bed with us (after about an hour she falls asleep)
Putting more clothes on her (we thought she was cold)

DOes anyone have any ideas? My OH thinks we should wean her or give her formula before she goes to bed but i dont know...... She is exclusively breastfed and weight gain is great, she is on 75th centile.

We are so tired! If anyone has any ideas I would be so grateful as we just dont know what to do!

Thank you so much in advance x

[lilisuze]

hi lamour welcome to BW, the best community in the world!!

Right ok here we go.......

My lo did exactly this so it may be the same, or may be totally different!

She is having very short naps in the day so i expect she is overtired. When lo's wake about an hour after going to sleep this is usually the cause of the problem. Does she resettle at this wake? my lo did this for about 2 months, and it wasnt til i sorted the naps that this NW stopped.

At 3am when she wakes she is probably hungry, but maybe not hungry enough to be screaming. You could try starting a dreamfeed (most babies have this until 7-8 months of age) where you pick her up and feed in the dark/quiet of her bedroom and put her staright back to sleep. You do this before you go to bed yourselves, and it can be a breastfeed.

I'm sure experts will be along soon, but this might help you a bit for now

Lili xx

[brenda2]

Hi
I agree with pp that she is OT. She is doing 30 min naps which mean OT (45 min naps can mean OT or UT) and her total day sleepis really low. Her First A time is probably about right but after her first short nap her next A time is 3 hours which is way too long. If she does a short nap you should reduce the following A time because they're not as well rested after a short nap.

Is she only having the one nw?  She may well be hungry. It is normal for Los of this age to still need a night feed and it's fine to just go ahead and feed her at the 3 am waking. Is she only waking the once? Any wakeups after this one until morning? Does she go back down fine after you've fed her?
 

[lamour]

Hello!

Thank you for your good replies. I thought she might be overtired. Last night was better; she woke about an hour after going down at night and my OH settled her straight back down. Then she woke at 4am, fed and fell asleep almost straight away; then woke about 6 but after a bit of a moan went back to sleep till 7.10am!

Today I was very conscious of trying to get her to nap more; so:


Woke at 7.10am
E: 8.30am ish
A:8.45-10.30 iish
S: 10.30-11.00 ish
E: 11.30
A:11.45-13.45
S: 13.45-14.30
A: 14.30-19.00  !!!!!!

It obviously didnt work though!!!!
I tried to get her to nap at 17.00 but she wouldnt go down. I think this was my fault and I need to work on this, make sure she goes down.

brenda2: so if I reduce the A time after a short nap does that mean that I do the EAS but in a shorter time? Sorry for being clueless!!

It seems to be that the day gets worse as it goes on; would you agree with this? SHe gets more and more agitated as the day goes on too....

Thanks in advance x

[brenda2]

She's getting more and more tired as the day goes on with poor napping. This causes he to be more and more grumpy.

If short napping you don't really follow EAS. You keep the feeds at the same time and work the naps around it. This may mean you do EASAS or EASAES. But basically if they only so short naps you need more of them in a day so their total day sleep works out about the same as it would have been with longer naps.

[A pair of Charlies]

Hi there 

Looks like OT. Those A times are pretty long and seems really OT again and again, so not getting anywhere near enough day sleep which generally means pretty lousy nights too. Which builds, so they are shattered the next day too and so it goes.

And the horrible thing is that all those NWs and short naps make for one really tired Mummy  which is why the Mummy doesn't notice straight off. I was there too 

It helped me to think of A = Awake time (rather than activity). So A=eyes open to eyes closed. And if those eyes are open early during naps or it takes a while to settle for naps, that's still eyes open so it counts towards A time. So, you look at the balance of time awake compared to asleep. At 4 months, 4EASY seems to be straightforward 2h A and 2h sleep. But it's not always that clear. Some babes need less A and more sleep, others can take more A. And some are chronic 45 min short nappers for a while - which can be okay providing they are happy and content and sleeping well at night. And as pps, a short nap is followed by a short A.

Kind of like if we (before we were sleep deprived Mamas) had 3h30 sleep at night, rather than 7 hours. We'd be fried by mid-morning... we could get through the day on adreneline but we'd be struggling. If we didn't sleep that day, and went through to the night again, getting just 3h30...well, you get the picture. It's the same awake / asleep balance with babes, it's just when we are so tired we can't see it so well  Wish I'd been able to see it when we were attacked by OT!!

Okay. Here's some resources that might help:
 * http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=85134.0
 * http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=64158.msg476652#msg476652
 * http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=10385.0 - great for inspiration!

So, where she's had an A time first thing of 3h20, drop that down to 2h max. Personally, I'd go for 1h 45 here tops for a few days and watch closely for how she reacts. Usually the first A time of the day is the lowest of the day (by up to 15mins) for those first 6 months or so. Aim for a long nap (1h30) so if you get a waking at 30mins or 45 or 1h, try to resettle. If won't resettle, take a break, come out of the room for 20 mins and then try again. The aim is to get the sleep. If E crops up amongst this, feed and then back to getting that nap.

At 4 - 5 months, the typical A time is between 1h45 - 2h. All babes are different, but with the OT monster in hold I'd go for the low side for a day or so.

There are times during the first year when EASY is more EAES and so on. It's about following your babes cues and using EASY as a basis. They are all different, these babes!

How many feeds is she taking per day? Does she seem happy and content between feeds? Is she finishing the breast each time - are you offering the second? The growth spurt around this age usually marks the time they need to feed on both sides at each feed so it's possible that hunger is also disrupting sleep.

Does that make sense / help?

Charlotte